The scriptures for this sermon are listed below.  To read them in the NRSV, just click the links.

Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

Christmas is a wonderful time to be in the church.
But I realize every year about this time that there is much to be said for Epiphany too.

You see, Christmas is everybody’s favorite season.
In an world so secular that no one ever mentions anything religious, except in negative terms,
you frequently hear carols and hymns on the television and radio. And people we never see at church during the rest of the year, usually manage to show up at Christmas time.
These strangers pack the church on Christmas Eve,
singing the hymns by heart,
faces radiant with joy,
as if they were at home here in church all year long.

Perhaps you know the old joke about the pastor who ended his Christmas Eve service with the benediction,
“See you all back here again,
same time, same place, next Christmas.”

Those of us still in church after all the Christmas hoopla,
know not to get too impressed by the seasonal religious outburst among yuletide Christians.
We don’t get too excited,
because almost without fail by Epiphany, they are gone.
Our church is evidence of that this morning.
Christmas is over for most of the world.
The curious, those here once or twice a year,
all these are gone.
Maybe we’ll see them again on Easter, or maybe not.
All that’s left are you and me.
just us really religious folk.

By Epiphany, it’s just us.
Us and the baby Jesus.
You might even say, us and our baby Jesus.

And yet, have you noticed how Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ birth.
Matthew says that when Jesus was born,
magi came from the East and worshipped him.
Who were these magi?
Well, they were not “Wise Men,” or “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” as we often call them.
Matthew calls them magi.
Now magi is the word from which we get our word “magic.”
These people were magicians.
They were stargazers, astrologers, alchemists,
even wizards who dabbled in magic potions.
Some scholars have even suggested that the gifts the magi gave to Jesus — the gold, frankincense, and myrrh –
these may have been the tricks of their trade,
elements used in their magic-making.

And so not only were the magi foreigners,
they were Gentiles.
And not only were they Gentiles,
they were Gentiles who practiced those magic arts which were specifically condemned in the Scriptures of the Jews.
And on the few other occasions where magi are mentioned in the New Testament,
it is in an extremely unfavorable light.
These Magi were not “Wise Men,”
and they certainly weren’t kings.
They were your average, superstitious, stargazing, gentile magicians,
people to be avoided if at all possible.

But Matthew says that these magi were the first,
the very first to come and worship Jesus as Savior of the world. The very first.

Do you sense the shock in that?
Do you understand how outrageous this was?
One of the first things you learn when you study the gospels is that Matthew is the most “Jewish” of the four gospels.
Matthew continually quotes from the Old Testament in order to demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah,
the fulfillment of Israel’s hope.
the Savior,
the one who has come for his chosen people, the Jews.
And yet Matthew opens his account of this very Jewish Messiah by noting that the “insiders” who had the Scriptures,
those who were given all of God’s promises,
missed it.
And these Gentiles,
these outsiders who knew nothing of Scripture,
people who were of the wrong race and the wrong religion,
people who couldn’t even pronounce the word “Epiphany,”
much less know what it means,
were the very first to come and worship the Messiah.

I think that by putting these magi up front,
at the very beginning of the story of Jesus,
Matthew wants to tell us something about the nature of Jesus.
This baby, this Messiah sent to save,
is not our sole possession,
Christ is not just the church’s or church people’s property.
Jesus is the Lord of all.
He is Savior of the world.

And even though the magi may not have known everything about him,
even though they knew very little of the Bible,
even though they were confused on a number of issues,
they knew that the child born in Bethlehem was their baby too;
they knew that he was their messiah, their Christ, their Savior.
And so they came and worshipped.

The people who crowd in here once a year,
all the people who get all choked up over TV Christmas specials, maybe they know more than we think they know.
Perhaps, just perhaps, down deep, in their heart of hearts,
they sense that Jesus has meaning for them.
If we in the church think that Jesus is only for us,
only for the “insiders” in the know,
then maybe it is we who have misunderstood rather than them.
For the one who lies in Bethlehem’s manger is the Lord of all.

