January 10, 2010

"The Three Wise Women"

Proverbs 1:20-33

Luke, chapters 1& 2

The traditional end of the Christmas season falls on January 6, the celebration of Epiphany. The twelve days of Christmas come to a close. The daylight time lengthens. We announce once more that the light of God shines upon all the nations.

It seems to me this year the merchants—and maybe most people—have been especially ready to move on after Christmas. The Valentine’s Day displays are already up in the stores. And, of course, here in Iowa City most were celebrating the Orange Bowl victory rather than Epiphany on Wednesday.

So here at Congregational UCC, we’ve extended our Christmas celebrations and this year we mark Epiphany today. Before we get everything packed away, before we close those opening chapters of Matthew and Luke for another year, we pause for a few moments and consider the light that has come into the world.

On Epiphany, we traditionally read the story in Matthew’s gospel of the “three wise men” coming from the east in search of the infant Jesus. It’s a wonderful story—and our pageants wouldn’t be the same without children dressed sumptuously in old drapes, wearing crowns of foil, and carrying their gift-box treasures down the aisle.

This morning, however, I want to look elsewhere for stories of epiphany, the showing forth of God in Jesus Christ.  Through the year ahead we will often be reading from the gospel of Luke. And to get us started this morning, I want to listen to the three wise women whose stories Luke tells.

The women are Elizabeth, Mary, and Anna.

These three women appear in the first two chapters of Luke. They show more power than the women in the rest of the Gospel. These opening chapters are the only part of Luke in which women speak without being corrected.[i] In fact, as we noticed a few weeks ago as we talked about Mary’s story in the adult education class, Mary even gets away with questioning an angel—an act that usually results in a rather unpleasant reprimand. The stories of these women are caught up in the story of the birth of Jesus. They each experience an “epiphany,” a revelation of God.

Let us listen and watch as they speak and act.

In the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, we hear about Elizabeth, a “kinswoman”of Mary. Elizabeth is pregnant when she encounters Mary who is visiting from out of town. Elizabeth's child will later be known as John the Baptizer.

Do you remember the story?

“In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry: ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?’”

The novelist Chaim Potok, the Jewish novelist, often quotes a Jewish proverb: “All beginnings are difficult.”

All beginnings are difficult. Just ask the people who tried to fly before the Wright brothers came along. You’ve probably seen some of those old newsreel films of those early experiments in flight: people in odd machines careening off of cliffs, jumping off of towers, and always crashing to the ground.

Elizabeth was there at the difficult beginning when Mary ran to her with the not-so-good news that she was pregnant. The words probably fell to the floor with a loud thud. Perhaps in her mind’s eye Elizabeth saw one of those early flying machines explode in flames. This wasn’t news that would fly.

Beginnings are difficult.

The start of a new life.

The start of a new job.

The start of a new year.

How you respond to a difficult situation, to a problem, is probably more important than what the problem is.

By definition, we always get the problems that we can’t handle. Anything else is not a problem. And acknowledging your anxiety about a situation goes a long way toward reducing its difficulty.

Luke doesn’t come right out and say it, but Elizabeth is a prophet. When she speaks, Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. She makes the first confession of Jesus as the Christ in her question: “Why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?”

In a difficult situation, Elizabeth speaks words of acceptance rather than judgment. She speaks words of love rather than condemnation. She wisely speaks in a way that focuses on what God is doing and reminds us that even difficult situations, especially difficult situations, can be occasions to discover God in our lives.  Perhaps by listening to the wisdom of Elizabeth we can find the strength to face problems and see God's creative solutions. Elizabeth shows the wisdom that affirms and finds new possibilities.

Just before that encounter between Elizabeth and Mary, Luke tells of Mary's encounter with an angel, a messenger of God.

Do you remember the story?

“In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

“The angel said to her, ‘Don’t be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Sovereign God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’

“Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’

“The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you and  the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the  child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Son of God.’

“. . . Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.”

