“By Another Way”
A Meditation for Communion by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett
Preached at Pleasantville United Church of Christ, January 9, 2011
Matthew 2:1-12 & Matthew 3:13-17

“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage...And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.” (Matthew 2:11-12)

The season of Christmas came to a close without fanfare this week when Epiphany began on Thursday.  Epiphany is both a day and a season in the life of the Church.  Thursday was Epiphany – the day, and we are now in Epiphany – the season.  We’ll be in this season until Ash Wednesday when the season of Lent begins.

Epiphany is a wonderful word.  The church harbors many wonderful words like: “epiphany” and “Pentecost” and “resurrection” and “eschatology,” but epiphany is one of those words that you’ll hear from time to time in secular culture.  People may say they “had an epiphany” and it usually means that they had a moment of sudden clarity or insight.  The word, itself, means “manifestation” or “appearing,” and in the Church we use the word with a capital “E” to refer to the manifestation or appearing of Christ to the gentiles who are represented by the Magi.  Hence, we read the story from Matthew of the Visitation of the Magi.

But the truth is, anytime the holy ‘shows up’ in some manifestation or appearing – that is an epiphany – with a small “e” and we can name a few of them:

- the burning bush that Moses encountered on Mt. Horeb was an epiphany;

- the still small voice that Elijah encountered also on Mt. Horeb;

- the in-breaking of God that we witness in the Baptism of Jesus is an epiphany;

- the dazzling moment of revelation, known as the Transfiguration is an epiphany;

- the encounter that two disciples have with the resurrected Christ on the Road to Emmaus is an epiphany;

- Paul’s startling vision on the road to Damascus is an epiphany.

Whenever God breaks into our lives with sudden clarity and insight – frequently interrupting our plans to be doing something else -- those are epiphanies.  The great 20^th century theologian, Paul Tillich, used to call these experiences “fragmentary moments of unambiguous reality”: epiphanies.

If you’re here this morning -- by your own choice -- the chances are good that you’ve had an epiphany.  Because it is often those moments of sudden clarity – those moments when we find ourselves confronted by the living God – that leave us forever changed and put us on some kind of spiritual path.

So the subject this morning is epiphanies – and how we are profoundly changed by them – and today we have two epiphany stories to ponder as a way to explore this.

First we re-visit the same text that we heard here last Sunday: a text known in the Christian tradition as “the Visitation of the Magi,” then we turn our attention to “the Baptism of Jesus.”

The Bible story we heard this morning doesn’t tell us how far the wise men traveled.  It doesn’t even say that there were three of them – it only says they brought three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh, so tradition has named them the “Three Kings” and given them exotic names like Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar.  But, in fact, the bible is silent about their persona. 

We only know that they journeyed from the East; that they followed the light of a star; that they unwittingly alerted Herod to the birth of the King of the Jews; that they narrowly avoided being used by Herod to seek out and find the child so that Herod could murder him; that – when they encountered the Christ Child – they fell down and worshiped him, offering him gifts; and we know that they were so profoundly changed by their experience that they went home by another way.

Our translation says, "They left for their own country by another road." Other translations say that they “left for their own country by another way.”  However it is described, those wise ones who journeyed to meet the Christ-child could not go back the same way that they came.  They had been to Bethlehem and they had been irrefutably changed. 

The name, “Bethlehem” means in Hebrew, “place of bread.”  The place of bread became the place where the bread of life --- which would be broken for us and for our salvation – would come to be born.  The journey of the Magi reminds us that once you have been to the place of bread, you can’t go back the same.  Once you have encountered the living God, your journey will never be the same.

The people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to the desert to be baptized by John in the Jordan River.  They went out to John, confessing their sins and being washed clean by water and a spirit of repentance. 

Jesus, too, came out to the desert to be baptized by John. 

And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, ‘
This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.

From that moment on, he would never be the same.

Some theologians consider this to be the first of Jesus’ miracles – it being a miracle of humility that the Lord of all Creation would humble himself and be baptized.  Dale Brunner writes: “The first thing Jesus does for the human race is [to] go down with it into the deep waters of repentance and baptism.  Jesus’ whole life will be like this.  It is well known that Jesus ends his ministry on a cross between thieves; it deserves to be as well known that he begins his ministry in a river among sinners.”[1]

Christians re-enact the baptism of Jesus every time we celebrate the Sacrament.  Most of us do not go down to the Jordan River in order to do it, but we come to the font remembering the way that our Lord went down into the deep waters of baptism and repentance in order to identify with us at every point of our journey.

In the waters of baptism we are claimed by God’s unfailing grace, washed free of our sins, and named as one of God’s Beloved.  From that moment on, we will never be the same.

Today we are invited to enter into two stories that remind us that God’s intention for our lives is to make sure that, once we have met him, we will never be the same.

The place of bread.  The waters of baptism.  Both are meant to be encounters that change us.  Both are meant to be practices that remind us of who we are, and to Whom we belong.  Both are meant to mark new beginnings in our life with God.  And both are meant to teach us that – once we have encountered the living God – we will always go home by another way.

It doesn’t matter what has come before.  This is a place we can begin anew. 

I don’t know about you, but that’s exactly why I’m here.