In November I was fortunate enough
to attend a preaching workshop in Toronto with colleagues from across Canada,
and the main text we focused on was this very text from the gospel of
Matthew. In preparing to preach, one of
the things that Anna, our workshop leader insisted on is that you have to go
into the text and wrestle with it until it speaks to you. And so, after spending time with the text,
reading it, questioning it, discussing it, looking at commentaries, whatever,
the first question that you have to ask yourself before you start preparing
your sermon is this:
What is the moment in the text
that gets you? That is, that fascinates
you, troubles you, thrills you, haunts you, disturbs you, or otherwise jumps up
to meet you?
We broke into small groups for
this exercise, and we asked that first question. What is the moment in the text that gets you? And we went around the room:
“overwhelmed with joy”
“overwhelmed with joy”
“overwhelmed with joy”
All six of us picked the same
moment: “When the wise men saw that the
star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.”
Then we moved to the second
question of our exercise, “Why does this moment in the text get you?” and our
responses again were the same. It was
because the phrase “overwhelmed with joy” awakened a deep longing in us, a deep
longing to be overwhelmed with joy. There
was a wistfulness in our midst. We had caught a glimpse of something in the
text, and we wanted it. We really wanted
it. Real bad.
Do any of you have a great longing
to be overwhelmed with joy?
Do you remember a moment when
you were overwhelmed with joy?
We asked that question too in
our group. And, again the answers were
remarkably similar, at least at first:
“The birth of my child”
“when my child was born”
“The birth of my child”
“I don’t have any children”
The wise men in today’s gospel
had a deep longing. They must have had a
deep longing, otherwise why undertake such a long and arduous journey through the
desert. They were seekers, and they saw
something in the night skies that inspired them to set off on their quest. “Where is the child who has been born king of
the Jews? For we observed his star at
its rising, and have come to pay him homage?”
It’s a strange story, this
story of great longing. Wise men, who
naively ask the King of the Jews about the child who has been born king of the
Jews. Do you see the problem here? This is the same ruthless King Herod who put
his own children to death to avoid any risk of premature succession. He will not respond well to the question of
the wise men. Strange too is the
behaviour of the star, which goes ahead of the wise men to Bethlehem and then
stops over the place where the child was. Stars don’t normally do that. And the wise men, who had journeyed long and
far, not quite sure of what they would find, not quite sure of where they were
going, 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. And I expect that Mary and Joseph found all
of this a bit strange!
Our stories of longing are
often strange stories. Our deepest
yearnings tap into something that we don’t fully understand. On the Camino de Santiago, it’s a common
experience for pilgrims to burst into tears of joy when they finally arrive at
the Cathedral of St. James, the end point of the journey. At one level we understand why. It is the end of a journey, the culmination
of months of effort and determination. Sometimes we have a good idea of what it
is we’re longing for. Expectant parents
long for the birth of their child.
Pilgrims long to arrive at their destination. Wise men from the east long to see the child
that has been born king of the Jews.
But at other times it’s hard
to articulate just what it is we’re longing for. We have this deep yearning for something that
may seem just beyond our grasp.
Throughout the ages, poets and mystics have entertained the possibility
that these deep longings have something to do with God. The Hebrew poet writes in Psalm 42,
“As the deer pants for the
water, so my soul longs after you O God.
My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; when shall I
come to appear before the presence of God?”
St. Augustine in the fourth
century also felt within himself a restless yearning for God. “O Lord,” he
cried, “our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
More recently C.S. Lewis wrote
in his autobiography Surprised by Joy
how even as a child he experienced deep yearnings, longings for something
beyond, moments of which he labelled as joy.
Later, as an adult he wrote about these experiences:
“If I find in myself desires
which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I
was made for another world.”
Do you have this sense of
longing within you?
Do you know what it is you’re
longing for?
And if you get there, or if
you glimpse it, will you let yourself be overwhelmed with joy?
My colleague, the one with a
great longing to be overwhelmed with joy but who hadn’t yet experienced it in the
birth of a child the way some of us had, she took some time to think, and then
she had an insight.
“Maybe I’ve never been
overwhelmed with joy because in my life I just feel so overwhelmed most of the
time.”
I think she’s on to something. Life can be overwhelming at times. And so with that in mind, let’s return to the
wise men, and see if we can learn anything from their story.
I think that a first lesson
from the wise men is that if we want to be overwhelmed by joy, we need to make
time and space for what matters. Clear
the clutter. Simplify. In order to go on their journey, the wise men
needed to leave many things behind, and they had to put lot of things on hold
in order to spend months and years traveling across the desert. Create the time and space to go on your
journey.
And then, when you get to a
place of joy, stop! Follow the example
of the star. When the star arrived at
the place where the child was, it stopped!
And so did the wise men. It would
have been easy to rush on to the next thing.
After all the wise men did have Herod on their tail. But they stopped. They allowed themselves to be present, and
they were overwhelmed with joy.
And not only did they stop,
but even more importantly, they knelt down and paid him homage. They worshiped. They gave thanks to God. They connected with the divine dimension of
that experience of overwhelming joy. They
gave gifts, and they celebrated. Take
the time to worship, to celebrate and to connect with the divine in your
moments of overwhelming joy.
And finally, don’t be afraid
to be naïve. We don’t have to have it all
together, we don’t need to look good, we can’t always justify our longings and
our quests. When Matthew’s readers first
heard the story of the so-called wise men walking up to the ruthless King Herod
and asking him where was the child who had been born king of the Jews, they
would have laughed at how naïve and foolish those wise men were.
Your deepest longings are a
gift of God. They are holy and they are
good and you should pay attention to them, even if some might think that naïve. Make time and space for what matters. When you get to a place of joy, stop! Kneel down, pay homage, give thanks, worship
and celebrate. And may you too, with the
wise men, be overwhelmed with joy.
Amen.
Homily: Epiphany, January 8 2017, St. Albans
Readings: Isaiah 60.1-6, Ps 72, Eph 3.1-12, Matthew 2.1-12
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