Later in his book,
Matthew tells a story about a great banquet in which a man invited all of his friends and relatives to a great feast.
And while we can read about this in chapter 22,
let me ask this instead,
does anyone hear remember how those invited reacted without turning to this passage?
All the people who were invited did not come.
Instead they made excuses.
One had a field to inspect,
another had bought an ox,
somebody else was recently married.
In great anger, the determined host instructed his servants to go out into the highways and byways to invite everyone to the feast, everyone.
No one was left out.

Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like this.
It’s like a bunch of riffraff whom we would not be caught dead being seen with,
much less partying with,
all eating together at the table of our Lord.

It reminds me of the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
This 1967 film starred Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in his last film role.
Hepburn and Tracy are an aging husband and wife who are meeting their daughter’s fiance for the first time.
They are, white, well-to-do, and quite liberal in their outlook.
The fiance, as played by Sidney Portier,
is also well-to do.
He is a doctor.
He is also black.
The characters played by Tracy and Hepburn have to deal with this turn of events in their lives.
They hadn’t expected something like this to happen,
and they are more than a little confused over how to react when the good doctor shows up for dinner.

In much the same vein we also get confused.
We keep thinking that the church is just for us,
just for people like us,
people who look like us,
who act like us.
But Jesus reminds us that he has sheep who are not of this fold. Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God as a place where the net is cast out and all kinds of fish, good and bad, are drawn in.
He told about a farmer who had a field in which both wheat and weeds grew together.

Things in his kingdom are never as neat as we would like them to be.
These outsiders keep showing up at the manger.
People who look nothing like us are invited and actually show up for the heavenly banquet.
Weird people keep hearing their name called.
Just when we think we have it all nailed down,
all figured out,
we insiders are shocked to find that we missed it,
that those whom we labeled “outsiders” knew more about the God’s kingdom than we know.
And that th
ose we consider strangers are just as welcome in God’s kingdom as we are.

In his last congregation before becoming the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University,
William Willimon and the people of the church decided that they needed to grow,
so they voted to launch a program of evangelism.
Evangelism.
You know what that means.
It’s the “We-had-better-go-out-and-get-new-members-or-we’ll-die” syndrome.
Beginning in the sixties,
Willimon’s church had begun a two-decade decline in membership,
so they figured that a little church-growth strategy was in order.

The church studied a program from our denomination telling them how to get new members.
Among other things,
the church-growth program suggested a system of door-to-door visitation.
So after organizing themselves into groups of two,
on an appointed Sunday afternoon they set out to visit,
and to invite people to the church.

The teams went out,
armed with packets of pamphlets describing their church,
pamphlets telling about the UMC,
and fliers portraying Willimon,
the smiling, friendly pastor,
inviting people to the church.
Each team was given a map with their assigned street.

Helen and Gladys were given a map.
They were clearly told to go down Summit Drive and to turn right.
That’s what they were told.
Willimon even heard the team leader tell them,
“You go down Summit Drive and turn right.
Do you hear me, Helen,
that’s down Summit Drive and turn right?”

But Helen and Gladys,
both approaching eighty,
after lifetimes of teaching elementary school,
were better at giving than receiving directions.
They turned left,
venturing down into the housing projects to the west of Summit Drive.
They were told to turn right; they turned left.
Of course this meant that Helen and Gladys proceeded to evangelize the wrong neighborhood and thereby ran the risk of evangelizing the wrong people.

Later that same afternoon,
each team returned to the church to make their report.
Helen and Gladys had only one interested person to report,
a woman named Verleen.
No one else on their route was interested in visiting the church,
no one but Verleen.
Now Verleen lived with her two children in a three-room apartment in the projects,
and although she had never been to a church in her life,
Verleen wanted to visit Willimon’s.

This is what you get,
Willimon said to himself,
when you don’t follow directions,
when you won’t do what the pastor tells you to do.
This is what you get,
a woman from the projects named Verleen.

The next Sunday,
Helen and Gladys proudly presented Verleen at the eleven o’clock service,
along with her two wiry and very animal-like children.
To the surprise of some,
Verleen liked the service so much she said that she wanted to attend the Women’s Thursday Morning Bible Study,
so Helen and Gladys said they would pick her up.

