Sunday, January 4th, 2026
Matthew 2:1-12
Today we are celebrating the feast of the Epiphany. The word epiphany means “to be manifest” or “to appear openly.” In the church, we think of manifestation as a slowly, dawning, new awareness of the depth of the meaning of the incarnation. The kind of thing that takes a lifetime of listening and prayer.
I have written a short article on the meaning of the word “manifest" for the newsletter that went out this week. But this morning I want to focus on this “slow, new awareness” side of the meaning of Epiphany. We’ve got six more Sundays coming to focus on the meaning of Epiphany so settle in. These Sundays will include the story of the Baptism of our Lord all the way through the Transfiguration.
It may be an error, however that we have come to understand the Epiphany to mean something more like a sudden surprise than a gradual dawning of new life. Scholars have been reminding us for decades to consider this other, slower meaning instead of the “wow” understanding of Epiphany. A mystery, slowly revealed.
I used to explain the meaning of the word Epiphany by reminding folks, especially children, of that old TV advertisement for the tomato juice called V8 where people would smack their heads and say, “I could’ve had a V8!” But smacking our foreheads and acting surprised every Sunday in January every year is really missing the point.
There is also way more to this story than camels and multi-colored men in robes along side the donkey and sheep and shepherds in the manger scene. This is the story of the whole world coming together because of the incarnate love of God.
We have just finished 12 days of blessed Christmas and here, at the beginning of Epiphany, we are slammed with the harsh reality of the world and all of it’s double messages. The representative of empire in our story, King Herod, is using his agency to demand privilege: “Tell me where this new fledgling hope-king can be found, so I can show him my, homage.” We know the rest of the story and know that Herod was not speaking truthfully.
The story of God’s revealing in Epiphany contrasts with Herod’s agenda of amassing self-serving power, through secreting. Herod says one thing when he fully intends to do another. Inauthentic and fork-tongued, he would, it seems, be willing to do anything to stay in power. He would be willing to lie. He would be willing to contrive. He would be willing to collude. He would even be willing to kill an innocent child.
So how do we understand the meaning of Epiphany in our reflection on this story from Matthew in which the wise men almost get duped by a power-hungry leader and it seems that the peace of Christmas gets lost in the chaos of evil. How do we respond to the story of the magi?
Well, if you look at that very last part of the Gospel reading, it’s in the dream. The wise men were warned in a dream. Just like Joseph, just like Zechariah, and Jacob and Daniel and Job and even Pilate’s wife. How then can we listen for the messengers of God through our own dreaming, through these mysterious ways of this mysterious God who loved us so much as to send an only son?
The song, When You Wish Upon a Star may seem cheesy to us now. Or it only reminds us of Mickey Mouse and Cinderella’s Castle.
But When You Wish Upon a Star was a very significant song in its time and has remained the theme song for the Magic Kingdom of Disney ever since. This is because of the hope it instilled at that epiphany moment when Cliff Edwards, a now unknown singer, first hit that lovely, light, falsetto B flat at the end.
When You Wish Upon a Star was written in 1938. 1938 was a pivotal year. WWII was on the horizon, the Great Depression had not yet fully lifted its heavy weight on us. The world was in need of hope. (1938 was also the same year God Bless America was revised by Irving Berlin. God Bless America was originally written by Berlin in 1918 during WWI but in 1938 Berlin revised the song in response to this new need for hope.)
And in 1938, Walt Disney was just beginning to turn out his magic. Pinocchio was a story which was only about 50 years old at the time. Pinocchio was also only the second feature length animated film from Disney. (Snow White was the first in 1937.) They needed a hit song to go with the project. It all finally came together in 1940 when the film and song were released.
The beautiful song to accompany lyrics such as:
If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do
Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of
Their secret longing
Like a bolt, out of the blue
Suddenly it comes in view
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true.
So, today, on this Feast of the Epiphany, with stars and wise men in mind, I am reminded of this ageless song which still gives us hope and reminds us of those “out of the blue” magical moments in life when “suddenly” stars “come into view” and all our dreams come true.