Luke doesn't give Mary a lot of lines in the Christmas pageant.  Oh, there’s the great song she sings: “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” This song borrows heavily from the song another wise woman, Hannah, sang around the time of the birth of her son, Samuel, centuries before. You can find that in the Old Testament book of I Samuel. But that’s a different story.

Mary says to the angel Gabriel: “Here I am.” She speaks words of wisdom: “Let it be.”

Mary takes for herself an honorary title applied to “a few good men” of Israelite history—Moses, Abraham, David—and to one good woman—Hannah, again. Mary calls herself the “servant of God.” And when she sings, “God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God's servant . . . God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly . . .”she sings not as a victim but as one who proclaims with a tough authority the power of God that can set all people free.

But most of the time Mary is silent.

We don’t hear her complaining about having to leave home so near to Christmas and travel the long way to Bethlehem on a donkey. We don’t hear her complaining to Joseph because he wouldn’t phone ahead and now there’s no room at the Holiday Inn.  We don’t hear the groans of childbirth, the pains of labor.

Angels and shepherds come and go. Mary remains silent, treasuring what she has heard, pondering the events in her heart.

Henri Nowen said that the “initial reaction of someone who has a really personal encounter with Jesus is not to start shouting it from the roof tops but to dwell secretly in the presence of God.”[ii]

Mary speaks wisely about God’s power. She also shows the wisdom of silence, giving slow and quiet consideration to the ways of God with humankind.

In chapter two of Luke, after the birth in Bethlehem, after the shepherds  have come and gone, Luke brings us with Mary and Joseph to the  temple in Jerusalem. There we meet the third wise woman.

Do you remember the story?

“When the time came. . . Joseph and Mary brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to God. . . .There was . . . a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty‑four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

A lot of older people are never surprised. “I've seen it all,” they’ll tell you. And maybe they have.

Maybe they’ve seen poverty in the depression and plenty in the post‑war fifties and sixties. Maybe they’ve seen amazing progress in technology. Maybe they’ve seen enough births and enough deaths for a couple of lifetimes. And maybe they’ve seen enough of their own kids with long hair and love beads and bell bottoms to not be surprised when their granddaughter shows up in bell bottoms once more or when their grandson gets his ear—or nose—pierced.

There’s something about the way that older people can be so unflappable that’s kind of neat. They're more interested—it would seem—in loving than in judging. Maybe age just does that.

But sometimes it can be a little disturbing—as if maybe they just don’t care anymore. As if the fear of aging is catching up with them: the fear of poverty again, the fear of loneliness, the fear of ending up in a nursing home with all the other sad people, the fear that when visitors would leave they would shake their heads and say: “It's too bad, isn’t it?”

The fear—of dying.

And with all that fear seems to come a desire to never be surprised again.

Anna was of “great age”—that’s a nice way to put it, isn’t it. Luke goes on to add she was 84. And maybe she was getting a little, well, odd at so great an age. Her children and her friends thought she was taking this religious stuff a little too far. Between the Bible studies and the prayer groups and church dinners she never seemed to leave the temple. It was too bad.

But Anna had a special kind of wisdom—the wisdom that was still able to be surprised. Still able to look at a sunrise and marvel at the beauty of it all. Still able—after 84 years—to look at a child and see something special, something new, something surprising.

And being a prophet, she couldn’t keep it to herself. Anna was different from Mary. She had to speak to others about what she saw.

Here in this infant was an Epiphany—a revelation—to Anna, and to all who looked for redemption. Here was a new light in which to look at past failures and to see new possibilities.

Here in Anna’s arms was the one who would one day say: “Seek and you will find,” not adding, because it really didn't need to be added, that what you find when you seek the holy, when you seek the living God, will always be a surprise—at any age. Anna had the wisdom that could be surprised, astonished by what God is doing in the world.

We live in the age of information. The Internet put all sorts of data at our fingertips. Television brings us news 24 hours a day.

Information is abundant.

There is a lot of knowledge.

Wisdom is much harder to come by.

The three wise women can still speak to our hearts and show us what is important:

the wisdom that affirms and sees new opportunities,

the wisdom that listens as well as speaks,

the wisdom that can still be surprised by what God is doing.