RESOUNDING JOY
A Sermon for the Sunday before the Feast of the Epiphany

Oh, star of wonder, star of might, star of royal beauty bright!

Westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light!

Happy New Year…and Merry Christmas! The short Christmas season is nearly over. It’s just twelve days, from the Feast of the Incarnation, December 25 th to the Feast of the Epiphany on Wednesday, January 6 th. Today, on the tenth day of Christmas, the last Sunday before the season of Epiphany begins, we hear the end of that Nativity story. Since we’re not singing “We Three Kings” this morning, I thought we might at least hear the refrain. It’s the first phrase of that refrain – “Star of Wonder” – I want to consider with you this morning. The title of another carol – “I Wonder as I Wander” – also makes me think about those Wise Ones, wandering on a journey of wonder that is beyond their wildest imaginations. How about you? Have you ever seen a star of wonder? Have you taken any journeys of wonder lately?

When I consider my childhood times of Christmas wonder, I remember a special journey my family used to make. The Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival (go to www.boarsheadfestival.com) may be the world’s oldest continuing festival of the Christmas season. Originating at Queen’s College, Oxford, England in 1340, it has been offered at Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati, Ohio, my childhood church, since 1940. This year, the Boar’s Head Festival celebrates seventy continuous years, with two performances this very afternoon. Today more than two hundred children, women and men will sing, dance and process in brilliant costumes or continue to work quietly behind the scenes. It all begins with a small child carrying an even smaller taper of light into the darkened cathedral. Then a trumpet sounds and wonderful pageantry unfolds, complete with lords-a-leaping, ladies and those Kings, whose “splendor,” we are told, “is dimmed by the (Christ) child’s radiance. They humble themselves in awe and kneel reverently.” Oh, star of wonder, journey of wonder, indeed!

Yes, the Boar’s Head extravaganza captured my childhood’s imaginative religious wonder. Even now, fifty years later, I can close my eyes and hear the music, see the colors and, terrifying as it was, gaze at that big, old, ugly pig’s head, which we are assured is “roasted and garnished, but not eaten.” Wonderful as it all was and still must be, I wonder something different these days. All that Christmas pomp and pageantry hides the plain truth: those who seek Christ, those who journey in darkness looking for light are, more often than not, not the ones all dressed up with some place to go. So many times it is not the well-dressed insiders, those who truly belong somewhere, but the outsiders, those on the margins – like those Gentile, non-Jewish Magi. So many people seek Jesus from the outside, looking in, because there is no room for them at any inn.

Those three kings of my childhood, wonderfully costumed, may be something to behold, but now, I wonder: would I invite a real deal Wise Guy to my dinner table or ask a not-so-Wise One to spend the night? Former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, once said the Church is the only society that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members. But do we truly believe, when someone comes to our door, that no matter who we think it is, it may be Mary or Joseph, looking for a place to rest? It’s one thing to give folks in need our money during the holidays, but I wonder: are we really ready to welcome them? The prophet names some of them in our first reading: the blind and the lame, the pregnant and the barren, those who come in travail, weeping. How truly consoling are we to those who are desolate?

During All Saints’ rector search, a profile of the parish said you wanted a priest who” was “warm and welcoming.” I do know something about warm and not-so-warm welcomes. Having lived in ten cities during my sixty years, I sometimes feel like I’m always new. I know first hand and in some depth about what we in the church call the ministry of hospitality – welcoming the stranger, the visitor, the guest, people who may never join this or any church. I know that, on some days, I am more willing to welcome them than on others.

I’ve been part of churches that know how to welcome people, and I’ve been part of churches that really don’t know how inhospitable and unwelcoming they sometimes are. Most churches fall somewhere between those extremes. Our resistance to being hospitable and welcoming reminds me of one of my favorite church cartoons during The Decade of Evangelism. (Does anyone remember that?) I t shows a priest and a parishioner, standing outside a church, with a large banner proclaiming “The Decade of Evangelism.” The parishioner, clearly an “insider,” says to the priest, “Why do we need a Decade of Evangelism? Everyone who is supposed to be an Episcopalian already IS one!”

We all have something else to learn about hospitality, about welcoming others and being welcomed, about being both guest and host. What I think today’s story helps us learn is how “welcome” and “wonder” go together. When we truly wonder about someone new, we are curious to learn something of their story – not to gather grapevine gossip, but to make a connection with them, to help them feel at home somewhere, to create a safe place where they can offer their gifts. A wise nun who ran a soup kitchen once wrote, “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love…if you knew their story.” When we truly wonder about someone, we can more easily welcome them, even love them, for who they are.

But, fellow wanderers in wonder, there’s a catch. In the Christian life there’s always some tough, bad news before that wonderful Good News. And the bad news is this: we cannot truly journey toward that star of wonder and be welcomed if we do not open ourselves to a wonderful, welcoming experience. The song we sang before we heard the Good News about the perfect light of Epiphany reminds us that “God gave a star to guide the wise, whose hearts were open to its light…” (Michael Hudson, Songs for the Light, p. 126). Both their hearts – and their minds, I suggest – were open. As Gentiles, they were not bound by Jewish religious tradition or expectation. Unlike the chief priests and scribes, who sat and scrupulously studied their Scriptures, unlike King Herod, whose motive was to wipe out rather than welcome, the Wise Men got up and followed a star, curious to know more, ready to welcome God’s perfect light.

When someone comes to us, just back from a journey toward some kind of star, all lit up with something wonderful, do we try to put out their light? How are we more like religious authorities than fellow pilgrims? A great Danish thinker, Soren Kierkegaard, put it this way: “…we may know the whole of Christianity, yet make no movement. The power that move(s) heaven and earth leaves us completely unmoved….For indeed what an atrocious self-contradiction that the scribes should have the knowledge and yet remain still” (from Meditations, in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, pp. 288-289).

I don;pt know about you, but in my experience, you and I cannot be childlike, we cannot be curious about life, we cannot experience something of the power that still moves heaven and earth and fills us with wonder…we cannot wonder and remain still. You and I cannot do any of these things unless our hearts are open, unless our minds are no longer set in stone. And I have learned that I cannot possibly open my heart and my mind, I cannot possible be curious or welcoming, I cannot possibly be filled with wonder if I do not ask for help to “open up.” I need to ask God to help me be like the child God created me to be. It’s as if another question has been added to the ones we answer each time we renew our Baptismal vows: Will you open your heard and mind, welcoming wisdom from all around you, and let yourself be filled again with childlike wonder? I will, with God’s help.

On Wednesday, the Feast of the Epiphany, Eyleen and I will arrive in Memphis for an end-of-Christmas vacation with our families. Next Sunday, on the Feast of the Baptism of Christ, when you will be baptizing five children in several of the services here, I, along with you, will be sitting in a pew and renewing my baptismal covenant there. That Covenant’s five promises, what we could call the “job description” of Episcopal Christians, is followed by baptisms and ends with prayer. It is that prayer to which I ask you to turn – now, in The Book of Common Prayer, to page 308. Let’s pray this prayer together, and let’s say “us” whenever we see “these” or “them”…

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon (us) your servants the forgiveness of sin and raised (us) to the new life of grace. Sustain (us), O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give (us) an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.

On Christmas Eve I preached about joy. Today I am asking you to add wonder. Joy and wonder. Now, there’s a Christmas gift! In these last few days of Christmas, let us ask God for the childhood gift of Christmas joy and Epiphany wonder.

Amen.

The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
All Saints’ Episcopal Church
Frederick , Maryland
January 3, 2010

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