Weekly Sermon: 01-04-2026 - Epiphany: Visitation of the Wise Ones

The Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you, O Lord.

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,

wise men came from the east to Jerusalem asking, 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.

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened and all Jerusalem with him and

calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people,

he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.

They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet

and you Bethlehem in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.

For from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.

Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact

time when the star had appeared.

Then he sent them to Bethlehem saying, go and search diligently for the child.

And when you have found him, bring me word so that I also may go and pay him homage.

When they had heard the king, they set out and there ahead of them went the

star that they had seen at its rising until it stopped over the place where the child was.

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.

Then opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold,

frankincense, and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their

own country by another road.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, O Lord Christ.

Thank you.

Anne Lamott is one of my favorite writers, and a New Year's essay of hers is

making the rounds on Facebook on the timely topic of New Year's resolutions.

In it, she says, I know you are planning to start a diet on January 1st.

I used to start diets too. Now, when I decide to go on a diet,

I say to myself, Great, honey, how much are you hoping to gain?

Here is what's true. Diets make you fat.

95% of the time, we gain it back, plus 5 pounds.

Oh my God, I wish that wasn't so true.

And isn't that the problem with New Year's resolutions? We start out so hopeful,

so committed, so optimistic.

This year will be different. I will be different.

We succumb to the pressure that arrives with the changing of the calendar.

Pressure to improve, to fix, to change.

By now, of course, most of us have already thought about what we should be doing differently.

We call them resolutions but most of them

are really outcomes results that we hope to achieve lose weight get organized

be less stressed be more faithful be better people be more grateful be more

patient I know you're going oh yeah oh yeah nope she didn't hit mine mine is

this one I got to do this over here.

But by mid-February, many of us will have already flunked.

Not because we don't care, or because usually it's because the goals are too

big, or they're too vague, or they're too disconnected from reality.

The realities of life that we somehow forget on January 1.

We assume that real change happens by our own power, through willpower,

through effort, through putting on that Nike swoop that says, just do it.

Through wanting something badly enough, that if we can lose it, we can keep it off.

That deprivation is a good way to live for the long term.

What if the problem isn't really our lack of willpower, but our misunderstanding,

at least over the turn of the calendar at the beginning of the year,

about how change actually really happens?

The epiphany story of the three wise guys offers us a different way to see how

transformation actually comes about. I know it doesn't look like a story of

transformation, but it ends that way.

I know this is a surprising proposition because when we really look at them,

the wise sages from the East already have everything.

They have all the things that people usually come to God hoping to get.

They're all the things that people usually come to God hoping to get.

Practitioners of the Zoroastrian religion from Persia, they seemed to have it all. They had wealth.

They bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These are really expensive gifts.

They had the resources to travel across national boundaries with servants and

camels and cooks and equipment to provide for all of their needs.

They had privilege. They walked straight into the palace of King Herod without

fear, without emissaries, without intermediaries, without consequences.

They were close enough to royalty and royalty themselves just to demand an audience

with the king. No questions asked.

They had freedom, the freedom of time, education, mobility, curiosity.

They could travel across borders, pursue spiritual questions,

and seek truth simply because they wanted to.

There was no job, no government, no family responsibility or immigration system

that held them back from doing whatever they desired with their time, energy, and resources.

Well, that sounds like the life, doesn't it? By every worldly measure,

the wise sages from the East were three men, most likely, who didn't need anything.

So what could they possibly receive from a baby born not in a palace,

but in the stable section of an overcrowded home in a small town filled with

extended families crammed together because of a government census?

What could they possibly receive from a child with no power,

no status, no protection in a backwater town of a small nation occupied by the Roman Empire?

And yet, something does happen to them.

They encounter Mary and Joseph with their newborn son, Jesus,

lying in the feed box for the donkey and the sheep.

And these wise, privileged sages are completely overcome.

They offer their gifts of gold, of frankincense, and myrrh.

Most astoundingly, they kneel.

They probably didn't kneel for King Herod, but they kneel for Jesus, and they worship.

They worship him. They are not given more power or wisdom. They are not given

answers to unsolved questions.

They are not given protection from the harms of the world.

