Epiphany Year A
Matthew 2:1-12
Isaiah 60:1-6
Read the legend from Bill Reid. We all have our stories of light overcoming darkness. This is the Haida's story.
Now Raven was not the most savory of characters (he is known as a “trickster”), but he was not evil, and he often did much good for humans even as he pursued his own interests. At its heart the story expresses what we believe as Christians: that the world is full of light and goodness given to us by God and that those good things are meant for all people, and for that matter for all beings. When we failed to use the light, that is live in harmony in creation, God sent Jesus to show us the way. In the story, the man who kept the light for himself found out that even he was the poorer as the result of his own greed, for it was only when the light was let out that he saw the beauty around him. Redemption came.
The magi, sages or wise people if you will, were the only ones who at first saw the light, the only ones who understood what the stars were saying. They were not Jewish nor were they of any ruling class. We do not know where they came from or even how many of them came. Yet they saw the light and knew that the light was to be shared, the light was there for all of us.
This Epiphany the message is a simple one: God, through Jesus, brought the light into the world and gave it to us, not to keep for ourselves, but to share. It only takes one person with a lighted candle to share that flame and light up the whole world. No candle needs to be extinguished when another one is lit. Jesus brought the light of God into the world and gave it to you and I and millions of other people.
Blessed are you who bear the light in unbearable times, who testify to its endurance mid the unendurable, who bear witness to its persistence when everything seems in shadow and grief. Blessed are you in whom the light lives, in whom the brightness blazes – your heart a chapel, an altar where in the deepest night can be seen the fire that shines forth in you in unaccountable hope, in love that illumines every broken thing it finds. Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light (from Circle of Grace, by Jan Richardson)
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