Epiphany Sermon: Wise Men and Jigsaws

A short sermon based on Matthew 2. 1-12

“When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.”

Astonishing. I find every detail of this story astonishing. These men, probably astronomers, or scientists as some researchers have deduced, these non-Jews, believe they’ve been given a message. These men have seen a sign about the birth of such a special person… that they need to go to him.

So they set off from their homeland on foot or on camels and they travel a very, very long way over field and fountain, (moor and mountain) following this rising star they’ve seen.

How long was that journey? Several months? Possibly longer? Jesus may have been as old as 2 when they finally got there. (So yes I’m afraid, the traditional nativity scene of the wise men standing beside the shepherds in the stable is fake news).

What drove them on all that time? What made them leave their home country to visit a foreign baby? And what did they find when they got there? I wonder what they thought when they saw that toddler. His ordinary parents. Their ordinary house.

Well, here’s something else extraordinary: These travellers, weary and dusty from their epic journey finally arrive at Mary and Joseph’s house, and what do they do? They get down on their knees! They’ve arrived at the home of the King of the Jews, and humble as he looks, they recognise who he is. They know they were right about that star. They get down on their knees and they pay him homage.

They then offer the little boy expensive gifts that they’ve riskily been carrying all this way. And then they depart. They return to their own country.

What an amazing story.

It seems like quite a leap of faith, to follow a star all that way. But something drove them on. They had a piece of the puzzle and had the faith that the bigger picture existed, even if they couldn’t see it, even if they’d never see it. They just had to go and find out. So they got up and went.

Just like Mary. She had to take a leap of faith after her piece of the puzzle was revealed. She was visited in person by an angel and told the baby she was going to give birth to will be “great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Not something you hear every day! Yet she replied, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” She was given a piece of the puzzle. Yes a more detailed and perhaps larger piece but still not the whole picture. It was enough for her to go on.

And Joseph. He had a piece of the puzzle too. An angel came to him in a dream and told him “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” That’s a bit of a weird and vague and frankly extreme claim. And again, not the full picture. Joseph took what faith he had, what piece of the puzzle he had and waited faithfully to meet his future son cum Messiah.

Then there’s the shepherds. They were absolutely terrified when their bit of the puzzle was given to them. An angel visited them in person and said “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” They went.

All of these people, humble shepherds, a carpenter and his fiancé, the foreign astronomers… something significant was revealed to all of them. King of the Jews, Saviour, Messiah, Jesus who will save people from their sins, Son of the most High, he will reign forever and his kingdom will have no end. Each was told something different about the little boy and together they build a much clearer picture of who this special child would be. I wonder if they swapped stories. I wonder if they conferred. They’d have got a better understanding if they had.

Each of their experiences was different. And strange or frightening, overwhelming or obscure as these messages were, they were the right messages for each of these people. Joseph wasn’t told to follow a star. He probably knew very little about starts. The scientists weren’t visited by an angel from heaven. They mightn’t have believed their eyes. Their pieces of the puzzle were as incomplete and they were right for them.

I wonder if it’s like that for us too. How did, or how might we come to know who Jesus is? None of us can see and figure out the big picture. The enormity of who he is and what he’s done for us. But some of us know a bit, and that bit’s right and unique to us.

Some of us might not even know we have a tiny jigsaw piece in our hand. Some of us might have been carrying a piece of the puzzle for years but have no idea where to put it, or what to do next. But whatever we hold, it’s the right piece for us. It fits. And one day, if we choose, we can add it to the rest and reveal someone beyond our imagining.

But it’s completely up to us. God doesn’t play with us like puppets on strings. We are free to choose to know God or not. To set off, like the wise men, with our piece of the puzzle and to seek out the bigger picture. Or not. We can choose to put our faith in the God we don’t fully understand, and we can spend our lives being enriched and blessed by what we learn as the pieces are revealed to us. Or not.

Our epiphany moment probably won’t be an angel or a star or a dream. It might be years of faithfully collecting puzzle pieces that are revealed to us at difficult or confusing or joyful times of our life, until one day we can just about make out the border.

Fortunately, although the full and perfect picture of God in Jesus might not be revealed to any one of us, it is revealed to every one of us. We each have a piece, we each know a bit, we each see and understand an aspect or a viewpoint or a characteristic or some truth, and together, the people of God make up this picture. Because Christ exists in all of us. Jesus said “abide in me as I abide in you”. Jesus is in us and we are in Jesus.

Whether we’re a humble artisan, a young woman, a farmer, a scientist, a foreigner, a person who’s never stepped foot into a church until tonight, we were each born with a piece of the puzzle that will be revealed to us when we’re ready. God abides in each of us:

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139.13-14)

Now it’s up to us to decide what to do with our insight, our faith, our puzzling questions. Will we go and find out more about this Jesus, whose star shines so brightly?

What They Did Next

Occasionally I publish sermons I’ve preached. Usually they’re about generosity as that’s what I do for a living (The Generous Giving Project).

Here’s one such sermon I preached at St Gabriel’s, Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland back in March 2017

It’s based on these two passages: John 4:5-42 and also Luke 19: 1-10

“The woman at the well” from John’s Gospel is that dodgy story with the serious blurring of social boundaries, misunderstandings and depending on your interpretation, a strong hint of a dubious past. A juicy bit of gossip straight out of (Middle) East Enders. A story of loose morals and forgiveness. Isn’t it?

