Deacon Bob Huber

Free Will and the Right Choice

Recently, the son of an old farmer was sent to prison for bank robbery. It was springtime and the farmer needed his large field plowed for planting. With his son now gone, and the old farmer too feeble to plow it himself, he wondered what he would do.

He went to visit his son in prison and explained his dilemma of which his son was already aware. But his son apparently did not want to do much about it. He told his father as they visited that he did not want his father to plow that field. For as his son explained, that was where he had hid the money from his bank robbery.

His father went home depressed and dejected. He loved his son and thought his son loved him. But he wondered how his son could be so callous in not suggesting how his father could solve his dilemma. The next morning, the old man was shocked to see about two dozen representatives of the sheriff’s office plowing his field. Then he understood what his son had done. Anticipating that their conversation in prison was being overheard, he had led the sheriff’s office to his father’s backfield. In a search for money that they never found, the sheriff’s office had unwittingly plowed his field for nothing.

Now with due respect for God’s seventh commandment, thou shalt not steal, let me suggest that in some ways God himself can be as clever as this bank robber. For God never stops looking for ways for us to plow his field of salvation, only this time the plowing is fruitful, if only we will just do it.

Thinking about this story is most appropriate this weekend. For we celebrate today the feast of the Ascension. This feast, coming about 40 or so days after Easter is a key and actually quite underrated feast in our liturgical calendar.

It would be easy to focus on the magnitude of the actual event. After all, we don’t see people levitating off the ground and ascending skyward, at least not on their own. Our Church teaches this event actually happened, as described in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles this morning. The Ascension represents the final event of Jesus’ public life on earth.

But the end of Jesus’ public life obviously does not end God’s relationship with us. And it is a good thing. Because at this point let me something that might seem controversial. If all that Jesus did was enter our world as a human, die a horrible death for our sins, rise from the dead to show that sin and death could be conquered, and then perform this remarkable miracle of the Ascension, it would still not have been enough for us to achieve heaven.  He would still need, like the bank robber, to lead us back to him.

God loves us so much that he not only came to this earth to save us, he did not and does not compel us to follow Him. He gives His creatures free will so that our love of Him, our decision to live as Jesus did is our choice. The choice to return to him is ours. We don’t need God if we choose not to follow Him or return to Him.

God’s providing man with free will establishes the fundamental choice and contradiction of the human condition.  But this is more than just a philosophical point.  We need only look around us.  Humans have enormous gifts from God that enable them to design, engineer and produce marvelous airplanes.  We also have the evil to ram them into the World Trade Center and kill thousands.

Humans have incredible initiative and entrepreneurial spirit that helps to produce enormous wealth and prosperity.  We also have the ability to forget how that wealth was generated and tolerate a world in which two-thirds of humanity lives in poverty and income disparities in our own country continue without much concern.

The great beauty of God’s creation is managed with careful stewardship at times; just look at our national and local parks.  But humanity can also pollute our water and air and trash our green space with litter and careless setting of fires.

Great technology can generate mineral wealth and a very productive economy.  But would we really care about the politics and conflicts of the Middle East quite so much if inhabitants of the region grew broccoli for a living?

Human beings have been willing to endure enormous sacrifices in defense of human rights and individual and societal freedoms. They also have the ability to pursue wars of dubious or nonexistent moral value, killing thousands, tens of thousands, and millions for unclear or even evil purposes.

Some might say that following God’s laws to love Him and others, to follow the message of the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes and the teachings of the Church is the absence of freedom, or somehow a failure of leadership.

This is just wrong.  Choosing to love God and one another is the ultimate freedom and enmeshes us with the free expression of love among the persons of God.  We seek to live the truth in love. As our Lord tells his apostles in our Gospel from Matthew this morning, we try to bring others to the Christian life by example and not coercion. We have the ultimate freedom to communicate with God through prayer, Scripture, sacrament, and Scripture. Living out God’s word brings a love, joy and peace that is so far superior to anger, jealousy, violence and the quest for possessions at the expense of others. As St. Paul tells us in our second reading this morning, living the faith gives us the amazing and wonderful fullness of communion with God and other believers.

