If You Want to Make God Laugh…

 

Text:  Matthew 2.1-12

The trouble with the first Sunday of a new year is that everyone arrives carrying invisible luggage. Not suitcases — far worse. Resolutions!  Expectations. Grand plans already wobbling slightly at the knees. January is full of brave intentions and new beginnings. “I’m going join that gym”.  “I’m going to cut down on the wine”.  “I’m definitely doing that diet”. But, if your resolutions are anything like mine, they are always subject to the golden rule of resolutions:  “I’ll start again tomorrow!”.

The Church, as ever, responds by doing something rather different to what the world would have us do.   Instead of “new beginnings”, we get Epiphany. Instead of resolutions, we get revelation. Instead of asking what we are going to do this year, the Church asks a more unsettling question: what might God choose to show us? What might the light to lighten the gentiles reveal?

The Epiphany story begins, not with insiders, but with travellers. The wise men are not Jewish. They are not local. They are astrologers — which already puts them in the category of ‘a bit odd’. And yet they are the ones who notice that something new is happening.

They see a star at its rising. Not a static beacon, not a fixed theological statement, but something that is in motion…something that suggests direction rather than certainty. And so they set off…to find out what’s going on.

And here’s the first revelation of Epiphany: despite not knowing everything, wise men go anyway.  They commit to the journey, even though they don’t know how it will end. 

When they arrive in Jerusalem, the wise men do what sensible people do when looking for a king. They go to the palace. They assume powerful Herod will welcome the new power of the Messiah.  Which turns out to be wildly optimistic.  Herod is deeply alarmed. Not curious. Not reflective. Revelation, for him, is not good news but competition. He is the kind of ruler who likes the world exactly as it is — with himself firmly at the centre. Any new light feels like an accusation.

That’s the second revelation of Epiphany: light reveals what we cling to.  Herod consults Scripture, summons experts, deploys religious language — and remains completely unchanged. It is possible, Epiphany reminds us, to know all the right answers, theologically-speaking, and still miss the point entirely.

The Magi, meanwhile, leave the palace and follow the star again. And this time it does not lead them to somewhere impressive. It stops over a house. Not a court. Not a temple. A home. A child.

Matthew says they are “overwhelmed with joy”. Not because everything suddenly makes sense, but because it finally makes contact. God is no longer abstract; no longer a theory in dusty manuscripts. God is not safely distant. No…he is close enough to kneel before.  He is here.  In a child.

That’s the third revelation of Epiphany: God chooses smallness.

And then come the gifts. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh — which sounds very romantic until you imagine the reaction you’d get by turning up to a baby shower with embalming fluid. These are not polite, practical presents. They are symbolic. They acknowledge kingship, divinity, and mortality. In other words, they recognise that this child is going to change everything — including suffering.  The fourth revelation is that Epiphany is not sentimental. The light that shines also casts shadows.  God arrives in fragility, with the reality of death and suffering baked in. 

And then, finally, comes the most easily overlooked line in the story: having been warned in a dream, the Wise Men return home by another road. No speeches. No fanfare. Just a quiet decision not to go back the way they came.

That is the final revelation of Epiphany: that encounter leads to change.  Not necessarily dramatic. Not instantly visible. But real. 

And that brings us, rather neatly, to the beginning of our new year.  Epiphany does not ask us to reinvent ourselves. It does not demand heroic resolutions or flawless spiritual performance. It simply invites attentiveness. To notice where light appears. To recognise when our assumptions — about God, about power, about success, about ourselves — might need adjusting.

The star does not show the Magi the whole route in advance. It gives them enough light for the next step. Which is probably just as well. If God showed us the entire year in January, most of us would politely decline and run away! 

Very soon, our PCC is going to ask us to think and pray about what the next five years of our journey together might look like.  And that’s good, its healthy.  We need to follow a star.  But, rather than a definite, final route-map, the Epiphany story offers us trust; trust that God is already on the move; that revelation is not something we manufacture, but something we receive. Epiphany reminds us that we are not required to have everything worked out before setting off.  As a good example, our last five year plan, drawn up in 2019, contained no inkling of the covid pandemic, which ended up reshaping many of the ideas and desires we had written down in our naivety.  How does the old saying go?  ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans!’ 

The liturgical prayers in our service today keep circling the same theme: God is a light that guides rather than blinds. His light draws rather than drives. His light meets us in ordinary places — houses, streets, tables, bread and wine — and sometimes quietly changes direction.

So as this year unfolds — with its hopes and its fears, its routines and its interruptions, and yes with its new mission plan — perhaps the Epiphany invitation is simply this: stay curious. Stay open. Pay attention to what unsettles you and what gives you joy.  And be prepared, when the time comes, and if God asks, to take another road. Not because we’ve failed. But because we’ve encountered something true.  The star’s light has revealed a new direction.

And that, for the first Sunday of a new year, is more than enough to be going on with.  Amen.