A Curious People
Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church
A warm welcome to each worshiper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.
As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.
943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkway.org
Order of Worship
January 7, 2024
Epiphany
10:00 a.m.
*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.
Prelude
Greeting and Announcements
Mission Statement: We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.
Call to Worship:
Arise! Shine!
God’s light has come to reveal the way in this New Year.
Arise! Shine!
The Glory of the Lord has risen upon us.
Arise! Shine!
God’s light penetrates the darkness.
*Hymn I Saw Three Ships
Led by the Front Porch Rockers
Prayer of Confession:
Everlasting God, we know how easy it is to forget your presence and power in our lives. Focused on our daily planners, we do not pay attention to the night sky and the stars that glitter. Surrounded by the sounds of anger, violence, and hate, we have trouble listening to your whispers of hope and grace. Thinking that Scripture is filled only with stories, we cannot understand your truth which can change lives.
Forgive us. There is no one who can hold a candle to you when it comes to mercy and hope. Lift us to our feet so we may walk with you; fill us with your strength so we may serve your people; touch us with your healing so we may proclaim to everyone the Good News that has come in Jesus Christ.
Assurance:
God never tires out, God is always with us,
God heals us with mercy, God strengthens us for service.
The One who numbers the stars knows each of us by name.
Thanks be to God, we are forgiven. Amen.
Scripture Reading Matthew 2: 1-12
The Visit of the Magi
2 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the east[b] and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him, 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah[c] was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet:
6
‘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[d] my people Israel.’ ”
7 Then Herod secretly called for the magi[e] and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 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 may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they set out, and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen in the east,[f] until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped,[g] they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 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. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Sermon A Curious People
Friends, here we are, observing a special, oft-overlooked holiday called Epiphany. Remember that book I was talking about during Advent? It was called An Unlikely Advent by Rachel Billups. I’m revisiting that one more time, because I saved the insight she had about the wise men for today. Of all the traits of the wise men that we could lift up, the one that Billups raised above all others was their curiosity.
In fact, Billups lifts up the three kings’ curiosity not just as a personality trait, but as a virtue. It’s very striking to me that she praises curiosity that way, because our society generally disagrees with her. We teach our kids that “curiosity killed the cat”, and we tend to think of curiosity as an immature, risky, childish quality. Curiosity generates trouble. And I get it. I’m a mom. Curiosity is the reason why my kids have colored on the walls, dumped out an entire bag of flour, stuffed all their toys in the toilet, and covered their entire body from head to toe in lipstick. Curiosity is not free of consequence, it’s very messy. But the flip side of my grown up mistrust of curiosity is precisely what makes it such an important spiritual virtue. Curiosity pushes boundaries. It looks contemplatively at the status quo, and instead of leaving well enough alone, it asks “why?” and “what if?” When Jesus schooled his disciples on the importance of approaching the Kingdom of God with a childlike faith, curiosity was a big piece of that faith. An uncurious, uninquisitive, resolved faith assumes that it knows all it needs to, that there’s a logical answer for every question, and that there’s nothing else it needs to find. That kind of faith keeps God at a safe, comfortable distance, and never risks true intimacy with the Holy. That faith is also so inflexible that it cracks the first time you face a situation that you don’t have a cut and dry platitude for. Curiosity may have killed a cat once upon a time, but a lack of it kills all of the potential Jesus sees in us. And the Magi may not have known that, but they did know that asking questions and engaging the world with an open mind and heart are true signs of wisdom.
For how important the Magi are to Jesus’ story, it’s a tragedy that we know so little about them. We don’t know their names. We don’t know what country they were from–only that they were “from the east” or “from the Orient”, a subtle reflection of our own racism. We don’t know how they described themselves, and we’ve gone back and forth between calling them “wise men”, “Magi”, and “the three kings”. More than likely, they were astrologers by profession. And, the real kicker: we don’t actually know that there were three of them. Seriously, we don’t. Matthew never said there were three Magi. Only that they gave Jesus three gifts. For all we know, there were fifty wise men that pooled their money together on the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and then they just all signed the card. And despite all the theological theories we have about why, when they could have gifted Jesus anything at all, they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh, we don’t know their reasoning, because no one asked, and no one wrote down their thoughts. Matthew, our author, omitted all of those details and included what he thought was important.
Therefore, Matthew has us focus just on the Magi interacting with Jesus’ political and social world. We don’t know exactly how long the wise men were studying the birth of Jesus, but it was long enough for them to come to the conclusion that the King of the Jews was born in Palestine, and they got all of that from looking at a star, so it was one heck of a star. Priests and Scribes in Herod’s employ narrow down exactly where Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were, based on Hebrew prophecy. We have the first of a few beautiful moments of intersection between different cultures–the Magi from the far East being astrology experts, but asking Priests and Scribes from the Middle East for scriptural insight to interpret their findings. Imagine what might have happened if Herod wasn’t so greedy and megalomaniacal, and all of these characters worked together to find, adore, and serve Jesus? The whole world would benefit from that kind of collaboration, just like it would today. Unfortunately, whereas the Scribes and Priests may have been as curious as the wise men, Herod lacked that virtue entirely. And disaster ensues because he can’t get over himself and bring that quality to the table. I already talked about how certainty and order crush curiosity, but because of Herod we also see how power and selfishness are curiosity killers. Curiosity opens us up to all the different possibilities out there, not just for our own selves, but for everyone. In order to stay open to those possibilities, you must be altruistic. But Herod doesn’t want good for all, just good for him. We also see because of the nature of Herod’s interaction with the wise men that a childlike faith does leave you vulnerable to a fox showing up in the hen house. The Magi believe Herod when he asks them to find Jesus, because he also has a gift for the baby king, and it’s the reason why they go on and find the Holy Family. If we live with curious hearts in this world, we will see unscrupulous people take advantage. The important thing is how everyone else responds.