If we really want to be a Christian, admittedly the choice is not easy. And we would not have the strength to make the choice of a genuine Christian life without God. To make that choice work, God would need to send us the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, completing and making permanent the intervention of God in the lives of human beings. The constant presence of the Holy Spirit, who offers us fruits, gifts, and charisms strengthens us and give others and us what we need to return forever to God.

So there we have it. God the Creator brought humans to life. God the Redeemer restored the loving covenant that God gave us, the best model for us to live our lives. God the Counselor and Guide pours out his very three-part divine completeness for us through the special arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This is the faith essence of the Ascension.

So the Ascension is not a mere historical event. It is a critical progression in God’s saving plan for all of us. It helps enable our souls to ascend as well. And it reminds us of the ability of God through the tools and spiritual gifts God gives us to ascend, if you will our human spirits to the joy of the Christian life. Like the clever bank robber, the Lord puts people and things into our life to help us to understand that love of God and others is the best way to live. But we do have a choice. Plow the field of salvation or let it lie and watch weeds grow in our souls. Let us pray that the feast of the Ascension helps us to make the right choice.
 

Those Dumb Animals

The Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible tells us that from the creation of the world, God gave human beings dominion over the earth.  We have large brain cases, opposable thumbs, and the ability to communicate in the most sophisticated of ways that animals cannot do.  Our intelligence has built machines great and small that have transformed the face of the earth.

We can therefore, be rather proud of ourselves.  We can look at some of God’s other creatures and think they we are clearly superior.  We are so much better; we are not like those dumb animals that roam the earth looking for food and shelter.  Three in particular can strike us as rather dumb: birds, donkeys, and sheep.

In traditional terms, we think of birds as rather limited in intelligence.  We even have a term for it: “bird brain.”  Birds are generally what are left of the dinosaurs that once ruled the earth eons ago.  And so, they really to do not have much to offer us. Right?

Well, consider this story from the National Geographic written many years ago. After a forest fire in Yellowstone National Park, forest rangers began their trek up a mountain to assess the damage.  One ranger found a bird literally petrified in ashes, parched in a statue-like fashion, on the ground, at the base of a tree.

Somewhat sickened by the eerie sight, the ranger knocked over the bird with a stick. When he gently struck it, three tiny chicks scurried from under their dead mother’s wings.  The loving mother, keenly aware of impending disaster, had carried her offspring to the base of the tree and gathered them under her wings, instinctively knowing that the toxic smoke would rise.  She could have flown to safety, bus she refused to abandon her babies.

When the blaze had arrived, and the heat had scorched her small body, the mother had remained steadfast. Because she had been willing to die, those under the cover of her wings would live.

Now us human beings would never be that stupid, would we?  We know it is better never to stick our necks out, or suffer for someone else, or take a stand.  That might threaten our comfortable lives. Speaking out against injustice would get us in trouble.  Suffering for others would be just too hard.  Oh, those dumb animals.

Then there are donkeys.  We think of them as rather stubborn and stupid. But there is an old farmer’s tale about a donkey that fell into a well.  The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.  Being a much smarter human being, he finally decided that the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth the trouble to retrieve the donkey.

So the farmer invited all his friends and neighbors to come over and bury the donkey in the well.  They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well.  At first, the donkey realized what was happened and squealed horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement, he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well.  He was astonished at what he saw.  With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing.  He would shake it off and take a step up.

After several hours, there was enough dirt to cover the well, and the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off.

Now we humans of course would never be that stupid.  After all, the donkey’s first instinct was right. We should just scream for help.  We expect people to see our predicament, drop everything, and help us.  And we know that it is impossible for us to help ourselves.  Oh, those dumb animals.

And then there are sheep.  Not very bright creatures either.  Mostly good for their coats, a great meal with garlic and mint jelly when they are very young, and that is just about it. Jesus talks about them in our reading from the Gospel from John. Being a sheep in Palestine two thousand years ago wasn’t easy.  The food you ate was mostly brush that spread out against a steep, rocky plain.  Unlike modern sheep, they were kept more for their wool than their meat, so they had a chance to live many years.

