The Gifts of the Magi

A Sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III

St. Mark's Presbyterian Church

Epiphany Sunday, Jan. 6, 2006

 This is Epiphany Sunday, the feast day when the church celebrates the coming of the wise men to offer their gifts to the Christ Child. Besides Christmas and Easter, no other feast day in the liturgical year has claimed such prominence in the church, as has Epiphany.  What is it about Matthew's story of the Magi that has so captured the imagination of the church in a way that the shepherds in Luke's Gospel have not? What is the point of this remarkable story of the coming of the wise men from the East?  For century upon century the preachers and teachers of the church have focused their attention on the gifts brought by the magi. Early interpreters suggested that the gold offered to Christ was symbolic of what one did in ancient times to offer tribute at the reign of a new King.  And frankincense, the aromatic incense used in sacred rituals was offered to the Christ child according to tradition as a token of his being the Son of God. And finally the Magi's offering of myrrh, often used to prepare a body for burial, was a foretelling of the destiny of the Christ child as the suffering servant who would be crucified and die.  Over time, the church began to reinterpret the gifts of the magi as symbolic of the acts of faith and devotion that could be offered by ordinary people in adoration of the Christ child. Gold came to symbolize the virtue of the faithful, frankincense became acts piety and prayer, and myrrh symbolized sacrifice. Let's accept this time honored approach and ask ourselves what are the gifts that we are prepared to bring to the Christ child on this Epiphany Sunday and in the midst of a new mission focus on the environment in the year ahead.

As the wise men brought frankincense to the Christ child, what spiritual gift of prayer and devotion would we bring on this Epiphany and in the New Year? If we would like the magi bring frankincense to the Christ child what spiritual gift can we bring? There are many spiritual disciplines that we could adopt in the New Year that might enhance our relationship to God. But let me suggest just one. Voluntary simplicity. What do the words  voluntary simplicity mean to you?  Of all the spiritual disciplines we could choose, I am holding up voluntary simplicity as the gift of frankincense that we are called to bring to the Christ child.  I suppose that a sermon could be rightly preached  on the reality of the growing disparity in our world between the have's and the have nots.  I would agree with those who believe that there is no way for the planet to sustain the level of consumption that is carried among people in the 1^st world nations. I wholeheartedly agree as well with the suggestion that the resolution of this great inequity will inevitably mean that 1^st world people will have to consume less , voluntarily or involuntarily. I suppose I could have preached on the moral and physical necessity of this downsizing but I didn't want to do that this morning. This sermon is an appeal not to guilt or what you should do but rather to ask you to look within and discern for yourself what you want to do. What might you want to do voluntarily to simplify your life? What voluntary simplicity means for me is the possibility of regaining control of my life. It means becoming a subject of my life rather than an object pummeled by our consumer media culture. Our consumer culture gives us literally millions and millions of messages over a lifetime suggesting to us that salvation, fulfillment, happiness is to be found in the acquisition of this or that product. To embrace voluntary simplicity is to stop being an object trapped within our own economic circumstances and to become again a subject voluntarily charting a course step by step  toward what we would define as true happiness and sufficiency. 

I believe there is a deep hunger and thirst in our culture for something that  cannot be bought or sold. There are people looking for a quality of life that is not found  when we acquire more but can be discovered when we are able to relinquish some of the things with which our lives have become encumbered. What would the simple life look like if we were to set out in search of it?  The simple life would look differently with each person because every human life is unique. But today there is a widespread movement of people inside religious traditions and people outside of those traditions  who would probably not recognize themselves as a movement. What they have in common is that they are seeking a deeper integration between the outward manifestations of their existence and the inward life. They want to experience a greater harmony between the values  they hold dear and the ways in which their life is acted out in the world. They have come to the point where they have recognized that the consumer frenzy of modern culture holds out a false promise of happiness and fulfillment. And they have turned their lives in a different direction. It is not so much a "back to the land" movement as it was among "hippie" types in the 60's and 70's. Reconnecting to the natural world is still the heart of this movement. But this movement is made up of city people, professional people, and people all along the economic spectrum who are standing up in the midst of the circumstances in which they live in now and trying to slowly, ever so gradually simplify their lives. It is slow work, it rarely happens overnight. With trial and error people are consciously taking control of their lives rearranging the architecture of their day to day existence, achieving a partial restraint in some directions in order to achieve, discover a greater abundance in others. One person described her journey this way: striving to become "outwardly simpler and inwardly more rich".