When the wise men traversed afar to bring gifts and pay homage to Jesus, we are told they followed a star. They were astrologers - so they would have noticed a star which would lead them West - to Nazareth.
The symbolism of the star in this story is an answer to the belief of the day that the birth of a savior would be accompanied by celestial signs.
We’ve wrapped the story of the Epiphany from Matthew in with the Nativity story from Luke and shoved the celebration of it to a fixed date on January 6th which rarely lands on a Sunday. So some of us have chosen to move this feast to the nearest Sunday out of concern that we’ve lost our awareness of the importance of this story amid the chaos of our celebration of the birth of our Lord and the end of our fiscal and calendar year. Because this story from Matthew is, in some ways, the more important story than Luke’s birth narrative.
Unlike the little drummer boy or even the donkey, these wise men (or seers as they are more appropriately called) were real. They are a symbol of the incarnation coming into all of the world, of the nations coming together under one King. Other religious leaders from the near east who also believed in and were waiting for a messiah came to see and saw and believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the One sent from God to save the whole world.
This story took place much later than the Bethlehem story. These seers came to the house of Mary and Joseph so all that flight to Egypt part must have past by then and they were back home in Nazareth. It would have taken that long for them to get the news and travel that far. And Jesus would likely be a toddler by then.
It’s also important to remember that these events were providentially guided. We are not listening here to a story of good fortune, happy coincidences, and historical accidents. Jesus is the son of God, King of the Jews, and Davidic ruler. It is no surprise, then, that his life was not only divinely begun, but announced with extraordinary signs and preserved providentially from the threats of a jealous tyrant.
When she was in middle school, just a few years after her childhood days of Jiminy Cricket, Judy developed a huge crush on Donny Osmond. She had a poster of him on her wall that came from a teenage magazine. She listened to all of his music and watched him on TV. For her 13th birthday present her dad took her to Roanoke to a Donny Osmond concert. Judy was so excited! She dressed up and put on make up and dreamed of her chance to finally meet and fall in love with her idol. In her simplicity and naïveté she actually thought they would meet and she actually thought he would fall in love with her too and they would live happily ever after.
The first clue she was wrong about this was the mere size of the crowd. Their seats were way in the back. Then she noticed the large number of lucky girls who were standing at the front, right at the the stage. Some of them actually even got to touch Donny Osmond when he shook some hands and signed some autographs.
Judy went home completely disillusioned feeling foolish for having believed in the Cinderella story that the media had sold to her and all of those other young people, like me, who had posters of superstars on our teenage walls. Judy stopped believing that night that dreaming of and wishing on stars was anything more than foolish.
Judy learned an important lesson. Jesus is not a superstar. Epiphany is not a surprise. And worshiping idols is not the best way to follow Jesus.
Epiphany is a growing awareness of the love and presence of God - at all times, in all places, in and with all people. Epiphany takes a life time. Those lost souls out there who follow power and money and believe only in prosperity and live in denial of the one true God have lost their way by following the wrong stars.
The basic question, then is “how can we share this Epiphany?” How can we spread the Good News that God is incarnate in Christ? Always was. Always will be.
The answer is in the Epiphany of your dreams. The answer is in the Epiphany of your heart.
And, though I seem to be making fun of Jiminy Cricket’s song, he had something right. “Make’s no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you.” We just need to remember to desire the right stuff. The stuff of mystery and the humble baby Jesus and the Kingdom of God.
Be careful about that dreaming though. The Epiphany star is not a lottery ticket. It is a journey. A journey which takes staying tuned in to the thin places and the little epiphanies in life to know how best to follow the Christ child. It’s a daily practice.
Whether thin places or head smacking moments, big and little epiphanies in life are when we realize not just who God is, not just how great God’s love is for us, but who we are in relation to God and to each other.
If you want to seek the epiphanies of God, if you want to resolve to be a better person this year by seeking God, you might do better to put down your map and your compass and simply follow the light. As if following a star on the horizon, simply follow the light that is in your own heart. Follow the light that you see in others. Follow the light that you see in the marginalized, the poor, the hungry.
But remember, if you follow the dreams of your heart, you may have to go home by another way.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly