Epiphany 2021 - What child is this?

 In keeping with the ancient practice, following the proclamation of the Epiphany Gospel, I just chanted the announcement of Easter and the Moveable Feasts for this liturgical year.  

Before the age of mass produced calendars and smart phones, the chanting of the feasts was a practical necessity; now, we do it as a way of remaining rooted in our Catholic tradition; the light of faith, the light of our Catholic Tradition is something that we’ve inherited from ages past, and it’s up to us to keep the light of faith burning in this darkened age.

Light. The Feast of the Epiphany sheds light upon the identity of the child born in Bethlehem, a light which the Catholic Church is called to manifest throughout the world.

“What child is this?” asks that beautiful Christmas carol. To an ordinary onlooker, he is just another child born into poverty—this one so unfortunate that he is born in a stable, amidst the filth of beasts of burden. There is no crib, so he is laid in the feeding trough. But then something interesting happens. As if choreographed by heaven, the christmas star, a spotlight from heaven shines upon the stable, and three strange figures approach the stable, and the fall prostrate before the child. 

What child is this, that these learned men—these magi—these royal philosopher astrologers from the east—having traveled a thousand miles, from Babylon to Bethlehem, see him, and fall flat on their faces?

What child is this that after doing him homage, they offer him gold, frankincense, and myrrh? Who did they think this child was to offer him these strange gifts?

Well, they had studied and pondered the ancient jewish prophecies, and they believed this child to be a king, the king of king and lord of lords, and so they brought him gold. The first gift: gold fit for a king. By the gift of gold they acknowledged the child to be the long-awaited heir to the Davidic Kingdom. A king who would gather all the scattered peoples of the earth into a single kingdom. A king who would rule over the whole earth—over a kingdom that would last forever. An eternal and universal kingdom, a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. And a king who would make his dwelling place among his people.

The prophet Zechariah says that this king “shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne.” He would not only be a king, but a priest. And hence the second gift—the gift of frankincense. In the book of Exodus, Aaron and his sons were consecrated to God as priests with frankincense.

Just like the smoke of the sweet smelling incense rises up to God, the priest’s job is to offer sacrifice to God on behalf of the people--to offer sacrifice for peace and blessing and healing and favor and the forgiveness of sins. And so the gift of frankincense acknowledges the identity of the child as priest—the high priest of the One True God—the fulfillment of the priesthood.

And then the final gift, the bitter gift, the gift of Myrrh. Myrrh was used throughout the scriptures in many different ways: for purification, for anointing, as a medicine and a painkiller, as a sort of perfume for the wedding bed, and also for the anointing dead bodies at the time of burial.

Myrrh, like frankincense is a sort of resin cultivated from trees. Myrrh is extracted by piercing the tree’s heartwood and allowing the resin to trickle out into bitter red droplets called tears. Even the process of cultivating myrrh makes us think of the sort of death the Lord would endure—pierced on the cross for our sins and laid in the tomb, so that we may be healed, and cleansed, so and presented to God as a pure and spotless bride.

What child is this? Through the gift of Myrrh, the Magi showed that this child through his suffering and death would bring about our healing and purification and union with God.

Throughout the centuries there have been attempts to reduce Jesus to a moral teacher—simply a good role model of the morals we should adopt. In the early 1800s for example, Thomas Jefferson composed a sort of alternative bible, in which he attempted to extract all of the moral principles of Jesus’ teaching from the new testament, while leaving behind anything that hinted at the Lord’s divine mission and establishing the Church. Jefferson’s Bible contains a bit of the Christmas story, how the child Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. But it omits any reference to today’s Gospel of the Magi and the gifts they brought. For the gifts of the Magi show that the child is much more than a moral teacher, guru or life coach. He is king, priest, and savior. 

Jefferson, a wonderful statesman, but a lousy theologian, and so many of our contemporaries, deny that Jesus is anything more than a moral teacher. They believe that human flourishing and blessedness can be reached simply by human efforts. But God directs us to a higher good than human frailty can attain on its own. Jesus is not simply a frail human teacher with some good ideas about living an upstanding life. He is more than that. He is king, priest, and savior, and so we owe him more than an interested ear. We, like the wise men, owe him our complete homage. We journey to him and fall prostrate before him. We like the magi bring him the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of our lives—the honor, obedience, and worship we owe to God.  

And by allowing the fullness of his light to shine in our lives, in the words of our collect today, we are able to pass through the shadows of this world and reach the brightness of our eternal home. Picking which moral teachings we wish to follow is not enough in order to obtain heaven.

