And Then We See | 1/4/26
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When was the last time you sat in utter awe of something, allowing yourself to get lost in the mystery of pondering?
Where in your daily life have you stopped being curious, and how might you invite that sense of "starstruck" wonder back in?
Are there "ancient stories" or long-held beliefs in your life that you are ready to see in a completely new way
In your search for truth, are you willing to be a person who is prepared to see, willing to follow, and open to surprises along the way?
What are the "gray areas" in your thinking right now that might be worthy of further investigation or a really good question?
Transcript:
We are not alone. God is with us now. That is what we celebrate in this season of Epiphany that we start today—that Christ is present and we can experience Christ's presence in our everyday lives. But for me, this season of Epiphany has always come with a little bit of questions. It always seemed a little nebulous to me because there are so many ways and different understandings of what this word "epiphany" means and how we are to catch a glimpse of Christ here and now.
And so, when I have questions or don't know how to feel about something, my go-to is to be in conversation with lots of different people that I respect. And so I did that. I went to several sources this week to see what they had to say about this idea of Epiphany, and Maya Angelou's definition of epiphany really struck me. I invite you to take a listen. She said the word epiphany probably has a million definitions, which is true. She thinks that it's the occurrence when the mind, the body, the heart, and the soul focus together and see a new thing or an old thing in a new way.
By golly, if that isn't our prayer every time that we come to this place for worship, or every time we crack open our Bibles. We pray that the stories that we hear through the ancient words proclaimed or read in our Bibles will speak to us in a new way, that they will become alive for us in a way that we never imagined before. And so here we are this morning, as we hear another tale as old as time—one that has sparked imaginations for centuries of kings from a faraway land. I wonder what we might learn from this scripture again this morning about how we might experience epiphany, the revelation of Christ with us here and now in our world today.
I invite you to hear these words from Matthew in a new way this morning:
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem and Judea during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose, and have come to worship him.” When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written: 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel'".
Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me so that I too may go and worship him.” After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed, and coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Friends, this is the Word of God for us, the people of God. And we say, thanks be to God. Will you pray with me?
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us this morning. Remind us that you are indeed Emmanuel, that Christ is with us and can be revealed to us in a multitude of ways. Speak to us now of this truth, by the power of your spirit. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
It wasn't anything new. I'd seen them a thousand times before: the timeless bursts and pops of color, the loud noise of fireworks in the night sky. It happened to be New Year's Eve, and I wanted to take my children out to that "Sparks in the Park" event at Depot Park. And don't get me wrong, I really do love a good firework show, but they've lost their sparkle of newness for me a really long time ago.
But my little three-year-old was filled with so much wonder. His body was literally shaking with it. You might say that he was just a little starstruck. And as we were looking at the sky, he asked all sorts of questions: "Mom, why does it do that? Mom, where are they?" And then he got right into my face as I'm trying to look at the fireworks, and he goes, "Mom, how do they go like that?"
And as his mind was filled with wonder, and as I was looking at him, I could almost see his mind turning with all of the questions that he maybe didn't have words to put to. And I wondered, where did my curiosity go? When was the last time that I, or any of us, sat in utter awe of something?. When was the last time we got lost in the mystery of pondering?. When was the last time we gave ourselves just a moment to sit in the wonder of experiencing something new and get caught up in the curiosity?.
Now, those Magi from the east, those were a group of people who knew what it meant to be caught up in curiosity. They've been given lots of names over the years: Magi, wise men, kings, noblemen, astronomers. But really, they were the scholars of the land in that time. They spent their time satisfying all of their curiosities with knowledge, learning everything they could about the problem or the subject at hand. And at this moment in time, the newest mystery that they were piecing together was the night sky, and how the stars might tell them something about the world around them.
Night after night, these groups of curious scholars would lift their eyes to the sky and see the sparkles of light that dotted the otherwise vacant expanse. "Why do they do that? Where are they? How is it that they shine like that?" I wonder if these were some of the questions that they asked one another as they looked up to the heavens. Night after night, these same stars shone over the eastern sky until one day a new star appeared. Maybe it was a big, bright, and brilliant star, like the one that is painted here. Or maybe it was just a new, ordinary-looking star that showed up in the east or western part of the sky. "Where did this one come from?" I wonder if they asked. "What might this mean for us?"
They asked these questions, and it sent them on a journey through history. Our scripture story says that these curious scholars were from the East. Some historians have hypothesized that they were scholars from Persia, which was the land where the ancient Israelites landed a long time ago when they were scattered in exile. During that time, when the Assyrian empire was invading the land of Israel and destroying their government, the Hebrew prophets were telling stories about a baby that would be born to rule over the Jews and inaugurate a time of peace and prosperity—a newborn king that would come from the line of David.
