Direction and Worship

The Significance of Direction and Worship in the Epiphany

Fr Richard Healey reflects on the Epiphany, focusing on the journey of the Magi and the theme of direction in both a geographical and spiritual sense. RH contrasts the Magi’s earnest quest to worship the newborn Jesus with the indifference of Jerusalem’s religious leaders. He highlights how the Magi, despite being outsiders, exemplify true worship and a genuine response to God’s call. RH invites us to reflect on our own openness to God’s presence and challenges us to embrace worship and humility in our spiritual journeys.

00:00:00 So it’s going to be another hot day. So maybe it would be a good idea to go for a drive somewhere. And I thought, you know, maybe I’ll go up and visit one of my friends. So if I’m going up to visit somebody, which direction am I going? So if I was going up to the Blue Mountains, what I say, I’m just kind of giving it away, haven’t I? So it could either mean we’re going up in elevation or heading north. So if I’m visiting my parents on the south coast, which way am I going? Yes. But like if I’m going up to go north, if I’m going to the south coast, which direction do I go down? So that’s our convention. And we’ve had that for many, many centuries. But it wasn’t the way in the ancient world, for them, the most important direction was where the sun came from. So they didn’t orient themselves north and south. They oriented themselves east and west. So to go up meant you’re going east.

00:01:04 To go down or back meant you were going west. If you were going to the right, you were going south, and to the left you’re going to the north. Directions matter for one, it helps us to not get lost, but it also orients us, you know, the whole sense of the anticipation of the East, the the longing for the sun, that desire that is there. And so that these Weird Magi McGaughey come from the East is very significant for the celebration of the epiphany, because what we get in this story is a really carefully packed story that Matthew has very carefully pondered and brought in all kinds of different images that most of the time we will miss. I mean, the yeast is the place where the sun comes from, but it’s also a place of some darkness, a place of awful memories. Because the raiders had come from the east when the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed 600 years before the time of Jesus, all of the people that from the East had been the people that had dominated and conquered them.

00:02:25 When they returned from exile, they looked to the east to see the people returning, but to come back from from the east to the west to return back to the promised land. And so the yeast was. There was mixed feelings, mixed emotions about the things that came from the East. But here we are told that we’re in Jerusalem, and it’s the first time in the Gospel of Matthew that we are given that marker of Jerusalem, which is interesting because we’ve had all the descriptions about Bethlehem until this point in chapter one, but this is the first time that we are given by Matthew this word Jerusalem. And whenever Matthew talks about Jerusalem, almost certainly within a sentence or two, he will talk about the scribes and the Pharisees. So he bundles all of these ideas together. And it’s all this sign of what could have been, you know, Jerusalem was meant to be this great witness, this great sign of what God could do, of what the people could respond to, the way that they will be brought into this covenant faithfulness with God.

00:03:33 But Jerusalem, the scribes, the Pharisees, simply represented everything that had gone wrong with the faith, wrong with religion, wrong with that response to God. And so when some people came to offer worship to the newborn king, it wasn’t going to be people from Jerusalem. It wasn’t going to be the scribes and Pharisees and certainly wasn’t going to be King Herod. King Herod was a weird kind of person. He’d been made the governor of the region some 40, 47 years before, well before the BC. Anyway, we’re not quite sure when these events exactly kind of happened. The dating gets a bit muddled. And so then he was made the the local king. Money might have exchanged hands. There might have been certain favors that were offered. Herod was a very shrewd operator. And so he’d been king for almost 40 years by this point, and he’d certainly at times been very generous to the people. He’d sold some of his gold to buy corn during a period of famine about 20 years before, but he certainly knew how to live the good life.

00:04:47 And often history is marked him as one of the richest people that has ever lived in the whole of history, and had this whole series of different palaces that he was able to move, you know, spend one month in this palace and move to the next palace. He was also very cruel, and particularly as he was getting older, very vindictive. He was known to kill both his mother, his wife, some of his sons. In fact, there was a saying that was said about him that it was better to be one of his pigs than one of his sons, which works better in Greek than it does in English, because the word for pig is horse, and the word for son is worse. So almost exactly the same kind of word. So Herod certainly wouldn’t have been one of the people to go and to bear witness to, to offer his worship to the newborn king. So who do we turn to? None of the people at the time. We look to the strange direction we look up, but we look to the east and we see these magazines.

00:05:51 Now, suddenly there were more than likely more than three for this great disturbance that happens within Jerusalem. For this, for the people to be, you know, kind of perturbed. The the Greek has the sense of being so kind of shaken by the arrival of this retinue that that arrive. And there’s no mention of them wearing crowns or being kings or coming in on camels. All of that we we get from our first reading today from the book of Isaiah. But Matthew wants us to to understand what is actually happening. And so when we’re told that the scribes and the Pharisees, you know, a pondering, where would the Messiah come from? Of course they quote from the prophet Micah chapter five, verse two, almost he quote from you, because what you actually get is a quote that mixes together that reference Prints from Micah chapter five. But Matthew also grabs another line from the second book of Samuel, chapter five. So the final line of the reading today you get something similar in the fourth verse of chapter five of the prophet Micah, but is actually a direct quote from the second verse of two Samuel chapter five, which is a reference about when King David had just ascended to his throne soul, who had been the kind of pretend king, the people that the king that the people wanted because he was tall.

00:07:25 And everyone knows that the tall people are the ones you really want to be running things, you know, they’re the ones that should be in charge of everything until they’re not. Until someone like Saul, who was both tall and good looking but isn’t the warrior that the people really need. And so this little runt of a kid, David, comes and ascends to the throne. You know, the Bible certainly may be sexist, but it certainly highest as well. It really doesn’t like tall people in the scriptures, and that’s a bit hard to kind of to deal with that. But David becomes this sign of what the Messiah is longing to be. This one, even though he sins, he has this desire to give himself to the Lord. And that’s the invitation that the Magi respond to, that they come, they seek, they long, and when they get to the presence of the Messiah, they not just fall down, but they offer their worship as well. And that’s the invitation for us that even these pagans, these absolute people that are outside the whole system and they have this desire, this openness to see what is happening.

00:08:37 And that’s the invitation for us to see if other people aren’t responding. You know, when Jesus comes into his his victory and makes this triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We’re told that people call out to him and say, hey, make your disciples be quiet because they’re making this ruckus. And Jesus says, look, if my disciples don’t, don’t cry out. Even these stones will begin to cry out. The God will invite us into this worship, and if we won’t respond, then he will find even rocks to do our job. You know, do we want rocks to be the ones that are offering their praise and worship of God? Or will we be the ones that respond? The people in Jerusalem were perturbed and shaken, but they didn’t worship. We’re invited as we come into this feast of the epiphany to offer our worship, to offer our love and a desire for God. It sets us up for the rest of the year that we can be the people that respond to the wonders of God by calling within us this desire and this longing to serve God, to worship him, and to invite others into that same space of worship and surrender to God.