But without the help of a good, vigilant, reliable shepherd, sheep could easily go down steep embankments and get lost or stuck in rocky ground, nooks, and crannies.  Many times at nightfall in the summer time, shepherds would have to build makeshift walls of stone with openings for the sheep to go through in order to be gathered for the night.

Jesus talks about this in the parable we read this morning.  The shepherds were literally gates themselves. They would lie down across the openings in the walls for the sheep. As the sheep would step up to get through the walls, the shepherds could count them and see if any were injured.  Like our second reading from the first letter of St. Peter, the shepherds would then heal the wounds of the sheep and be better able to protect them from harm.

Now we human beings would never be so dense.  Sheep think that it is better to be together, but we know that is not true. We should always look out for number one first.  We don’t believe working together saves not just others but us as well. Better to get ours first then worry about others.  Or not worry about others at all. Oh, those dumb animals.

But brothers and sisters, are we really so smart?  Like the mother bird, Our Lord gave up everything, suffered an excruciating death, so that we might have the abundant life of faith and eventually eternal life.  Jesus, through his model of life that inspired the faith of the Church, has given so many the courage, the strength, the grace to overcome the donkey’s dilemma, to brush off the dirt thrown at us and step up to a life of service and works of mercy.

And yes, Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who left us Himself through prayer, the sacraments, and Scripture to build up our communities. Our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles reminds us that Jesus left us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that we might be part of a communion of believers. These believers the Lord protects from harm and the reality of His loving presence heals the wounds of our souls. For Christians have chosen to live together in love of God and others, against the corruption of the selfish, individualistic life of our secular culture.

So you see, in God’s creation, there is a purpose for everything, even those dumb animals. They often reflect the behavior of Jesus himself. Sometimes it seems the animals even appear to trust in God’s love. Gee, maybe those dumb animals are not so dumb after all.
 

The Many Significances and Challenges of the Lazarus Miracle

            With the exception of the Passion and Easter Gospels, perhaps no element of the Gospels is more inspiring than the miracle of the raising of Lazarus that we read about tonight (this morning).  With your indulgence, I would like to spend a few minutes tonight (this morning) taking a close look at this intense Gospel reading according to John.

            We can think of at least three levels of significance in this Gospel. The first is the significance of the people present for the miracle itself.  It must have been a remarkable scene with a torrent of different emotions for the apostles, Martha, Mary, and family members. Suffering, death, grief, doubt, elation they are all there. And make no mistake about it: this is a Super Bowl, seventh game of the World Series, NCAA championship final game miracle.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus raised three people from the dead. In the case of the other two, both individuals may actually have only been on the brink of death, or perhaps in a deep coma from which they arose. But in Lazarus’ case, we are talking stone cold dead. The Gospel refers to Lazarus being dead four days. According to Jewish belief, the spirit of a person stayed with them for three days, hoping that the body might yet be revived. But on the fourth day, a person’s spirit would leave them for the next world, and the human body would be truly and fully lifeless.

So Jesus’ miracle was beyond any human explanation. That this was Jesus’ intent is unmistakable, for the Gospel says Jesus waited two days after he received word that Lazarus was gravely ill. Jesus in fact wanted to make sure Lazarus had died so that there could be no mistake about the nature of this miracle. 

So this miracle was an awesome demonstration of God’s power and the reality of Jesus as God, which no one could deny on the basis of “facts on the ground.” And yet, the miracle had a different and second level of significance for Jesus. At one level, the human Jesus was somewhat disappointed it was necessary for him to work this miracle in the first place. Martha and Mary, as well as Lazarus, were close human friends. Yet he is greeted by both of them with a sense of disappointment. Both of them imply that if only Jesus had come sooner, Lazarus would not have died.  Implicit in this veiled criticism is also the implication that Jesus could still work the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead.

Jesus had told his friends, apostles, disciples, and other followers that HE was the resurrection and the life. He tried to tell them that those who followed Him would never die but have eternal life. He brought them peace, and the confidence that God would never leave them alone and that ultimately they would be reunited with God forever in the next life.