Yet they are transfixed in worship and in hope.

They receive an overpowering love, presence, vulnerability, fulfillment.

They behold God in a tender, fragile form.

They see themselves and every human as holy.

They are overwhelmed with joy as they recognize the union of God with humanity, all of humanity.

And they are filled with deep contentment and peace that they have never known before.

And this holy encounter changes them.

And Matthew ends their story. Having been warned in a dream not to return to

Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

They go home another way. At first glance, their new path home seems to be about

safety, about avoiding Herod.

But I'm not sure with a rare resource of papyrus that Matthew would take up

that space, adding that sentence,

giving us this detail, unless it means something much more.

The wise sages don't just take a different road.

This is not about maps and geography and directions.

They leave changed.

They have encountered something, someone who rearranges their future.

So they cannot return to the same way they were.

They can't return to the same power structures unchanged.

They cannot participate in the same systems of domination without question.

They can't live with the same privilege without rethinking how they use what they have.

They cannot unsee what they have seen.

They cannot undo what they have experienced and its implications for how they live.

They go home another way because their lives are now oriented differently,

not toward the Herods and those in power, but somehow toward those who are vulnerable.

What transforms the wise sages is not the gifts that they brought.

It is the gift that they receive God's presence and love revealed in fragile vulnerability and,

A grace that does not need their wealth or privilege or freedom,

but instead comes to join them in their humanity and says,

Now, what will you do with your wealth and with your privilege for those who are vulnerable?

Ironically, the story of the wise sages is not about what we give to God.

Their story is about what God gives to us and how this gift changes the direction

of our lives, which brings us back to this new year.

The invitation of Epiphany, the revelation of Jesus as the presence of God with us by the stages,

who gives us gifts unimaginable of peace and wholeness and love and fulfillment and joy,

is not to try harder to set better goals.

The invitation is to ask a different question. It's not what outcome or results do I want?

Is it 10 pounds or 15 that I want to lose? No.

It's what pathway will I choose to walk now that I've had this encounter with Christ?

The wise sages don't make resolutions. They don't announce a five-step plan.

They don't even promise to be better people.

What they do is to choose to go home another way. They choose a new practice.

They choose to behave in a different ritual.

Because it was an encounter with Jesus that began to change them.

And you know, real change for us works the same way. it's an opening.

It's opening up ways for God to change us through the presence and the power of Jesus.

And so what if going home by another road isn't about achieving something dramatic

by our own willpower and Nike slogans,

but it is instead about choosing rituals and,

over resolutions. A process, instead of pressure for results,

practices instead of outcomes.

Because here's what we know when we're honest. Resolutions based on outcomes

are often out of our control.

Bodies change, life intervenes, schedules explode, energy wanes,

and when outcomes become the

measure of our faithfulness, we can end up discouraged and even ashamed.

And boy, that is not a formula for change at all, is it?

But rituals, finding a different way, exercising a different practice,

well, that is a whole new ballgame.

Just ask the wise sages.

Rituals shape us slowly, repeatedly, gently.

They create space for God to work over time.

They don't demand instant results. They invite presence, the presence of God

who came to be in union with us, starting out as an infant in an animal feed box.

The only goal of a ritual is not success, but choosing the practice,

choosing the new road, and returning to it again and again.

So if you miss a day, or three, or a week, you pick it up the next day,

and you keep going. There's no shame.

So what might it look like for you to go home another way this year,

after encountering Christ this season?

What would it look like to commit to a ritual rather than a resolution?

To commit to a practice rather than an outcome?

Not, I'm going to be more grateful this year, but to set an alarm once a day

at the same time and name three things that you're grateful for.

No pressure to feel joyful.

You can't force that, but just a practice, a ritual of noticing.

And see what God does with that over time.

Not, I'm going to lose 10 pounds. I can't even count how many times I've tried that.

Guess what I have? An extra 15. Thank you, Anne Lamott.

But slow your eating. I'm going to put my fork down in between bites and pay

attention to what God has provided for me.

Try a new fruit and a new vegetable every week. Try saying grace before meals. Add a ritual.

Love and thank your body rather than criticizing it. Thank it for carrying you through the day.