As the wise men brought gold to the Christ child, what virtue would we bring to honor the baby Jesus? If you were to do a moral inventory of your life, what virtue would you think would be most in need of development? If we were to think for a moment about our collective reality as a society, a culture: how would you answer that question. What virtue is our society most in need of? I think we could make a compelling case that in this historical moment, environmental sustainability is the most important virtue that we could develop. You know it used to be that the American economy was held up as the model for the world, that if people would imitate our economic system and work hard then they could have all the material benefits and prosperity that we enjoy. But now we know how utterly naïve that was. The world cannot afford another nation like the US. What is it? 10 percent of the people of the world in the US use something like 40 percent of the world’s resources. The global environment cannot afford another America. Anywhere in the world. What we have to do is to achieve a new vision of prosperity that is environmentally sustainable. I encourage all of you to pick up a copy of the environmental action steps that are available in the sermon rack in the narthex. Go over that list and decide on one or two things that you can do to reduce your carbon foot print. Go for the low hanging fruit. Go for the ones that are easily do-able for you. It might be turning off lights, buying recycled products. Or it could be using compact fluorescent bulbs that last 10 times as long as regular incandescent bulbs and use ¼ of the energy. It could be buying several new St. Mark’s tote bags so that when you bring home your groceries you are not using paper or plastic. On Earth Day, April 22 we are planning a workshop here at St. Mark’s in which St Mark’s will present to other congregations our experience of doing an environmental audit on our institution. One of the goals of this workshop will be to equip all of us to do an environmental audit of our own households. Please consider doing an audit on your home. Any one of these actions for environmental sustainability could be a way for us to bring to the Christ child a golden gift of virtue.

The wise men offered the gift of myrrh to the Christ who would grow up to be the Suffering Servant whose compassionate heart embraced a broken and hurting world.  As Christians today we honor the Christ child by embracing a sacrificial way of life that is lived not just for ourselves but for others.  What sacrificial gift can we bring the Christ child?  This is a tough one. Americans make convenience and comfort the true god of our lives. So talking about sacrifice is a sensitive subject. When the nation went to war in ww2, countless people, not just the soldiers themselves but the civilians remaining at home enthusiastically embraced innumerable sacrifices for the war effort. This made it all the more striking to many US citizens that when the Bush administration started the wars against terrorism with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the American people were not asked to make sacrifices for the war effort. Rather we were told to do our part and go shopping. Well let’s be perfectly clear, the changes that are being called for to address the environmental crisis of our planet will require sacrifices of us. What should those sacrifices be? For example, here’s a very small sacrifice: turning down the thermostat to do with less heat in the house during winter or with less cool in the summer. You see it’s easy for Lisa to say to me in the summer, let’s cut back on the cooling as it is easy for me to say to her in the winter, let’s cut back on the heat. One person’s sacrifice is different than another’s. But in our household we are not yet talking about the sacrifice that some of you have made to go from two cars to one. We are being told more and more by the climate experts that the next 7 years are critical for turning around the global situation on climate change. Much of this will have to be done by industry and at the level of policy. But a significant part remains to us in changing our personal life styles. Knowing that 80% of our energy use has to do with housing and transportation: What sacrifice are we prepared to make?  How do we understand sacrifice? Do we think of it primarily in terms of money or do we think of it as a change in habit? Either way I am not going to tell you what sacrifice you need to make. That is for you to decide. But we will not get to where we need to be without sacrifices. And we will not make the sacrifices we need to make unless we remember the very meaning of the word sacrifice: which is holy gift.  Sacrifice is a holy gift. Sacrifice is a positive gift to contribute to the healing of our planet. Long ago, three wise ones brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to a Child born in a manger.   May their wisdom guide us as we bring our gifts of virtue and prayer and sacrifice to the Christ child born anew in our world, the Christ Child who is God with us.