Yet when push came to shove, Martha, Mary and their relatives, and for that matter the apostles were still looking for signs and wonders. When he moves toward the tomb, Jewish ritual practices of crying and mourning in ever-louder ways resumes. Jesus is resigned to the fact that despite everything He told them, human life matters more to them than eternal life

It is said in the Gospel that Jesus weeps. But this is not sorrow for the death of Lazarus only, but also tears of frustration. For God’s Chosen People, after all these centuries, and all these days, months, and years of listening to God literally on the earth, still would not ultimately surrender things of this world. They wanted a loving magician, not a loving God. But because He loved His people so deeply, He would relent and give them what they wanted.

The human Jesus was ambivalent about this miracle for a second reason. For he knew that the miracle, and the reaction to it by friend and foe alike, would surely lead to his Passion and Death, for which He wished at some level He could avoid. Jesus undoubtedly knew that the performance of this most extraordinary of His miracles would bring adulation and followers, but also jealousy, envy, and murderous intent on the part of the religious authorities of the time, who clearly saw their positions threatened by the spiritual and now physical power of Jesus.

In this regard, we can easily the significance of this miracle for Jesus far beyond that of its witnesses. For Lazarus’ own suffering, death, and rising, however remarkable in human terms, was but a mere foreshadowing of Jesus’ own suffering, dying, and rising. This was the miracle that was the last straw for the Pharisees. They were now determined to kill him. It is no accident that in the Church’s liturgical schedule, this Gospel occurs shortly before Holy Week. For the Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection follow shortly after the raising of Lazarus,

This is also why the apostles in this Gospel are so worried about his safety in returning to Judea. They know he has made major enemies in Jewish society. Jesus knows that this miracle was to bring Him great popularity, but it was also to bring Him suffering and death. This was undoubtedly another reason for Jesus’ weeping. But in spite of all of this, Jesus’ loving mercy always is transcendent.

Finally, we must think of the significance of this Gospel for own lives. This Gospel account is intriguing in many ways, but none perhaps more intriguing than the fact that one of the few people not speaking in it is the subject of the miracle itself: Lazarus. And this is also no accident. For if we think about it, we have something rather remarkable in common with Lazarus. Like Lazarus, we too rise from the dead. Even in the same physical sense. Our first reading from Ezekiel reminds us that the Lord will open our graves and bring us home to God. Our second reading from letter of St. Paul to the Romans reminds that God raises us to new life, a life in the Holy Spirit.

But much like Lazarus, there is an uncertainty. We do not know how Lazarus responded to the remarkable gift of new life given to him by Jesus. Was he grateful for what God did for Him? Did he become a determined follower of Christ? Did he love and serve God and others, following God’s laws in spirit and in truth? Did he defend Jesus in the weeks ahead when it was truly dangerous to do so? We don’t know. But we also must thing about something else. We also receive a remarkable gift of new life given to us by Jesus. Are we grateful? Are we determined followers of Christ? Do we love and serve God and others, following God’s laws in spirit and in truth? Do we defend Christ against the assaults against Him in secular society?

God gives us sacraments, remarkable Scriptures like the Lazarus miracle, the joy of service, and the power of prayer to answer that call. In human terms, we sometimes fail and make Jesus weep. But Jesus’ transcendent love and mercy brings us back. We will suffer and die, but with the grace of God, if we follow Jesus, we will rise with Jesus.
 

Overcoming the Desert in Our Souls

Our Gospel (tonight) (today) focuses on Jesus’ visit to the desert at the beginning of his public life. This Bible passage, found near the beginning of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, traditionally signals the opening of the main part of Lent.

At the level of the literal, we are talking of course about the physical desert. For many periods throughout its history, the Jewish nation had been conquered by foreign powers. Leaders and other citizens of those occupying powers typically lived in Jerusalem and other large cities of Israel. Jews were often forced to live elsewhere. Some left IsraelMiddle East. completely to dwell throughout the

Some Jews wanted to stay in their country, even while it was being occupied. The only other inhabitable part of Israel was in the southern part of the country near the Dead Sea. To get there they had to travel through a desert that was thirty-five by fifteen miles. It was known as the Devastation, an area of yellow sand, and crumbling limestone. Ridges ran in all directions. The hills were like dust heaps; the ground shimmered with heat like a vast furnace. Travel back then on foot or even by animal transportation took many days, weeks, or months before one reached the Dead Sea.

