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Epiphany

Subhead
Built on a Rock
By
Rev. Dr. Phil Booe, St. John Lutheran Church, Luverne

The season of Epiphany begins on January 6 as the Christmas season comes to a close. This special celebration of the incarnation recalls many events in Jesus’ life: his birth, his baptism, and even his first miracle at a wedding feast in Cana, when he turned water into wine.
Epiphany first draws our attention to the visit of the Magi, or wise men. The tale is familiar. It is a story of distant astrologers from the East who followed a special star to find the Christ. We remember their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and we can imagine them laying each one at Jesus’ feet.
The Magi’s visit came to an end when an angel told them to avoid going back through Jerusalem. So, they high-tailed it back east, avoiding Herod to protect Jesus.
Too often when we hear this story, the focus is on what the Magi knew or did, rather than what God is revealing to us. Is the moral that we should be like the Magi, seeking out Jesus at all costs, worshiping him with all that we have, and protecting his name from the Herods of this world? Maybe not.
The problem is that Epiphany is not a story about the Magi after all. Over time we have added so much to their mythos that the Bible does not reveal.
For instance, we don’t know that there were three of them. Despite the song “We Three Kings,” we are fairly certain they were not kings. And no matter how your nativity is arranged, the Magi didn’t visit Jesus in the manger. The Bible tells us they visited the holy family in Bethlehem in a house they were living in nearly two years later.
We have added so much detail to this story because we try to make it a story about the wise men, when it is actually a story about how Jesus is God come down to Earth.
What is amazing about the visit of the Magi is not that they were so wise, but that they were Gentiles. They were led by God to a Jewish Messiah to demonstrate that Jesus was not the savior of a select few, but of the whole world. It was not their wisdom that brought them to the Christ, it was God.
This is a lesson for us. Even the wisest Magi of old needed God’s help to give them direction. This direction came to them in the form of God’s appearance in the world and through his holy word.
The Epiphany we celebrate today is that God appeared to us as a child, grew in stature and wisdom in the man Jesus, and then died and rose again so that we might be forgiven and have everlasting life.
We know this because of the faithful witness of the prophets and apostles and because God still appears to us today in his Holy Scriptures, where he continues to guide us and give us direction. Through the Bible, we have access to wisdom and knowledge of which even the Magi would be envious.

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