Second Sunday of Christmas: January 5, 2025

The Rev. Nat Johnson

Readings: Jeremiah 31:7-14 | Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a | Matthew 2:1-12 | Psalm 84

Today is the Second Sunday of Christmas. Tomorrow, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Epiphany. We are at yet another hinge moment of our liturgical year, standing at another moment of transition as we complete the nativity cycle and shift to a season that will focus our attention, and shape our imaginations according to, God’s self-revelation in Jesus. And we make this shift by hearing the story of the magi’s journey to Jerusalem and then Bethlehem as they follow the star that will lead them to a new king. The magi are priests and scholars who hold wisdom and insight, who are open to reading the portents of the skies and heeding the visions of dreams, even when it leads them into foreign territory.

Today, we might discard such wisdom as hokey astrology and coincidence. We are not trained to see the stars or dreams in the same way as those in ancient cultures were. Stars have become demystified, and any messages found in them debunked as lore and myth. Psychology has led us to believe that dreams are simply our subconscious attempt to process and categorize our waking experiences. As a society, we have become increasingly skeptical about notions of “divine signs,” those moments of epiphany in which God reveals Godself in our lives and in our world. It is perhaps easy to assure ourselves that epiphanies are things of the past, if they ever were anything at all. It’s easier in our present moment to think of our faith as an intellectual ideology that governs our moral compass.

But the story of the Magi following a star to seek out the One whose coming it announces challenges any notion of faith as simple ideology. For here, the fullness of God was found not in stone tablets, not in cultic tradition, not in prophetic utterances, but in a child born to peasants in an insignificant town. And the announcement of this significant birth (according to Matthew) is not accompanied by angelic declaration or song, but in the subtle movement of the heavenly bodies that point beyond themselves to the source of their brightness.

Perhaps it would be easier for us to recognize God’s self-revelation if it were accompanied by the host of heaven suddenly appearing in the night’s sky, filling the stillness with songs of praise and jolting our sleepy selves from the mundaneness of life. If only God would give us such clear signs of God’s presence! Perhaps then, we could understand the magi being overwhelmed with joy when they see the star stop. Perhaps then, we could understand the joy that leads them to fall on their knees in worship.

But the magi didn’t have choirs of angels. They had a star, and they had their dreams. Along the way, they had to tune into something beyond the tangible to discern their path, to find what they sought. And that journey wasn’t without peril. Their travels alone would have been long and arduous, but they soon discovered that their arrival with news of the birth of a new king would spark fear and violent response within the political system. The magi were given King Herod’s blessing to go and find the child they spoke of and to report back after they’d found him. But his intention was not like the magi – his intention was to snuff out whatever threat he perceived the newborn king would bring him and to do so he ordered the murder of every male child under the age of two in the region. Just as the magi heeded the warning in their dreams to return home a different way, Mary and Joseph were warned to flee the wrath of Herod and they journeyed to Egypt where they lived as refugees until the death of the king.

Once again, I suspect it is easy for us to simply brush off the supernatural, to see the story of the magi, of King Herod, of Mary and Joseph as nothing more than lore or myth – important though we may find it in our faith tradition. What, after all, have dreams and stars to do with us in 21st-century U.S. America?  What have they to do with us here at St Peter’s Episcopal Parish in Seattle, Washington?

I want to suggest a few things that have relevance for us, for the particularities of our time and our place. First, the story of the magi reminds us that God’s self-revelation is not confined to “proper” places and methods and people. The magi did not belong to the people of Israel, the star they followed was not prophesied in the Hebrew tradition. God’s revelation transgressed such proper boundaries and the presence of the magi in Matthew’s gospel is a reminder that God’s revelation is available to all and is found along unexpected paths. Second, the magi provide for us an example of following the signs of revelation, of heeding dreams (even when it means defying the king). They demonstrate a faithful journey that ends in utter joy and worship and so offer us a pattern of seeking after Jesus even along perilous paths. Finally, the magi were willing to take another road, to set aside their best laid plans and go another way. They offer us an example of discernment that leads to something new, something different, something unexpected.

Friends, we find ourselves in the midst of a great deal of transition: a new year, a new president, a new slate of politicians, new tragedies of violence. But we also stand as a community in transition. We are now one year into my two-year call as your priest in charge. When I first arrived, the story I heard over and over was that our people were burnt out, exhausted. We were still recovering from the pandemic, we were mourning the loss of those who had died and those who were no longer coming. For much of the past year, we have allowed a great deal of our ministry to lie fallow so that we might find rest and in that rest be rejuvenated. In the coming year, we will begin to rebuild our ministry, to discern together what shape our mutual ministry will take. We will envision together how God is calling us to work in this place and who God is calling us to be in this time.

Now is the time for us to read the signs in the stars and to pay attention to our dreams. The magi’s story can give us courage to do so, by reminding us that God comes to us (and to all!) in unexpected ways. Jesus, the bright morning star, will be our guide. The road ahead of us will not be easy. We will have difficult decisions to make, we will have to risk taking new and unexpected paths. But, we need not fear the journey because it is bound to end in utter joy. Let us follow the example of the magi and together set out to discover all that God has in store for us and for the community in which we gather. May God give us wisdom and insight, and may we always keep before us the guiding light of God-with-us. Amen.