“What child is this?” How we answer that question, how we allow that question to shape our earthly life will determine our eternity. Will we go a search diligently for him, and fall down in worship before him, or will we, like Herod, sit in our palaces lazily, and leave the work of worship and service to others—the spreading of the light of His Gospel.

May this new year be filled with gifts, the gifts of homage, prayer, worship, obedience, gratitude, honor and faith, given to Him, every day, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

Christmas 2017: "They wrapped him in swaddling clothes."

What child is this, who, laid to rest,
On Mary's lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing:
Haste, haste to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

“What Child is this,” What child is this whose birth we gather to celebrate this day? We learn a lot about his identity and his mission, by the company he keeps, by those who gathered for his birth: Angels, shepherds, wise men, a carpenter, and a sinless virgin: seekers, workers, the humble. There are certainly some seekers, some workers, and maybe even some angels here tonight. As my favorite Christmas card says, “the wise seek him still.”

We also learn a lot about the Christ child by where he was born: not in a royal palace, not in a hospital, not in his family home, not even in the village inn, but in stable, a cave used for housing and feeding animals in the backwater town of Bethlehem. We have a God who chooses to be born into “straw poverty”, who teaches us to seek him and to serve him in his poor ones.

But I’d like to focus not on those who witnessed his birth, nor on his place of birth, I’d like to focus on his clothes. When the angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds, by what sign were they to know him? His swaddling clothes. “And this will be a sign for you,” the angel said, “you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger."

There is a story about a number of priests who were on a retreat with the famous biblical scholar, Donald Senior, and they were going around the room talking about their favorite biblical passage.  One priest said his favorite passage was, “Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of everlasting life.”  Another priest said his was, “Let it be done to me according to thy word.”  The priests expected the noted biblical scholar to have some complex passage from St. Paul’s letters, but he said his favorite passage was, “and they wrapped him in swaddling clothes”.  They wrapped him in swaddling clothes.  He says, “we have a God who was a baby in a manger, we have a God who wore a diaper, we have a God who was wrapped in swaddling clothes.  That’s how accessible, that’s how loveable our God is.  He’s a baby.  And he wants us to pick him up, and embrace him, and kiss him, and he wants us to tell him that we love him, and need him, that he has changed our lives, and that we will spend our lives loving him.”

On Christmas Eve a few years ago, Pope Benedict wrote, “God is so great that he can become small. God is so powerful that he can make himself vulnerable and come to us as a defenseless child, so that we can love him. God is so good that he can give up his divine splendor and come down to a stable, so that we might find him, so that his goodness might touch us, give itself to us and continue to work through us.”

His swaddling clothes certainly speak of Our Lord’s humility.

Yet, the swaddling clothes have another significance.

Bethlehem wasn’t known for much, but it did have one industry, you might call it. The shepherds of Bethlehem raised lambs for the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. They were Levitical shepherds and raised the lambs that would be used in the Passover sacrifice in the Jerusalem temple. And when it was time for these lambs to be born the shepherds, would bring them into the shepherd’s cave and then they would be swaddled because the sacrifice had to be without spot or blemish.

A baby born in the same place as the sacrificial Passover Lambs, swaddled like a Passover lamb, pointed to the fact that this child was the Lamb of God born to be the sacrifice which takes away the sins of the world. Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen would often say, some men were born to live.

He was born to die for us.
Why lies He in such mean estate,
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spears shall pierce him through,
the cross he bore for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
the Babe, the Son of Mary.

The cross he bore for me, for you. This is why he was born. Or as we recite in the Creed: "For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man." The Creed itself links these two ideas: his birth and our need for a Savior.

Had our greatest need been knowledge, God would have sent us an educator.  Had our greatest need been technology, God would have sent us a scientist.  So too had our greatest need been for money, God would have sent us an economist.  Had our greatest need been for pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer. But, because our greatest need was for redemption from sin, God sent us a Savior.
His very name, Jesus, means “God saves”. As the angel said to Joseph, “you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

To us is born a Savior, into the poverty of Bethlehem, to bring us the riches of heaven.
To us is born a Savior, who is wrapped in swaddling clothes, that we may know we are wrapped in God’s love.
To us is born a Savior, who brings healing to the most broken of the human family.
To us is born a Savior, who commands the storms of our life to “Be still!”
To us is born a Savior, who casts out demons from the darkest souls.
To you is born a Savior, the Passover Lamb, who allows his hands and feet to be nailed to a cross to rescue us from our sin.
To us is born a Savior, who pronounces our sins forgiven and who feeds us with his flesh and blood, that we might have eternal life.
To us is born a Savior, who sends us out to bring his scattered sheep into one flock, the Church.
To us is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.