Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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It is a little known historical fact that there were originally four Wise Men. But one was turned away because he brought a fruitcake!

Actually (and this little-known fact is true) we don't know how many wise men there were. The Bible doesn't say. It tells us they brought three kinds of gifts (gold, frankincense and myrrh), and that, presumably, is where we get the well established idea that there were three. But that doesn't necessarily follow. Could have been two, or six, or a dozen.

We Celebrate the Wise Men Who Came to Worship the King

It is on Epiphany Sunday, two weeks after Christmas, that we celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men in Bethlehem -- the lapse of time, of course, because they had some distance to travel. These Wise Men, these "magi," play an odd role. They always look awkward in a crèche. Everyone else is poor, humble -- and here they are in their rich finery, carrying expensive gifts. But they represent not just wealth: they represent the non-Jewish world, they represent us at the manger.

We Celebrate the Fulfillment of the Prophesy to Abraham

Those of you who are in Disciple Bible Study will remember that, in the beginning -- two thousand years before the birth of Jesus -- God made three incredible promises to an old man, to Abraham. First, that Abraham, though childless at the time, would have descendants (lots of them!). And this God accomplished by giving Abraham and Sarah a son, Isaac, in their old age. Second, that this family of Abraham, which Isaac would establish, though Abraham and Isaac themselves were nomads, they would have their own land. And this promise God kept five hundred years later (after a long period in Egypt and a shorter period in the Arabian wilderness), by giving Abraham's family, the Hebrews, a land which they thought was so beautiful they said it flowed with "milk and honey". And, finally (the third promise), that Abraham's people would maintain a special relationship with Abraham's God (who was the only true God), and because of that relationship would become a blessing to all the world.

Now we Christians believe that the last promise, concerning being a blessing to all the world, was kept when Jesus became the foundation of a truly worldwide church. The Wise Men, then, are the first sign that the ancient, proprietary religion of Abraham is about to burst its bounds, to move beyond Abraham's family (the Jews) to the rest of the world, that the Jewish cat is out of the bag. As we see the Wise Men kneeling there with their gifts, we might want to hum the old hymn: "In Christ there is no East or West, in him no North or South."
 
 

These men were diviners. We use the word "divine" in many ways, everything from saying, "that dress is simply divine," to saying "Christ our Lord was divine" -- that is, having the nature of God. In the middle somewhere is another meaning: to divine, in this sense, is to see and understand things beyond the usual. A "diving rod" helps us find water hidden in the ground. St. John the Divine, who wrote the Book of Revelation, is called that because he surely saw things ordinary men do not see. These Wise Men divined the will of God by the stars. And, whatever their method, their divination was correct: that something very important, something beyond the ordinary, had happened in Bethlehem.

Isaiah Also Prophesied the Coming of Christ

Isaiah was also a diviner. Long before Jesus, Isaiah was a prophet of Israel in desperate times. His people were straggling back from a humiliating fifty-year exile in Babylon, straggling back in rags to Jerusalem, a once great city now with grass growing and jackals running in her streets; and all her public buildings, including the beloved Temple, were in ruins. And, in the midst of all this despair, Isaiah had an improbable vision (which we read this morning). He says to his broken people: Rise and shine! Wake up. God's light, his glory, is shining on you and you alone -- all the rest of the world is in darkness." (This, of course, would be understood as the keeping of God's last promise: that the Jews would be a blessing to all the world.) Listen to his words and see if they aren't a prophecy of the Wise Men: "Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn and the wealth of the nations shall come to you. A multitude of camels shall cover you. They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord." Isaiah saw caravans turning and carrying their wealth to Jerusalem. We see Wise Men.

Elements of hope in hopeless times. Hope that leapfrogs the present, hope that divines the will of God, "far down the futures broadening way." Surely what Mary and Joseph needed was a hotel room. Surely what the postexilic Jews needed was some money and some stone masons to help them rebuild. But the diviners among them saw far more. That is what diviners do. They lift peoples' visions.

Through the Bread and the Wine We Take in the Message of Christ

We need lots of things, but nothing more than hope. We who are trying to sing the Lord's song in a strange land. We who are surrounded by the gray, bleak world of paganism. We get together for this morsel of bread and this tiny cup of wine, drink a toast to our absent King, and pray for his return. What is that in the face of all our troubles? Well, there is a star in this once secret ceremony of ours, a star of hope, "a bright and morning star" -- as the early Christians referred to Jesus. There is, in this, also a call for us to wake up and do our part -- to rise above our discouragement, and to shine, to be, in fact, a blessing to our world, a city set on a hill, the salt of the earth, the leaven in the loaf. But most of all there is a vision, perhaps a divination in this: the vision of a world where the people of God will be a blessing to all people. It is already taking place. In just two thousand years (a dot in time for God) the message of Jesus (carrying with it all the wisdom of the Jews and more) has spread from a stable in Bethlehem to every nation on earth. Hundreds of millions now bow the head and bend the knee to his name. The vision is far from complete, of course. There is more to do and be done. But we should step back now and then and see what God has accomplished, and marvel at what he is yet to do. Epiphany: the coming of hope. A star. A vision. The keeping of an old promise.