January 5, 2025 The Epiphany of the Lord / 2nd Sunday after Christmas

Welcome Father Eckhard Today’s Readings: Is 60:1-6 | Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6 | Mt 2:1-12

“Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” (Mt 2:2)

The ‘wise men from the East’ are only found in Matthew’s Gospel, which does, of course, raise questions about the strict historicity of the account. Nor does Matthew mention how many ‘wise men’ came to worship Jesus. […] Be that as it may, the arrival of the wise men, their recognition of Jesus as ‘King of the Jews’, plus Herod’s fear of the birth and determination to kill Jesus, are all hugely significant events for Matthew. […]

Matthew’s readers would immediately recognise the significance of the three gifts brought by the Kings: Gold, recognising Jesus as a King (King of the Jews); frankincense recognising that Jesus was God (frankincense was burned in the Temple as an offering to God); myrrh, recognising the death of Jesus for us. (Myrrh was an embalming resin used as part of Jewish burial rites).

Through the arrival of the ‘wise men’, therefore, Matthew states very clearly that from the very moment of Jesus’ birth he was ‘King of the Jews’, Divine, and that he would die for us.

Even more important, the coming of ‘wise men from the East’ represents, for Matthew, the reality that the ‘Kingdom of God’ isn’t for all people, not just Jews.

A central difficulty the Jewish authorities had with Jesus was that the Kingdom he preached was utterly different to their vision of the Kingdom of God and the person of the Messiah. They expected the Messiah to be a military leader who would free Israel from the tyranny of Rome; Jesus proclaimed a Kingdom of peace and forgiveness. They expected the Kingdom of God to vindicate them as God’s ‘chosen people’ and punish their enemies; Jesus proclaimed a Kingdom open to all peoples equally.

It is not an accident that, for Matthew, the first people to recognise Jesus as King of the Jews were the ‘poor’ represented by the shepherds, and the Gentiles (non-Jews), represented by the ‘wise men’.

Jewish Christians reading this Gospel were being called to accept, as a core part of their faith, that Jesus came into the world to save all peoples and to bring the Kingdom of God to all.[…]

In this week’s Gospel, Matthew is foreshadowing all that would transpire later in Jesus’ life. The subterfuge and plotting of King Herod and his determination to kill the new-born ‘King of the Jews’ tell us that even at his birth the Kingdom of God was beginning, and the Messiah, the King of the Jews, the Lord who would rise from the dead, was already among us.

We can so easily tie ourselves in knots arguing as to whether there actually were three wise men or a star or a stable. The truth of the Gospels is that none of these details matter. The truth Matthew is sharing with us is so much more amazing than that. In this short Gospel, Matthew, and through him God, reveals to us, that the Christmas story and the Easter story are one and the same. At his birth, just as at his death and resurrection Jesus was King of the Jews and Messiah.

He was the Son of God and divine.

It was through the seeming tragedy of his death that the Kingdom of God was finally revealed.

The Kingdom of God is for all peoples of the world.

Faith in the person of Jesus is all we need to enter the Kingdom of God.

It is a true, powerful, exciting and hope-filled message for our world and all who live in it. It is, in a word, the ‘Joy of the Gospel’.

Source of reflection (shortened): Fr. Brian, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, https://oblates.ie/pray-with-us/weekly-reflections/ Source of image: Wesley, Frank, 1923-2002. Arrival of the Kings, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59233 [retrieved January 4, 2025]. Original source: Estate of Frank Wesley, http://www.frankwesleyart.com/main_page.htm.

News

• 5 January - As this Sunday still lies within the school holidays / travelling season for many of our members, kindly take not that our monthly social gathering is moved to a week later, and will thus take place on Jan 12.