The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Eve of Epiphany
The 171st Anniversary of the Founding of the Parish
January 5, 2025
In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.
Have you travelled any for the holidays? Have you visited friends or family? Or maybe they’ve come to visit you. Or maybe you just went somewhere special, somewhere different, in these quiet days between Christmas and the new year.
So many people were travelling this Christmas that almost half the folks at our Christmas services were visitors! It was a great chance to welcome people, to be together, and to celebrate the birth of Jesus—God’s breaking into the world with hope and joy and peace.
When I was a child we’d travel every Christmas eve to visit my great grandmother. It wasn’t a long drive, but we’d go in the evening, when it was dark. We knew what we’d find there—a turkey, some dressing, casseroles, a twelve-layer chocolate cake, oyster stew with oysters from a can, and dozens of cousins and family members to see.
We’d gather around the space aged aluminum Christmas tree with lights reflected in its boughs and exchange small gifts—flashlights, small toys, or other tokens of gift giving—along with envelopes of cash from my great grandmother. Five dollars for great grandchildren, twenty for grandchildren, and fifty for children. There were denominations for each generation. There was a system.
We knew what to expect when we travelled to my great grandmother’s. It was predictable, expected, comforting. It was a wonderful night.
And when we left we’d scan the night sky for anything that looked like it might be the red nose of a reindeer headed towards our town. Any moving light was suspect. And we’d watch until we fell asleep and had to be carried inside to await the coming of Christmas morning.
We knew what to expect. We knew why we were traveling. We knew what we’d meet when we got to my great grandmother’s house.
We hear today about a different kind of journey—the one made by the three kings, following a star. What were the three kings looking for?
What a time they must have had of it! They weren’t certain of where they were going, of what they would find. They had no idea of what was in store. But they knew that something important was happening—and they wanted to be there. They wanted to know more.
They sought out the temporal authorities, the rulers of the area, to ask them about the birth of a king. And they journeyed onward. And they found, in the most unlikely place, Jesus, the King of kings. They found that God had broken into the world.
Did they understand what they were seeing? Did they know what it would mean for their own lives? For the lives of those around them?
T. S. Eliot writes about their journey. It’s never a bad idea to read Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi” on Epiphany, so bear with me as we listen to this journey, not unlike our own:
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
I should be glad of another death.
They made the hard journey, not knowing what to expect. But what they found changed the world. What they found was the death, the ending, of everything that they thought was important. Everything that told them how the world worked. Everything was new.
A birth and also a death.
As sure as the infant Jesus is born, as sure as Jesus the messiah is executed and dies, as sure as the savior rises, everything is changed.
Love conquers death. Hope conquers despair. Power is for the meek, not the violent. Respect conquers oppression. Life and love and hope reign. For in this birth, and in this death, God has redeemed and restored all things.
That’s what the three kings found at the crib. That’s what we find at this altar.
And even when the journey is hard, even when we are tired, the camels refractory, when it feels like all the old things are falling down around us, all that is dying is what we thought we knew. For life will prevail. Love will reign. And God will gather all things to God’s own self.
I should be glad of another death, the king says.
If you are tired on the journey, know that the three kings journey with you in this space that Wystan Auden calls “for the time being.” Know that Jesus walks with you. Know that all has been and is being redeemed.
Because we, like the wise men, have seen Jesus. We now know what to expect. We know what the kingdom of God looks like—and we know that it has come near and is coming.
So hold on. Do not be afraid. Hold on to hope. Love has conquered even death. God will reign.
We’re lucky that we know what to expect. We know how the journey ends.
Scripture doesn’t tell us more about the wise men—about what they do once they return home. Eliot’s poem speaks of an uneasiness, living amongst the gods of the old dispensation. A discomfort—perhaps even a hope—in knowing what they know among a world that has not yet come to know, has not yet come to believe, in the values of the kingdom of God.
What did they do? Did they tell the good news they’d received?
And I’d ask us the same question, in our journey. In this 171st year of the foundation of Christ Church Parish, how will we use that knowledge? How will we proclaim what the wise men have seen? How will we use what we know, that the kingdom of God has come near and will come?
Be not afraid. Hold onto hope. And let’s ask ourselves this year, this 2025, how will we tell what the wise men have seen? How will we show people Jesus?