January 8, 2012       The Epiphany-Revelation to the Nations      David Timbs

Today Christians celebrate the Epiphany from a dual perspective: firstly, the public disclosure of Jesus to the Gentile world through its representatives, the Magi and secondly, he, son of Mary and Joseph, is manifested to Israel as its long awaited Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham.

Matthew does not offer his community a classic birth narrative as Luke does where the focus of annunciation stories is always the mother (e.g., mothers of Isaac, Samson, Samuel). Instead, his interest lies in demonstrating that Jesus is the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary and that he is duly recognised as the Messiah of Israel. Paradoxically, it is people beyond the pale of Israel who bear witness to this.

Dreams play a central role in Matthew’s narrative. Joseph’s dilemma over the unexplained pregnancy of Mary is resolved by a messenger of God in a dream. Joseph is warned in a dream about the murderous conspiracy of King Herod and was instructed in yet another dream that it was finally safe to bring his family back from the refuge of Egypt. Joseph, the guardian of Jesus, is a dreamer like his namesake, Joseph the son of Jacob (Israel). We all know his story, how he was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt; how he became a renowned interpreter of dreams; how eventually he became the chief officer of the Pharaoh; how he was able to save his family from disaster and give them a secure future.

In Matthew’s narrative Joseph of Nazareth, the man of dreams and protector of his family, firmly locates the identity of Jesus at the heart of the faith tradition of Israel, its experience of persecution and deliverance.

The mysterious Magi from the East are depicted in Matthew’s Gospel as Outsiders, who are searching for Wisdom and the meaning of the star which they had seen in its rising (original Greek meaning but translated as the East). They come to Bethlehem to offer gifts to a king but find royalty in a rather peculiar disguise, a homeless couple with a baby nestled in an animal feed box. Nonetheless, they pay homage to God’s Wisdom enfleshed and powerless in a manger rather than seated on a throne.

This affront to conventional logic and subversive paradox is picked up and powerfully applied later to the life of the adult Jesus. Israel turns its back on this Messiah and his precursor. The Jewish contemporaries of Jesus could not bring themselves to accept that God could operate outside of the parameters set by their own limited imagination.

God got it all wrong if Israel was invited to embrace a Messiah born of a family of ‘no account’, recognised by common shepherds, beyond the pale of respectability and manifested to non-Jewish outsiders. God was mistaken to insist that the Messiah would be one not only to mix with the unclean, outcast sinners but to feel at home with them and act like them as well,

But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and you say he has a demon; so the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners! Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds. (Mt 11: 16-19)

Matthew placess a great deal of symbolic value on the Magi. They are outsiders, strangers, non-Jews yet who are searchers for truth and wisdom. They find both of these in Bethlehem and their silent presence proclaims a blessing on Israel. The ancient Levitical blessing in the first reading finally takes on a new meaning. It is also evocative of another famous story in Numbers involving another wise Outsider, Baalam. Despite pressure from Israel’s enemies to force Baalam to bring down a curse on the wandering tribes he blesses them,

and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel…(Num 24: 17)

Christians are invited like the people of both ancient Israel and of Jesus’s time to acknowledge with some shock and surprise that God is not restricted to some set plan but can choose to venture beyond pre-determined boundaries and to manifested divine Wisdom through people and events outside of the expectations of the Insiders. Matthew had to struggle to get his mainly Jewish Christians to understand that even the despised Gentiles, the Outsiders, could be the instruments of Revelation and the servants of God’s mysterious Wisdom.

The Church is calling its members these days to discover new ways of spreading the Good News about Jesus and the Reign of God. To our surprise and maybe discomfort, we could learn much about this Baptismal calling from the seekers of Wisdom from outside of our Community. In identifying more clearly just exactly what the truth-seekers at the margins are looking for, we might better learn how to be a Community which attracts and invites not repels and dismisses; a Community which creates a new Epiphany not just in theory but in the established facts of faith lived.

Perhaps an essential element of the New Evangelisation is to listen closely and respectfully to the questions posed by the Outsiders. Maybe they can evangelise us by challenging our presuppositions and holding up to scrutiny those pretentions we all too often confuse with authentic and congruent lives.