The desert had very little rain, very little food, extremes of temperature, and little or no civil authority that meant that danger to one’s person and goods was constant from bandits and wild animals.  So the idea of exile to the desert was a terrifying thought to Jews. Old Testament prophets had told the Jewish people that beginning with the story of Adam and Eve that we read about in our first reading, the refusal of many Jews because of fear, indifference, greed, jealousy, or apathy to follow God’s commandments was a key reason why they now often found themselves in the desert.

These prophets emphasized that only a return to God through prayer, personal responsibility, purity, and growth in holiness would lead Israel to be a nation able to return to God’s favor.  God did not destroy Israel. But God also made clear that Jews as individuals and as a people must accept the love God offers them and have a conversion of heart. 

The physicality of the desert was also to play a role in the life of Jesus. But the key difference here is the ability of Jesus, as the Redeemer and Savior of His people and indeed all of us, to use the bleakness of the desert to show his triumph over sin and death.  Where many Jews for centuries sinned and died in the desert, Jesus goes in the desert and renounces and resists sin even though he is tempted mightily by the devil.  As St. Paul tells us in our second reading, just as through one transgression (the sin of Adam and Eve) condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act (the Death and Resurrection of Jesus which begins with his trip to the desert), acquittal and life came to all.

Jesus’ ability to withstand the rigors of the physical desert, and his miraculous ability to turn it into a place of faith is also a logical complement to the concept of desert as metaphor.  For neither Jesus nor the Old Testament prophets were concerned only about the physical desert when they spoke or visited there. The bleak and weakening effects of the physical desert on humans in some ways pales by comparison to the bleak and weakening effects of the spiritual desert in our souls.  Sin in its innumerable forms (greed, lust, jealously, envy, hatred, violence) is every bit as deadly to human souls as the conditions of the physical desert might be to human bodies.

The Lord’s visit to the desert was one of the most intense experiences of his life on earth.  Jesus was alone in the desert. So He would have had to have relayed this intense experience to His apostles for the desert visit to be found in the Gospels. So there is no doubt that Jesus did in fact visit the physical desert.

But the Holy Spirit, Our Gospel says, sent Jesus into the desert. The Spirit would not have done that to punish Jesus. So we should be careful about focusing the meaning of this story only within the geographic or physical level of desert. For the visit to the desert was about a process of deep contemplation for Jesus. The human Jesus went to the desert to think about and establish what would be the best means, the best strategies, for bringing about the redemption of man from sin. After all, that was the principal reason His Father sent to Him to earth in the first place.

Not all aspects of the desert descriptions in the Gospels should be taken literally. The term “forty days” was an expression of Jesus’ time. It meant a long period of time, often not literally forty days, much like we might say “it took forever to get here.”  As well, the devil, in tempting Jesus, takes him to what is described as a very high mountain where all the kingdoms of the world can be seen.  Of course, we know there is no such place in the desert to which Jesus traveled.  The same can be said of the temple parapet, where the devil tells Jesus to cast himself off.  The temple of Jerusalem was obviously not located in the desert.

So Jesus undoubtedly went to the desert to seek the Father’s help in His mission to redeem the world. But at least part of the concept of desert is metaphorical, focusing on the devil’s struggle for Jesus’ soul, and indeed all of our souls. It might be useful to think of those parts of these parts of the Gospel account as visions Jesus had in the desert, visions for the benefit of all of us. Here on Whidbey Island, we never have a shortage of water, particularly this time of year. But notwithstanding this literal fact, we face in our own faith lives the same kind of temptations Our Lord did as we struggle with how to live and how to treat others.

The devil offers three temptations to Jesus.  The first, to turn limestone rocks into bread can be seen metaphorically as a temptation by the devil to bring people to faith or to your point of view by essentially bribing them. While we are called to meet the needs of others and utilize the gifts we have been given to build up the Body of Christ in various professional settings, almsgiving to impress others or using the gifts of the Holy Spirit for professional gain or credit should never be undertaken.