Try that in a 10-minute walk after each meal.

Choose a practice and do it with love for your body. Wow.

What can God do with that?

That is such a radical concept to me to actually do something with love toward

my body when I've been beating it up mentally my whole freaking life.

Can I say freaking in a sermon?

I just did. All right. Everything I say and do is recorded and on online. Great. Okay.

Not pray more, but pray for one minute in the car before you get out to go to

work or for one minute before you open the laptop if you work at home.

Just enough time to remember that your work does not define your worth.

Not set the tightest budget ever so I can be as miserable as possible in 2026.

But maybe start writing down everything you spend money on and start noticing

patterns and values and see what God does with that.

Where does God nudge you to start paying attention to vulnerable people around

you and how God asks you to start changing your values?

How is God asking you to live another way?

How is God nudging you

to to reevaluate how you're

participating in systems of oppression how is

God asking you to turn away from the herods of

the world and pay attention to those who are less privileged than you are come

to the making money simple class after church today for the next three weeks

and learn from the wise sages on our abundance team simple tools not resolutions,

simple practices.

Add to the fun by picking some star words. I have star words.

Has anybody done a star word before for epiphany? We did it a couple of years ago.

So this is something that developed more recently where you want a guiding word for the year.

And so after communion, you can throw away your cup and you can come over here, over there.

And you just ask, Holy spirit, give me a guiding word or two for this year.

And you they're turned over. So you don't know what it is.

And so you pick one or two words and you trust the Holy Spirit to give you a

guiding word for the year. And that becomes a ritual.

That becomes a practice. And then you pay attention to how God is using this

word to change you, not by your willpower, but by the Holy Spirit helping you notice what's going on.

So that is really fun. I usually tape it on my bathroom mirror,

and then I ask God, how is my focus on this word?

Helping you do something within me this year that I need transformed.

And if you're listening from home, you can put it in the comments or write an

email or on messenger, and I'll pray for you, and I'll pick two words,

and then I'll send them to you in the mail.

So these are not self-improvement projects. These are ways of traveling in faith.

Rituals open us in a way for God and Jesus Christ, who is in union with us to

transform us over time and over time and over repetition, our lives,

our thoughts, our bodies, our hearts, they begin to shift.

Trust grows, awareness deepens. God shows up, not all at once,

but gradually faithfully.

This is God's work. This is how epiphany. This is how revelation works.

The wise sages don't leave Bethlehem with all the answers.

They leave with souls full of joy and a change of direction.

And that is enough.

And so as we celebrate epiphany today, as we mark doors, as we bless spaces,

as we receive spirit-led words to guide our insights, as we mark the beginning

of a new year, we are not promising God new and improved outcomes.

We are choosing a new way of being.

We are saying that we are open to revelation. We are open to being changed.

We are open to traveling differently than before.

We are trying one or two new practices or rituals where God can work on us.

You will probably return to the same home, the same job or school,

the same relationships. I pray that I am.

I don't need any of those things to change. But the wise sages invite us to

believe that after encountering Jesus, we do not return the same way.

Thank goodness for that. There's hope for change and transformation.

And it's not up to me. Praise the Lord, because I'm flunking when I try to do it on my own.

I don't want to feel like a failure in February. Do you?

Yay. All right. Shoo.

Thank God that's off the table on January 4th. Isn't that a relief?

Yes. Amen. I'm so glad the wise sages show us that encountering Jesus,

that is the transformation.

The work is up to God. We just have to show up and open ourselves up with one

little ritual, one habit where we say, okay, God, I'm showing up over here.

What are you going to do with me?

Get to work. No, that's what I like to say to God. Okay, I'm here. What are you doing?

So the wise sages encourage us to release the pressure and trust that God will

always meet us on the road with a big star and more new light.

So let's go. Let's have fun. transformation in

God is a wonderful wonderful blessing of

new light put away the put away

the Nike motto and just say I'm showing

up God with one new practice let's let I'm open to what you're doing in and

through me with joy amen go in peace to do justice love kindness and walk humbly

shining the light of Christ as you love, serve, and welcome all.

Thanks be to God, and we will.