Personally, I’m not so sure – after all it the passage doesn’t mention sin anywhere. I wonder whether we might get side-tracked when we see this as a story about a sinful woman. So that’s not what I want to talk about today. What I am going to talk about is what happened when this woman met Jesus; what she did next.

The story starts:

So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

Women and men in this culture didn’t usually mix. They kept a safe social distance from each other. So the woman is probably a bit shocked when Jesus addresses her directly. And what he says is even weirder. He asks her for a drink.

She can’t believe it. She says something like:

“Well this is odd, a Jew asking a Samaritan for a drink!”

Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate. When the woman at the well asks Jesus what on earth he’s on about, why He, a Jew, is asking her the Samaritan for a drink, Jesus answers,

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Living water” was a local expression for running water. So she thinks he’s on about a stream or river, and wonders how on earth he can provide this water when she knows fine well there’s no running water nearby. If there was, why would her ancestors have built this well? Was this man trying to be funny with her? Thinking he knows better than the locals?

But when Jesus talks of “living water”, he’s talking about himself. Living Water. Jesus Christ. The only one who can satisfy every need and be the source of all life. And over the course of their conversation, this truth dawns on her. She believes. She identifies Him. He is the Messiah.

Unlike the religious leader Nicodemus who met Jesus in the previous chapter, who just couldn’t get his head around who or what Jesus was, this Samaritan woman clearly gets it. She sees and accepts Him for who He is, just as He’s seen and accepted her. In fact it seems as if He’s always known her. And importantly she understands what he offers.

Armed with this knowledge she dashes off to play a unique role in Jesus’ ministry. She’s one of first characters in John’s gospel to seek out others to tell them about Jesus. She’s the first evangelist to the gentiles.

Her gender, her past (whatever it was) and the fact she’s not Jewish have no bearing whatsoever on her ability to see, receive and then act. In this story Jesus shares this living water, the truth and the life, with people whom Jews considered detested enemies and outsiders.

So I think this story makes it clear that since Jesus, the people of God is to consist of all of us, whoever we are. Jesus died for the sins of the world so that we can all be included in His Father’s generous love. And, no matter how late it is, or who we are, it’s never too late to receive this living water, if we acknowledge Jesus for who He is. It’s our opportunity to have a fresh start and change our lives.

So this is a sermon (I said I’d eventually get to the point) about the transforming nature of discovering who Jesus is and what we do with that knowledge. As soon as the woman at the well realised who Jesus was, she sprang into action. She literally left her water container at the well and dashed off to tell others, so they could share in Him. So here’s the question for us today: if we know what Jesus has freely and generously given us, how do we respond? What do we do next?

To assist us with that question, let’s meet Zacchaeus the tax collector. He’s the wealthy Jew from Luke’s Gospel who collected taxes for the Roman oppressors. He’s that traitor who got rich by extortion and embezzlement. By taking advantage of the elderly, and exploiting the working poor. Not a nice man. He’s the bloke who, when Jesus saw him, he called him down from the tree that he’d climbed, and said to him “invite me to stay at your house”.

Painting by Joel Whitehead

And after Jesus spent some time at this shady character’s home, Zacchaeus declared:

“Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

When Zacchaeus recognised Jesus, when he accepted him at the Messiah, he felt absolutely inspired, driven, compelled even, to completely turn his life around. His discovery led him to extraordinary generosity. He gave away his possessions.

We’ll never know what Jesus said to Zacchaeus in that house, but we do know what he said to the woman at the well about being the living water that will sustain forever, that will prevent us from ever thirsting again. And we do know that with this knowledge she ran to tell anyone who would listen. Maybe he said something similar to Zacchaeus. We’ll never know.

So what can we learn from these two people who met Jesus? I’ve learned that when I said yes to Jesus Christ, my life changed. And it doesn’t matter if your story of discovery is nothing like mine or theirs. Because even if we’ve grown up knowing Jesus we can still have light bulb discovery moments and choose to make a greater commitment. This can happen at any time. Maybe we haven’t yet had that discovery moment, and we’re still faithfully waiting for the day we’ll know in our hearts that Jesus Christ is our living water. Wherever we think we are with faith, the offer is always there. God won’t go away.  Every day the choice is ours to invite Jesus into our lives and to see what happens.

And when this happens, when we start to comprehend and accept that he gave everything for us, and he sustains our every need like pure, cool, life-giving water… when we properly get it that God loves us and gives us more than we could ever ask, and that God will keep on meeting us when we are still far off and will bring us home…. when we accept this level of generosity I firmly believe our hearts and our behaviours are transformed.

I just don’t think we can stay the same, once we discover Jesus for ourselves.

And when we discover (or rediscover) who Jesus really is, like the woman at the well, or like Zacchaeus, what will transformation look like? What will be noticeably different about us? What is God calling us to do? What is the Holy Spirit nudging us to share? How will we give of ourselves once we know Jesus Christ is the living water?

Will we be like sturdy reservoirs, collecting and storing this living water? Or will we do what these people did, and share this discovery with others? Will we let God’s love and light and generosity pour into and then out of us to other people? Will our faces shine with the light of this discovery? Will we go out and share this news with our neighbours like the Samaritan woman? Do we feel prompted to be like Zacchaeus by doing generous acts? By giving up some of our stuff? By generously giving away our money and possessions to those less fortunate?

How will our personal discovery that Jesus is the Messiah transform our lives? What will we do next?