A faith, which depends on signs and wonders, is no faith at all, and whatever following one gets, if it is a personal following, offends God’s call to the Gospel life. Such followings also easily dissipate as we often see with people in every profession who rise to great power and wealth and then fall just as easily and quickly.

Jesus is also tempted by the devil to perform great signs and wonders like throwing himself off the main temple in Jerusalem and landing softly.  But to posit oneself in life as an awesome success in teaching, evangelizing, politics, business, or many other professions is no substitute for the generation of the quiet trust we get from others because they see the way trustful people live, and by the principles through which one choose to live. To do otherwise only creates a vicious game of one upsmanship in which the gift giver must continually give more and more, and achieve more and more.

In professional settings, if we measure success by how much business we bring in, how much money we are able to raise, how much greater and greater our budgets grow, we are proverbial apes on a treadmill. We run as fast as we can just to stay in place.

Human beings have an amazing and rather sinful ability to routinize what they see and do. To long for ever greater sensations is to distrust rather than trust others and us. It is a central part of addictions, of extreme competitiveness, of a loss of ethics, and cycles of violence at the individual, group, national and international level. Such an attitude does not serve oneself or others; it harms and destroys souls, ours as well as others.

Rather, Jesus sought, and calls us to seek, to live by the example of His teachings: the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the two Great Commandments.

Finally, the devil offers Jesus absolute power on earth if only he agrees to worship the devil.  Here of course, we are once again not talking about the literal. Jesus is clearly more powerful than the devil at the literal level.  But to the human Jesus, who must seek to bring others humans to the Father, what the devil seeks from Jesus is a willingness to compromise on principles.

For us, cooperation with evil, compromising the central elements of our faith means that we become just as evil as those who ignore or are indifferent to what the Christian faith teaches.  It is a slippery slope to an anything goes attitude in which we buy in slowly but surely to the idea that if it feels good, it cannot be wrong, or that any compromise is preferable to confrontation, or that achieving power justifies any compromise.

While there are many ways to approach our calling to live the Gospel life, while tactics to achieve Christian goals at home, in society, in the workplace can often vary, and we can disagree about them, some things are wrong and violate God’s laws. They are always wrong.  And some things, regardless of situations, are always right and are to be defended.

Jesus did not compromise on the core of God’s truth. He sends the devil away with the warning not to tempt God with human weakness and compromise. He was not sent to be a political revolutionary. And if we are to be Christians on the road to greater holiness and salvation, then on matters of principle we cannot stoop to the level of the world. As Christians, our living the truth in love must raise the world to Christianity’s level. Our task is to forgive others and bring them along to a new way of doing things, not simply giving and accepting because it is just easier or more popular. We are called to be new men and women, and build up other new men and women, and a new earth.

Like Jesus, we are called to a loving service to God and others. Like Jesus, we are called to pray to God the Father to give us what we need in a literal physical sense, but also in a spiritual need sense that puts others first. And with Jesus, through prayer, service, sacrament and Scripture, we receive the graces to achieve this calling. If we cooperate with Him, we can traverse successfully the physical deserts of our lives, and the spiritual deserts in our souls. 

The Real Meaning of Epiphany

The feast of Epiphany is a very important feast in its own right. For me, it is particularly important. Two years ago, I visited St. Hubert’s for the first time. Fr. Spicer was kind enough to allow me to serve on the altar as a deacon. I told you then that I was a deacon in the Archdiocese of Washington DC. I told you that I would be moving to Whidbey Island, and that I hoped to serve you as your deacon. Just like two years ago, the Washington Redskins lost to the Seattle Seahawks that weekend!

Through God’s grace, all of that has happened. So let me take this opportunity to say that now that I am here as your deacon, and have gotten to know many of you well, I am even more pleased to be here. I thank you for allowing me to serve you, and I pray that Fr. Rick, the staff of St. Hubert and all parishioners feel that two years from the first time I met you, we continue to grow in faith and love in this wonderful parish.

