Epiphany 2025

Isaiah 60.1-6; Ephesians 3.1-12; Matthew 2.1-12

It was in this Cathedral that I heard Richard Holloway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh, offer the wonderfully succinct suggestion that we should understand the nativity stories as trailers. The nativity stories are like film trailers that set the scene, give you a glimpse of the kind of story you are in for. Like a trailer that provides a taste of what lies ahead if you commit to the full story, the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels are full of hints at the fuller story to come; they set you up to understand the kind of good news that is being offered here.

The problem is that at Christmas we mash together the two somewhat different trailers given by Luke and Matthew. In Luke’s nativity we hear of the calling of a census and Mary and Joseph’s consequent journey to Bethlehem; of the angels surprising some shepherds who join Mary and Joseph around the manger. From there, Mary and Joseph travel to Jerusalem, where the baby Jesus is greeted by Simeon – events that we will recall at Candlemas, the end of our Christmas and Epiphany celebrations.

Matthew offers a very different trailer, one whose timeline doesn’t really make sense when it’s put together with Luke – it’s one of the reasons why we can jump around in our readings a bit at this time of year. We were celebrating with Luke’s nativity at Christmas, and then on December 28th remembering the Holy Innocents, the children massacred by Herod, as told by Matthew. And if you were here last Sunday, you would have heard Luke’s story of the twelve year old Jesus escaping his parents and quizzing the teachers in the Temple. And today, on the Feast of the Epiphany, we have jumped back to the arrival of the Magi, to a house in Bethlehem where they find Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus.

So let’s try and untangle these two trailers, and focus today particularly on Matthew, on his telling of the arrival of the Magi, those unexpected travellers from afar, who are the focus of his nativity, his trailer for what is to come.

Matthew’s nativity is much darker in tone than Luke’s, whose joyful focus has been on Mary, on her ‘yes’ to God at the annunciation, and her exclamation of joy in the Magnificat. In Matthew’s Gospel, the nativity introduces us to the theme of the fulfilment of God’s ancient promise in a world full of threat. The promise of God, first offered to Abraham, Jesus’ forebear in faith, has been nurtured by the people of God. That promise has been the basis of the covenant between God and God’s people, a people tasked with being God’s blessing. It is that promise that Isaiah articulates and celebrates in our first reading: Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Now, announces Matthew, the promise is fulfilled in the coming of the promised one. That fulfilment of the promise of God, in the face of a world of threat, is always surprising. The very start of Matthew’s nativity is a genealogy that traces Jesus’ lineage back to David and then Abraham. But the list includes four women, who in different ways embody the outsider and the unexpected - Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheeba. There isn’t time to tell the stories of each of these women, but they are outsiders, who break into a much more expected order and list of the otherwise male lineage of Joseph’s ancestry. Matthew then goes on to tell how Joseph has to be persuaded by an angel in a dream not to quietly dismiss Mary on finding her pregnant. The baby Jesus, bearer of God’s promise of salvation, is threatened from the start, requiring surprising action to facilitate his birth.

And the threat to God’s gift of salvation is embodied, above all in this nativity trailer, in Herod, into whose authoritarian kingdom the baby arrives. The fulfilment of God’s promise will overturn such abuse and misuse of power. But the promise is not recognised by those we might expect, rather it is the outsiders, the travellers from distant shores, the keepers of very different wisdom, the Magi, who recognise the signs, and follow the star, to honour the promise. They may unwittingly set in motion the threat by arriving at Herod’s palace, but they are the ones who pay homage to the promise, and in their gifts anticipate this baby’s future.

A promise given in a world of threats. A promise recognised by surprising people, come from distant lands, bearing gifts. The gold and frankincense given by the Magi fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah, but the third gift anticipates something very different: myrrh is the oil used to anoint the dead for burial. The threat to the promise does not end with Herod. It is a threat that Jesus will have to reckon with all his life; the promise not fully realised and known until the threat is borne and carried on the cross.

Threat and promise – Matthew lays out the great themes of his gospel from the start. As we begin a new year, the threats may seem very obvious, the promise of God’s fulfilment perhaps less so. And yet Matthew’s gospel invites us to recognise and follow the promise in the midst of threat. So pay attention to the outsider, the unexpected giver of gifts. Herod saw threat everywhere and shaped the world in that image. Mary greets the Magi as those who witness to the promise, not of an easy life, but that God would be at work in the baby that lies in her arms. That is the promise given to us as this new year starts, and always. The promise to be fulfilled in us as we are formed into the Body of Christ, given to be a blessing for the world. Amen.