And on Thursday Verleen appeared,
proudly clutching her new Bible,
a gift of from Helen.
It was the first Bible Verleen had ever seen,
much less owned.

Willimon was leading the study that morning,
a study on the reading for the coming Sunday,
The passage was Luke 4,
the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.
After presenting his material,
Willimon asked the group,
“Have any of you ever been faced with temptation and,
with Jesus’ help, resisted?”
“Have any of you refused some temptation because of your Christian commitment?”

One of the women told about how,
just the week before,
there was some confusion in the supermarket checkout line,
and before she knew it,
she was standing in the supermarket parking lot with a loaf of bread that she hadn’t paid for.
She then confessed,
“At first I thought why should I pay for it?
They have enough money here as it is.
But then I thought,
‘No, you are a Christian.’
So I went back in the store and paid them for that loaf of bread.”

Willimon made some approving comment.

It was then that Verleen spoke.
“A couple of years ago,
I was into cocaine really big.
You know what that’s like!
You know how that stuff makes you crazy.
Well, anyway, my boyfriend,
not the one I’ve got now,
the one who was the daddy of my first child,
that one, well, we knocked over a gas station one night–
got two hundred dollars out of it.
It was as simple as taking candy from a baby.
Well, my boyfriend, he says to me,
‘Let’s knock off that Seven-eleven down on the corner.’
But something in me,
it says, ‘No, I’ve held up that gas station with you,
but I ain’t going to hold up no convenience store.’
He beat the hell out of me,
but I still said No.
Made me feel like I was somebody.”

Through the stunned silence Willimon managed to mutter,
“Well, er, uh, that’s resisting temptation.
That’s sort of what this text is about.
And now it’s time for our closing prayer.”

Afterward Willimon stumbled out of the church parlor and was standing out in the parking lot,
helping Helen into her Plymouth,
when she said to him,
“You know, I can’t wait to get home and get on the phone and invite people to come next Thursday!
Your Bible studies used to be dull,
but I think I can get a good crowd for this!”

You never know who’s going to show up in God’s kingdom.
You never know who is going to darken the church’s door.
You never know who is going to hear God’s call and decide to follow after the voice they hear.
You never know who’s going to show up for dinner.
It just may be some wise men,
magicians from some far away land.
It just might be someone like Verleen,
someone who is unlike anyone else in our congregation.
Who knows, who knows but God.

One thing I know, however,
we had better be ready when they do come.
And they will come, you know.
They will come,
if we are the light we are supposed to be.

There’s a hundred-year old Swedish story about a country doctor who came to a farmhouse one night to help deliver a child.
As the mother labored on a kitchen table,
her husband assisted the doctor by holding up a gas lamp to illuminate the makeshift delivery room.
After a time of intense labor,
the mother produced a fine baby boy.
Then, to the surprise ofboth parents,
the doctor announced that a second child was due to arrive.
And indeed the mother delivered a lovely daughter.

Her husband was already shaken by this unexpected turn of events,
so you can imagine his astonishment when he heard the doctor say,
“Hang on.
I think there’s a third.
I think we have triplets.”

At this the father began to back out of the room.
“Hold it!” called the doctor.
“Come back here with that lamp.”

“Oh, no,” said the father,
“It’s the light that attracts them.”

It was the light of a star,
the light of Christ that attracted the magi from the east to the newborn Christ child.
It was the light of Christ in Helen and Gladys that brought Verleen from the projects into the church.
And the light of Christ in our lives,
well, you just never know who will be attracted to that light.
Our calling is to be ready when they come.
Our calling is to invite them into our midst.
Our calling is to make them welcome at the Table of our Lord.

Look at those strange magi who showed up,
as if out of nowhere, to worship the babe at Bethlehem.
Even though they probably knew very little about the Messiah,
all that he was to be,
all that his advent meant,
they knew a great, glorious truth which they now try to teach to us:
The light that shines in the darkness,
is light for the whole world, not just for us.