With Epiphany cards to send, Epiphany presents to purchase, and the traditional Epiphany meal of roast moose and turnips to prepare, I imagine many of you will be swamped with the hustle and bustle of the Epiphany season.
Well, probably not. Although we will soon enter this next season in the church year, most Christians in the United States do not celebrate this season with the same fervor as Christmas.
Our United Methodist Revised Common Lectionary brings the scripture lessons for the day of Epiphany (Jan. 6th) to this Sunday. The Matthew passage can be a good teaching tool in two regards.
The first lesson would be how our legends sometimes blur our vision of Scripture. Ask how many “wise men” or “magi” the passage says came to see the Christ child before reading it, and most people will answer three. But the number of visitors tis not mentioned; it is only later church tradition that fixed their number at three. How many were there? God only knows.
The second lesson is much more important – God loves the outsider, the poor, the oppressed. The passages from Isaiah and Ephesians remind us that we who are Gentiles (non-Jewish people) are like the wise men – outsiders who have by God’s grace been brought into God’s household. So “...the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph. 3:6).
As those who were once “outsiders”, we should have a heart for those whom our society considers outside the grace of God. Psalm 72, a prayer for the king of Israel, makes clear the concern of God for the poor and those in need, as well as those who are oppressed. As we begin a new year, Christians in the United States should take these calls seriously. We still live with the effects of 400 years of oppression in the form of slavery, and new forms of oppression as well.
In his letter of February 24, 1791 to William Wilberforce, Wesley was quite blunt. Wanting to encourage the younger man, Wesely wrote “Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well-doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”
Wesley’s outrage continues in the letter. He sounds similar to the good king of Psalm 72 who would “judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice” as he wrote, “Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance, that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a law in all our Colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this!”
We will be entering a new year. Perhaps Wesley’s Covenant Service (or one of the many updated versions) could be used to renew your people’s dedication to work for justice for all.
Rev. Dean is a retired elder in the Iowa Annual Conference.