The feast of Epiphany is a feast where one can easily get lost in the liturgical history. For example:

-We often hear people call this feast, the feast of the Three Kings. But the three historical figures, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, were not really kings at all. They were part of pagan religious group from modern day Iran, or perhaps also modern day Iraq, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. The term magi, which is translated roughly speaking as part prophet, part priest, part advisor to royalty is probably the most accurate name for them. We actually don’t even know if there were three of them; their names are more of legend than what we would consider real historical research. We also know that Gaspar was considered a very kindly man; when he passed away, he became a kind spirit known as Gaspar the Friendly Ghost. Just seeing if you were paying attention!

-This feast was not celebrated in the early Church at all. And its origins actually come from the Eastern part of Catholicism, not the Roman or Western part; In the East, Epiphany commemorated the birth of the Lord as Christmas did in the West. All told, it took Catholic leaders more than a thousand years to get on the same page about when Epiphany was to be celebrated.

-And finally, despite the choreography of the crèche sets or nativity scenes you see or keep in your home, when the Magi made the decision to visit the very young Jesus, it would have taken them nearly a year by camel, to follow the star from Iran or Iraq to Bethlehem.  So the Jesus to whom they presented their gifts was more likely a toddler than a baby. Our Gospel from Matthew this morning talks about the Magi entering a house, not a stable or a manger.

Now you might ask at this point, why should we care about this? What is the real meaning of Epiphany and why do we continue to celebrate it? And why does it matter to us Catholics here on Whidbey Island on January 6, 2008?

The main reason we should care about Epiphany is because it is directly related to why Jesus Christ came to earth. When the Magi came to earth, they were demonstrating to the world for the first time something very important. The Magi visit demonstrated that Jesus came to redeem all of us, not just Jews but also Gentiles, all of us. He came to redeem not just the rich or powerful, but also the poor, the downtrodden, the despised.  Our first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah presages the Gentile worship of the Messiah that the Magi manifested. St. Paul in the letter to the Ephesians we read this morning reminds us that all people in every age are coheirs to the promise of Jesus’ coming and in the living of the Gospel life.

The Magi believed the star they saw was a prophecy about a very important king being born. They were certainly right about that. But the Magi also believed that Jesus was to be a political revolutionary, who would usher in a new age of earthly justice and prosperity.

Jesus was not a political revolutionary. He did not overthrow the despised Roman Empire. Rather, as He would later tell a different set of religious leaders, the Pharisees, as they undertook to murder Him, that His Kingdom was not of this world.

The Magi reflected this misunderstanding. In today’s Gospel they bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus as a sign of respect typically given to royalty. But while their gifts were appropriate in a cultural sense, they were also irrelevant.

But let us not be too hard on the Magi. For Jesus was certainly a spiritual revolutionary. God could have come to earth in many different ways, including as a rich and powerful King. Instead He came as the most ordinary of human beings. And this says something very, very important brothers and sisters. It says that the most ordinary of persons is a king in the kingdom of God. The most ordinary of people that Jesus chooses as his followers can be prophets.  And the most ordinary people, indeed all of us, are called to spread the faith, explain the faith, and practice the faith as priests in a common priesthood.

Even ministerial priests in Christ’s Church are called to be servants, and not be a religious class like the Magi. And so all of us are kings, all of us receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit that can include prophecy. And all of us are priests. Jesus calls us to full partnership in bringing about the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of mercy, justice, and peace.

So Jesus was a very different kind of king, in a kingdom not at all like the kingdoms the Magi knew or we know about in human history.  He came to show us how to live, so that we could eventually be united with him in heaven forever. He gave us the roadmap to peace on this earth and in ourselves through his teachings. He gave us strength and graces for the journey to salvation through the Scriptures, the sacraments, and prayer. His presence with us is intimate and real, available every day of our lives if we simply ask for it.    

Brothers and sisters, epiphany is a Greek word that roughly means a sudden recognition of something or insight of deep meaning. And so let us pray that on this feast of Epiphany more than two thousand years after the epiphany of the Magi, may we come to recognize the real meaning of Epiphany, and act on that meaning by living everyday, in the Kingdom of God Jesus revealed to us.