Maybe you remember hearing some of these prophecies during the season of Advent. Maybe these curious scholars found old accounts of these prophecies in their land and then decided to go explore for themselves. So they loaded their camels with all of the appropriate supplies needed for a good road trip, and they loaded gifts fit for a newborn king and set out in search of answers to their questions. They set out in search of a revelation that would help them piece together the story puzzle in the heavens.
This story of the curious scholars invites us to think about this idea of Epiphany, not as something that just happens out of thin air or on a whim, but something that happens as a long journey that is open to us as we begin to be curious about the world around us in our everyday lives. In Jim Harnish’s book, "Everyday Epiphanies," he says it this way: "Epiphany happens for people who are prepared to see, willing to follow, and open to the surprises along the way.” Their journey toward revelation, or toward seeing something old in a new way, begins with the willingness to ask questions, just as we imagined the curious scholars asked of the stars and the sky, or of the traditions in the time that they were living.
This curiosity and inquisitiveness are the foundation of a nonprofit organization called Lead by Learning at Northeastern University in California. It's a program that was designed to help teachers, district leaders, and other educators build programs for public schools that provide equitable outcomes for all students from a multitude of backgrounds and needs. Lead by Learning is now led by Jennifer Ahn, who started with the organization quite a while ago as a facilitator for a special process that they called "collaborative inquiry.” During this process, they got together teachers, principals, and other district leaders, everyone in one room. They sat them down and then reminded them of the mechanics of what a good question looks like—what a good and curious question might hold.
And then they invited them to practice asking one another questions. If you were a teacher, could you imagine asking your principal or maybe your district superintendent a question in a safe place? Questions like, "How would you define rigor?" and "How do you think your teachers define that?" Through this process of asking questions of one another, they built an environment where it was okay from the ground up to ask good questions. Because of this, it led them on a journey toward improving educational equity in their schools for all of their students, created by the culture of asking questions where all questions are welcomed and valued. Through this question-oriented conversation, Lead by Learning right now is actively impacting over 400,000 students across California and the surrounding areas.
Jennifer says this about the value and power of good questions: "In my experience, a good question reveals itself when one deeply listens and notices something unsaid or said between the lines, pinpointing a gray area in our thinking that is worthy of further investigation. When we create the conditions for people to ask one another good questions, we create space for collective problem solving and new thinking.”
Friends, what if we lived in a world where good questions were welcomed and celebrated, especially in the life of faith?. What would it look like in a world where we can all come to a common table and work toward the collective good by simply listening to someone else's answers to a question that you might have a different answer to? This is the space where Christ is revealed, where epiphany exists. That shared space between the question and the answer is where new insight can be cultivated. And I think that this is why Matthew begins his gospel account of the Good News—this story of revelation for all people in Christ—with curious scholars who ask every question under the sun.
Because in God's story, curiosity and questions are a gift. They present an opportunity to grow and to learn and to flourish and discover something new in what was once old. The very first words spoken in this gospel were not spoken by an angel announcing the good news. It wasn't even spoken by Jesus himself, proclaiming that he was the fulfillment of the good news. It was a question spoken from the lips of a foreign scholar.
So these scholars went to the most logical place for a newborn king to be born—to the palace. And they asked King Herod a question: "Where? Where might we find this newborn king of the Jews?" At that moment, these curious scholars didn't know that Herod might not have been the best choice to ask that question to. But because they asked a good question and then probably continued asking themselves questions about this encounter with Herod as they went on their way, they discerned that the leader's words and empty promises would not and did not match his actions.
And so they went on their way, finding the revelation of good news not in a palace, not in the seat of government, or with the powerful rich, but instead in a humble house to a humble woman. Oh, the questions that they must have had as they knelt before the Prince of Peace, as they worshiped him, as they offered their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, as they readied, then for their journey home by a different road.
Friends, curiosity, and questions—these are the gateway to experiencing epiphanies in our everyday lives, because they give us room to wonder, room to grow, to learn, and to flourish by the light of Christ. Asking good questions of the world around us gives us an opportunity to discern for ourselves what is good news, what is indeed the revelation of Christ with us, and what is not good news at all. The story of these curious scholars beckons us to ask the hard questions of our everyday lives. Their story calls us to inquire of what we see in our community, what we hear on the news, and what we feel is true in the very depths of our being. They beg us to follow these questions until the very end of the journey, and to discern along the way what good news is the revelation of Christ right here and right now for us.
Because if we can learn anything from those curious scholars, if they've taught us anything at all, it's that the Holy One will show up, and he just might show up where you least expect him to. And that is a gift. Thanks be to God. Amen.
