2nd Sunday of Christmas

Christmas 2A: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84

Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:1-12

The Rev'd Margaret Dyer-Chamberlain

January 4, 2026

May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts, and the actions of our lives be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer.

Good morning, St. Aidan’s.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, the moment when the wise men from the East traveled to Jerusalem and found themselves overwhelmed and overjoyed by the glory of God, manifested in the birth of the baby Jesus.  It’s a familiar story, a sacred story.  By Matthew’s account, we don’t really know how many wise ones there were or who they were exactly – perhaps educated priests, maybe scientists or astrologers since they knew about stars.  We know they were not from Israel – they were from the East – foreigners, gentiles, different.  We know that King Herod tried to get them to collude with him – asking them to find the messiah and report back.  Herod was a cruel tyrant and ruler who was threatened and frightened by the idea of a new King of the Jews. It seems pretty clear that Herod’s motives were dangerous at best and violent at worst.

The wise ones made no response to Herod that we know of and they set out, following a star. They found the baby king, brought him gifts, paid him homage, and were overwhelmed with joy.  They seemed to know in their bones that they had found the messiah – they experienced God’s glory “face to face” as our collect this morning put it.

Then, at the end of the story we hear that - “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”

This is significant.  They decided not to obey Herod, the powerful, ruthless ruler of their time.  Instead they decided to go home – ostensibly to tell others of the wonder they had seen – to spread the good news.  They took “another road” – they chose another option rather than obeying the authorities of their time.  They charted their own path knowing that they had seen, internalized and understood the presence of God.

I can’t help but wonder what that moment – that juncture point – was like for them.  I wonder if they were afraid that Herod would come after them or punish them?  I wonder if they had any inkling of what another road would look like for them?   I wonder if they doubted their dream?

And I wonder about us – how do we feel about our journeys as followers of Jesus at a time when the culture and authorities of our world are not necessarily supportive of this road we’re taking?  How are we thinking about our version of another road?  What doubts do we experience?

I feel like the starting point for thinking about all of this needs to be grounded in the foundation of that deep joy that the wise ones experienced when they found Jesus.  That epiphany moment.  Episcopal Priest and author Fleming Rutledge noted that “Epiphany directs us to behold – that’s a revelatory biblical word, behold – the glory of God in Christ as he moves through this time on earth with us through his death into his ultimate victory.”

Our reading from Isaiah also refers to the glory of God, emphasizing that even as darkness covers the earth and the people, God is with us.  “Lift up your eyes and look around” the reading advises us.  Isaiah notes that nations will come to God’s light, kings will see the brightness of God’s dawn, and the glory of God has risen upon the people.  This is the kind of glory the comes only from the infinite love of God.  And in case we missed it, our hymn of praise this morning repeats it – glory, glory, glory to God.

So God is our foundation, these ancient texts tell us - our starting point.

Psalm 72 does a great job of explaining to us what this foundation means, and what Jesus’ ministry among us is all about.  “He shall defend the needy among the people, he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor” – the psalm repeats this theme four times by my count.  Righteousness and justice are the highest of God’s values.  This is counter-cultural and it’s not necessarily what the rulers of the world emphasize, although in this triumphant psalm “all kings shall bow down before God and all the nations do him service.”  There is a very clear message here that God’s vision and dream is far more important – and more lasting - than any earthly conflicts or pain we find ourselves in the midst of.

As I think about these starting points - God’s foundation for our lives and what this foundation means, I find myself left with the question of --- “What am I going to do about this?  What’s my action?”  I can’t help it, I’m a deacon after all.

Abby Olcese (Ol ces e), in a piece in this month’s Sojourner’s magazine, validates this question for me.  She writes “The season of Epiphany invites us to take our relationship to God out into the world, expose us to new experiences, and challenge us.”  Another writer in the same magazine, Kyndall Rae Rothaus (Roat house), describes this as “drawing us into a humble evaluation of where we are and challenging us to a depth of commitment that can’t be faked or flaunted or rushed.”

I was thinking about this as I was clearing out my home office a bit – going through clippings I’ve saved and vowing to organize them better in the new year.  Anyone else have that practice at this time of year?

I came across an article, again from Sojourners magazine (I guess that seems to be my source for today!) from last year at this time entitled “Epiphany and Mulch.”  I wonder why I saved that one?

The author, a Mennonite minister named Celeste Kennel-Shank, related her despair over the impact of climate change in her Chicago neighborhood and its impact on the trees in particular.  After drought, wildfires and destructive storms, the trees were suffering.  And then she remembered, from a community gardening experience, that mulching helps trees.  She spread some mulch around a tree in her church garden, and then around a neighbor’s trees.  Other neighbors “got curious” about what she was doing, they talked about trees and mulch, and people began joining in.  Soon the number of mulched trees increased, a child planted sunflower seeds around and about, and a sense of hope began to grow.

Celeste Kennel-Shank wrote as she reflected on this experience, “It’s easy to let Epiphany come and go.  We remember the journey the Magi took with a luminous hope to guide them.  This year, even as ‘the nations rage’ and some ‘people plot in vain’ perhaps we can … search for what renewed hope looks like for us today.  How is God’s light rising around us?”

Whether it’s about mulching trees or reaching out to our neighbors or holding our broken world in prayer, we each have the capacity to bring God’s love into the world.  It sounds easy, and it’s not.  It’s hard to remember that we are, each of us, made in the image of God and that we have all we need to be disciples of Jesus.  The noise of the world gets in our way, we become discouraged and confused, we are fearful that we don’t have the answers we’re looking for.

And yet – God’s love is with us anyway.  There is a deepness and a mystery to this.  Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians that we heard today, called it “the mystery of Christ.”  Paul writes about this mystery as the gift of grace, available to everyone.  He notes God’s plan and wisdom and power.  He yearns “to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things…..”

Thinking about the mystery of God brought me back full circle to where I began this homily – which is to the wise ones in that moment of joy and mystery and awe and wonder that they experienced as they visited the baby Jesus.  Somehow, in that epiphany moment, they knew that God was their foundation, the source of the meaning in their lives, setting the direction for their journey to come even though they didn’t really know what that journey would look like.  I have to think that, like us, they didn’t have all of the answers and probably they had a lot of fears, but – at the same time – they knew they were held by a loving and gracious God.  And perhaps they knew, deep down, that this knowledge was really all that they needed to find their road home.  This was the starting point that they were called to embrace, to wonder about, to rely upon, to linger within.

I’d like to leave us this morning with one last thought from Sojourners magazine from this month.  This one is from Julie Polter who wrote: “So, in this new year I may seek to do more ‘beholding’ and praising the glory of a God who heals, who loves, who creates, in ways that give power and hope beyond our current imagination.” May it be so, as we celebrate Epiphany today and as we embark on a new year together. Amen.