Travellers’ Tales
A sermon preached by the Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce
on Epiphany Sunday, 3rd January 2010
In the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I suspect that from the time when human beings first attempted to describe their own life stories in words, they will have used the language of travel to do so. We all do it – and most of us do it so automatically that we don’t even think about it. We speak of life as a ‘journey’. If things are going well and we have a sense that we are making progress we may say that we are ‘really getting somewhere’, or that we have ‘come a long way’.
Conversely, if life is difficulty, we may describe it as an ‘uphill struggle’; we may feel we have ‘lost our way’, or that we are ‘unclear about the way ahead’ or ‘unsure of the next step’. And this kind of language is particularly relevant to our spiritual lives, because bound up with any understanding of spirituality is the idea of quest: of seeking God; of trying to find the right path; of discovering where God is calling us to be. So it is very natural for us to reach for words that are to do with movement, with journeying, with travel.
And if you think about it, the single most important starting point for all Christian spirituality – the Bible – is itself a book of journeys: the Israelites were a pilgrim people throughout much of their history, and just about every narrative in the Old Testament has travel in it somewhere: Abram is called to leave his native country and his native people and go to an unknown land that God will show him; the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and their wilderness wanderings is integral to their story; as is the trauma of their Babylonian exile. And the New Testament is just as full of travel as the Old: at the heart of the Christmas story we have just celebrated is the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem; during his ministry Jesus was constantly on the move, preaching and teaching in and around the towns of Galilee, before finally setting his face to Jerusalem and embarking on that final journey to the cross and beyond. And the apostles went even further afield, having been charged with the task of making disciples of all nations – and of course the journeys of St Paul are themselves legendary.
And it seems to me that in marking the feast of the Epiphany, we are celebrating not one, but two very significant journeys. The first is the journey of the magi, the wise men, whose story the Church commemorates today. And the second is the very personal journey that each and every one of us is making – indeed, the very fact that we are al here today, in a church, taking part in an act of worship, is itself an indication of the journey that we are all travelling, whether we feel it is a road that is already familiar to us, or a voyage that is still very new; whether we feel the path is familiar and secure, or uncertain and leading we know not where.
The story of the magi, the wise men, is a wonderfully rich episode within the story of the birth of Jesus. Unlike the shepherds, who have a great deal of divine assistance from an angelic messenger, who not only tells them exactly what has happened in the stable in Bethlehem, but tells them precisely where to go and what to do about it, the wise men have only the silence of a star to guide them – the significance of which they must discover for themselves and by themselves. And one has to say to their credit, that they don’t do at all badly.
So, for example, they know exactly what it is they are looking for: a child; they know, too, where to look for him: among the Jews. They also know that this is a birth that is of tremendous and earth-shattering significance – which is why they wish to travel and pay homage to the new king.
And yet, for all their wisdom and their insight, the wise men still have to shed a lot of assumptions – they have to do a lot of ‘unlearning’ - before they are able to find what it is they are seeking with such determination. Because at first they get some things completely and badly wrong. They know that they are looking for a king – so they begin by doing what seems the most obvious thing - by asking the man at the top – King Herod. They have not yet learnt that the king whom they seek is quite unlike any other king in human history: a king who is to be found, not amongst the wealthy and the powerful, but among the poor and the powerless. And they have not yet learned that human knowledge and human wisdom alone will not lead them to what they seek – rather they have to allow themselves to be led by a star: the same star that in fact inspired their journey in the first place, and which has been with them throughout their travels. One cannot help feeling that they were even wiser men at the end of the story than they were at the beginning.
And what of our own Christian journeys? As people of faith, even when we feel sure we know what it is that we are seeking; even when we feel confident that the path we have chosen is the right path, nevertheless, our God remains a God of surprises: a God who will always catch us out, revealing himself in people and places and situations where we would least expect to find him at work. Ours is a God who challenges our assumptions; who shatters our illusions; who will sometimes lead us to places where we would rather not go; but who will never leave us comfortless. Because his star is always before us, even if we lose sight of it occasionally, and the light of that star can penetrate even the deepest darkness. But we need to learn to trust that light, which at times will require us to set aside all our assumptions and preconceptions about how things are – and indeed, about how God works. Which can be quite challenging at times, particularly for those of us who are at risk of becoming rather too comfortable within our faith.
I have often felt that the most well-integrated human beings that I meet – and certainly the most effective clergy – are invariably people whose own life stories have been anything but straightforward. Because somehow, within such people, one has a real sense that those parts of their lives which were broken, or vulnerable, or lost, have been taken up and woven into the people that they have become, in wonderfully creative and constructive ways. They have a depth of compassion and insight that comes from a life that has not always been easy for them. During my own school teaching days, I always suspected that I was a far better teacher for having been a terrible pupil: because I understood at first hand why some kids really do struggle at school, so I was able to work with those children who so often get ignored or written off, as I so very nearly was myself at their age. And there is something in all of that that chimes in with the way in which God works: taking those parts of us that are most fragile, and turning them into the greatest gifts that we have to offer.
I have been privileged before now to celebrate the feast of the Epiphany at the Convent at Alum Rock. And during their Epiphany service in the Convent Chapel, gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, are offered at the altar there, with a special prayer accompanying the presentation of each gift. But I am always struck by the nature of those prayers, which are not quite what one might be expecting.
Because when the gift of gold is presented, the prayer that accompanies it is not about wealth, or power, or kingship, but about purity: the purification of gold in the refiner’s fire; a fire that sears and burns, but which brings out of that ordeal something of extraordinary beauty and purity. The words at the offering of the incense link incense with prayer; and the words at the offering of the gift of myrrh are a prayer for healing. Understood in this way, the three gifts offered to the Christ child at Epiphany become, strangely enough, not so much things that we give to God, but gifts that we receive from him: the gift of purification; the gift of prayer, and the gift of healing. At Epiphany it is we who are the richer. Because the greatest gift that we can ever offer to God is our selves: our hands and hearts open to receive his love and his grace. In the same way, in the Eucharist, the communion service, we make our offering to God, but in doing so we receive back from him far, far more than we ourselves give.
I often find myself returning to that wonderful prayer by the modern day mystic and Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, who died in 1968, who wrote wonderfully, and profoundly on the subject of the spiritual life; and yet whose own life journey was anything but straightforward, particularly in his early years. Before dedicating his life to God, he had lived a very wayward life, drinking excessively, womanizing, and fathering an illegitimate child - generally getting into all kinds of trouble. And yet, one cannot help feeling that it was precisely those kinds of experiences, and the bleakness in his life that led him to behave in that way, that subsequently gave such authenticity to the honest, heart-searching in his relationship with God, which radiates through his writings. And Merton was a man was able to give, because he had learned to receive; which is a somewhat paradoxical observation to make about a Trappist monk who, in a material sense, owned nothing at all.
The prayer to which I refer, is this one which, I think, just says it all:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you, and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always. Though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my peril alone.
We walk in the footsteps of one who has gone before us, whose light shines on in the darkness, and who, like the Epiphany star, will lead us to our destiny. What is asked of us, is that we trust that star, and have the courage to follow it.
Amen.