Saint Mark

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

18313 Lappans Road Boonsboro, MD 21713

Sermons by the Rev. Anne O. Weatherholt, Rector

Date: January 6, 2008

Liturgical Day: Epiphany

Propers: Matthew 2:1-12

Title: The Shining Light

Those of you who saw my face last week know that I was sporting what is known in American slang as a “shiner.” Yes, my right eye was swollen and of a deep purple color—not exactly shining, but definitely a dark bruise. As you can see, it is greatly improved this week, and I have no permanent damage from a trip and fall on a hard sidewalk! It was an interesting week, however, as people immediately noticed the bruise. However the same size bruise elsewhere would not have attracted quite the attention as it did on my face. The whole way we “view” people’s faces was brought home to me in a new way. What is usually the first place we look?--at someone’s face. Along with that look comes a flood of impressions that we don’t realize we are getting—What is the expression on the face? What is the color of the skin? What is the shape of the mouth, nose, eyes? Is the face happy or sad, confused or excited? Do other people meet our gaze or drop their eyes? And on and on. In a split second of looking at someone’s face, we form a whole host of impressions and judgments.

The holy people of old knew the power of the face. In the Hebrew Scriptures the word face was used in a variety of meanings and images. God moved over the “face” of the waters at the beginning of creation. God spoke to Moses “face to face” on Mount Sinai and came down with his face shining so brightly that he had to cover it. The Psalmists pray that God will not hide his face from humanity. The Hebrew word for face is used over 300 times and is also translated as “presence,” which captures more of those impressions I just mentioned. Remember these quotes? “Cast me not away from thy presence (Ps 51.11)…Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving (Ps. 95.2)…In thy presence is the fullness of joy (Psa 16.11).” The Hebrew word is the same one translated in other places as face. In the book of Exodus, Chapter 33, God commands that the presence of God contained in the Ark of the Covenant be carried with the people on their journey through the wilderness. This is the same idea of God’s face indicating God’s presence. This same double meaning of face and presence is also carried out in the Greek of the New Testament. Remember this quote from Luke 1:76 from Zachariah’s prophecy: “for you shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways” or from the Gospel of John 20:30: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence (face) of his disciples.” The same Greek word is used in both of these sentences. Throughout the scriptures and in our own language, the power of the face is found in commonly used metaphors: “On the face of it…face value…show your best face…and more recently facebook is one of the most popular sites for people to show their lives to others on the world wide web—far more than just their face.

We look today on a scene where shining, face and presence converge. The star prophesied by the prophet Balaam in Numbers 24 was shining in the sky and noticed by magi. They were kings in their own lands and believed there was great significance in this star. Traveling west, they followed the star from the east. Along the way, they conversed with various other heads of state to determine what they noticed, what significance they saw in their own lands and kingdoms. When they reached King Herod, however, they found a direct correlation between their observations and the prophecies of the Hebrew people. A king would come to rule the people, a king to be born in nearby Bethlehem, a scant 12 miles outside Jerusalem. When Matthew, writing more than 60 years later, recalled this story, he knew that there was a connecting piece with the prophet Isaiah. From the beginning of the Covenant people, God had said that they would be a light to the nations, a light in the darkness of the world. God’s face, the same presence that created the world and was expressed in the life-giving law, the same presence that stayed with the people even through exile and war, this light would be recognized by people form other nations. Isaiah prophesied that they would bring gifts of tribute: camels, gold, silver, incense.

But Herod, another king, saw something quite different. The announcement of the foreign kings brought anxiety, fear and worry to Herod and all Jerusalem. This was so pronounced that Herod had to speak to them secretly and send them off under the cover of darkness on a covert mission to scope out this threat to the throne and the stability of an already decaying monarchy. Instead of shining light, Herod saw darkness. And he multiplied the darkness when he sent his soldiers to murder the children of Bethlehem to try to stop the threat to his throne. Like a dark bruise, the stain of his actions still lies in the background of the nativity story like the dark shadows of Isaiah’s prophecy.

The face of God was shining fully in the presence of a baby in Bethlehem. James Alison, a Catholic priest, writes in a sermon from The Christian Century, “We are taught by the Magi to value the One who lies in the manger. He acquires worth and splendor through their eyes. This is part of what the feast gives us: models for our desire, for our adoration. With each gift we are offered a way to shift the weight of our heart in an unaccustomed direction. When the Magi offer him gold, which indicates a king, we are invited to lessen the tribute we offer to the power structures to which we belong and on which we depend; when they offer him frankincense, which indicates a priest, we are invited to tiptoe out from under the delusions of our sacred canopies, to be drawn into the jagged-edged sacrifice of presence that this Priest will carry out; and when they offer him myrrh, which indicated a prophet’s death, the Magi invite our hearts to lighten as death loses its hold over our drives and desires” (Dec 25, 2007).

The face of this same child still shines today in the presence of Christ Jesus in our lives, in the church and in our world. There were no artists who captured the face of Jesus from his life, and it did not seem important for anyone to describe his face, the shape of his nose or the color of his eyes. For it is not the face but the presence that is still with us. We call celebrities “stars” in our culture, and we see their faces on tabloids and magazines. But their presence is often marred, shallow, fleeting, gone and replaced by the next celebrity. These stars burn out quickly, and the attention they capture cannot be held when the world gets dark. The star that led the Magi to the presence of Jesus still shines to lead us forward. We see the light of this star in the lives of those who follow Jesus Christ, whose faces are glowing with the faith and love. In Jesus Christ we have met God face to face, we have seen his love, his shining light, and we have “come into his presence.” This is the season of Epiphany—the shining forth of the light of Jesus Christ to all the world. At this holy feast let us hear in closing the words of the priestly benediction from the book of Numbers: “the Lord Bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”