So, onward the Magi go, and they gift Jesus the iconic gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Odd gifts for a toddler, to say the least. Have you seen that joke about how the wise men leave, and then the wiser women show up with diapers, bottles, and frozen meals? Touche, and those kinds of jokes certainly have a point. Gold would certainly benefit new parents, you gotta love it when people just give you a card with cash in it. And maybe burning the frankincense could cover up that ever present dirty diaper smell. But myrrh? Come on, Mary and Joseph, this is why you register. All joking aside, though, the curiosity of the wise men gave them such open hearts that they saw something in Jesus that more cynical people would find absurd. They saw a potential for a world leader, someone who had nothing and would need a lot of help in order to guide all people toward love and peace, hence gifts. And, despite the optimism they had by virtue of their curiosity, they were also realistic enough to know that a poor child who would rule the world would live a short and tragic life, hence the sobering presence of embalming oil, or myrrh. Curiosity isn’t just about innocence, it can also give you some serious depth.
And even though the childlike curiosity of the Magi made them vulnerable to Herod’s tricks, it also allowed them to be open enough for God to reach them. The Divine warns them in a dream not to report back to Herod with Jesus’ whereabouts, and more logic-rooted people would ignore those dreams and proceed with the original plan. But to the Magi, a dream warning makes perfect sense. If following a star got them here, then a dream can surely get them back home. So, a childlike faith may leave our defenses down, and people will try to take major advantage. But the Holy will also use that same virtue for our protection. And we can have tender, open hearts while still defying tyrannical leaders and committing civil disobedience. This story teaches us that we can have both love and justice, and it shows us how we get there.
How different would our world be if we harnessed some of that curiosity the Magi modeled, and used it? If we were grown adults and experts in our fields, but still inquisitive enough to follow stars and wonder what else is out there? How much would our neighbors benefit if we questioned the status quo, and started asking how we could help one another? What would happen if we started sharing our gold?
I’m closing this sermon by sharing these words by Cameron Bellm, a prayer for Epiphany:
I wonder sometimes
If one of the stars that lit Abraham’s night
Was the one that led the Magi to Jesus.
A dark canvas speckled by the most generous brush–
What an improbable promise to an old man.
But our God has never been daunted by the unlikely, the impossible.
What a sight for the Magi, too.
A baby resting on hay, his cries mingled with braying and bleating.
I like to think they heard in those everyday sounds a holy chorus,
Saw in that noisy tableau a Creator serenaded by his Creation,
All of it embodied, enfleshed–
All of it good.
And when we’ve left our gifts for this implausible King,
May we, like the Magi, go home another way–
Having encountered the Holy,
May we protect it, guard it,
Trail its light behind us wherever we go.
A sacred arc transposed from heaven to earth,
May we ourselves become the star,
Leading the way to Emmanuel.
Amen.
*Hymn We Three Kings #254, v 1, 2, 5
Offering
Offertory
*Doxology #94
*Prayer of dedication
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Holy God:
All our lives we have been searching for you, seeking you, wanting to know who you are, what you want, what you are about. In moments we would never share, we have even entertained deep doubts. Many times, we’ve been confused--one person says one thing and another person says another. One passage of scripture seems one way and another passage seems so different.
It’s easy to feel lost. It’s easy to give up our search. It’s easy to let the darkness of this world encompass us. It’s easy to get distracted by the many diversions of this world, the multitude of competing interests that keep our minds and eyes occupied and divert us from keeping our eyes on you.
Long ago, those who lived in darkness saw a great light. The people around the Galilee saw the face of God in the face of Jesus. Pagan astrologers from the east were rewarded in their search for you when they saw the glory of God in the face of the Christ child.
So help us, holy God, to keep looking for you. Help us to see Jesus. Help us to know you heart and to have your heart as we encounter him. Help us to keep our gaze fixed on him, to let nothing distract us from following the light we have seen in him. Help us to share the light of Christ in a world full of folks like the Magi from the east--good people who are looking for you in all kinds of ways and places and need just a little help figuring out that Jesus Christ is the one they are looking for.
Merciful God, heal the sick, comfort those in difficulty, draw the lost to yourself. May your light shine in every dark corner of our hearts and our world.
Amen.
Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.
The Lord’s Supper
*Hymn The First Noel #245, v 1, 2, 5
Benediction
Postlude
Staff
Natalie Bowerman Pastor
Betsy Lehmann Music Director
Joe White Custodian
Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant
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