At Christmas, we heard how the shepherds were visited by angels to announce Jesus' birth, this time it is a star. Even as a newborn infant without any ability to speak, the King of Heaven on earth is so powerful and so determined to bring about peace and unity that he is already commanding from heaven his will. Two different forms of revelation to two very different groups of people but both groups: those from a Jewish background and living nearby and Gentiles from far away are enlightened from heaven. This revelation is for everyone.
For us today we consider Astrology to be a pseudoscience concerned with fortune telling but in the ancient world, it would have been considered a science, along with the study of medicine and philosophy. These wise men were indeed wise and holy men whose purpose would have been to seek truth and order to human life by studying the sky. Something was revealed to them that made them believe that this was God breaking into his own order, something that unquestionably needed to be responded to. Their scientific knowledge and skill guaranteed that they would be paying attention but later in their journey something else would be required of them than purely a scientific mind alone.
The star that they followed led them to and stopped first at Jerusalem rather than leading them straight to Bethlehem. Jerusalem was the place of the rich and powerful and home to the earthly King Herod, once a generous and protective presence, now aged he was jealous and violent. The chief priests and scribes were there too and he called upon them to look to scripture to find out where exactly the Messiah was due to be born. People had long been waiting for this day.
Why did the star stop here though and not just take the wise men straight to Bethlehem? Maybe the underlying message here might be that God isn't found in the spaces of power and wealth but instead, it is found on the edges of society, with people on the edges. God manifested as Jesus the newborn baby and was born into this lowly setting, a place where we would least expect to find an earthly King let alone a divine one. God chose to reveal Himself in a place outside of all of the things people take to be significant and worthy.
God used the journey of the wise men to show us that we can indeed honour the wisdom of the world with all its knowledge, skill, logic, and science for it can and does produce amazing things, and like it did with the wise men, it can point people in the right direction but more importantly, he stopped them first at Jerusalem to find out through the Faith of the Jewish people and their scripture - the Old Testament, where the Messiah was to be born. Science started their journey but Faith was required to complete it. Secular wisdom, sacred revelation, and even deceitful and negative influences in the form of King Herod all worked together to bring them (as it does us), to the place where the wise men and us can adore and pay homage to God through Jesus.
As we begin a new year with all the uncertainties and worry that the ongoing pandemic brings, the Epiphany story can give us a world-affirming view, a much-needed hope that even though we might be completely different from one another and on completely different paths and routes in our lives, each one of us can still reach God. It might not be in the initial places where we thought we might, but the Epiphany story suggests that the whole world, the universe, even those people who are of ill intent and seem to put obstacles in our way or want to destroy rather than unite, even with the relentless Covid virus that seeks to destroy, despite all of this, and maybe even because of this, God finds a way through to use these situations and people to help us find him.
Once we have found Jesus, we too, just like the wise men, can then offer our gifts, ourselves and worship and adore him. Being a follower of Christ requires the lifelong commitment of seeking God, to keep travelling towards Him, over and over again and so this Epiphany, let us celebrate the very first journey undertaken that led the Gentiles, these wise men to witness and then adore the manifestation of God as the infant Jesus. Then let us pray for each other and for all people of the world, no matter where we are from, near or far, no matter which stage of the journey we are on, that this new year we all get to experience God's revelation in our hearts and that it is so overwhelming in its significance in our lives that we too kneel and pay the infant Jesus homage, worshipping and adoring him.
Natalie Rees