1-3-2021 The Sunday Before the Epiphany “The Real Miracle” Matthew 2:1-12

The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

There are some holidays and special liturgical days that we have to celebrate the Sunday before they occur, because they occur during the week. Epiphany is one of them, at least this year. The Christian Church will commemorate the visit of the Magi (AKA the Three Kings, the Three Wise men) this coming Wednesday.

When you look up the word “Epiphany” online you will find everything from this is the climactic day of the Christmas celebration to this is when you should take down your Christmas tree — the latter not all that theological.

There are so many jokes about this day. What if it had been Three Wise Women instead of Three Wise Men? They would have baked a casserole, they would have brought diapers instead of Frankincense, and they would have cleaned the stable. And of course, there are several, several others.

As the Church, we have to ask two important questions: “What is the significance of Epiphany?” and “How does it relate to our contemporary life of faith?”

The first one is somewhat easy to answer. The Magi (the Bible does not say that they were kings) came to the manger to offer expensive and symbolic presents. That in itself is pertinent. The fact that they came from the East is even more important. The idea is that this event isn’t confined to a small town in the Roman province of Palestine. Word is spreading. People as far away as the East have heard about it! The Magi (we assume that there were three of them, because they brought three gifts — there could have been three of them, and there could have been ten) the Magi and their entourage make their way across harsh landscapes because they heard the news.

We have heard the news, too, which is why we are here today — and every Sunday. We come to see the miracle again, and again, and again. The miracle, of course, is God deciding to join us in the flesh, to become one of us.

We will begin another Bible Study shortly. The last one, which began just before Thanksgiving, ended three days before Christmas. We talked about both holidays, as well as the Advent season, to discern what they mean to us today. The conversation was great; they’d have to be with the cast of characters who attend (and I say that with great love, admiration, and respect). At the last session in this last series we talked about Jesus’ birth, and the miracle of the Incarnation. We got off on a bit of a tangent and talked about how miracles occur around us all the time; we just don’t see them.

Anyway, at our last session we talked about the miracle of Christmas. We also talked about miracles in general. We think of the spectacular as the miraculous: God making the impossible possible, as one of my favorite movie definitions of “a miracle” states.[1]

On one hand, nature is a miracle. I know that. You know that. We’ve talked about this before. The human body is also a miracle. It can fight off diseases, reproduce, and has a mind that can reason and is aware that it will one day die. It is truly amazing.

But let’s break this down even more, so that it fits the season of Epiphany. Why is there something and not nothing? Why do we even exist? Why did God choose to create a universe full of beauty and complexity rather than just leave everything the way it appears at the beginning of Genesis: a formless void. God could have done this if he wanted to. He was not required to create anything.

III

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth German philosopher and mathematicians Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz reflect on this. “Leibniz thought that the fact that there is something and not nothing requires an explanation.”[2] This has been the focus of my theology lately. Sometime, just pause for a moment and think about how vast the universe is. In fact, our galaxy and the “known universe” is a drop in the bucket compared to what we don’t know. To believe that all of that came from an explosion in space 13.7 billion years ago with nothing causing it is pretty hard to believe. All of that came from nothing? And if it did, what caused it — what was the intentional life-force behind it all. The universe is too organized and purposeful to simply be its own cause.

You can take these reflections to another level and ask, “If God caused this, then God could have decided not to cause it.” It becomes almost a logical quandary from which there is no escape.

There is a philosophical term for this: cosmology. Not to delve into a university-style lecture here, but all of us think of God in a cosmological sense from time to time, we just don’t have the words for it. The late philosopher Louis Pojman describes it this way: there are necessary and contingent beings.[3] (Sounds like a university-style lecture to me!) Hold on for a moment. A child is a contingent being: he or she needs something or someone else to exist. That someone is the child’s parents. They are necessary beings. But aren’t parents contingent beings, too? Didn’t they need parents in order to exist? Parents are, therefore, necessary as well as contingent beings. So are their parents, and so are their parent’s parents. Pojman argues that we have to get back to a point when it all began. We have to arrive at a necessary being that is not also a contingent being — that which does not need anyone or anything else to exist. Pojman talks about that primary necessary being as the First Cause: the beginning of it all. Some philosophers refer to this being as the Prime Mover: the agent that is responsible for all that exists.

So, let’s work our way back a bit. We see God as the uncaused First Cause, the Prime Mover. But that doesn’t answer the question, “Why is there something and not nothing?” The answer to this question is easier than the philosopher might think. It’s all about love.

The Bible makes it clear: God is love.[4] That which is love needs something to love, doesn’t it? God created us out of love in order to love us. Let that settle for a minute: God created us out of love in order to love us. In other words, we were made for a purpose, and that purpose is to be the object of God’s love!

God did this by becoming human. That is the miracle of Christmas. That is the miracle of the Incarnation.

So maybe, when we look to the stars and ponder the vastness of the universe, the miracle of life itself, we join the Magi’s caravan — amazed at God’s miracles unfolding in the most startling ways, we follow the same star. Amen.

[1] Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction (1994).

[2] Lloyd Strickland, The Conversation: Academic Rigor, Journalistic Flair (online).

[3] See chapter 2 from Louis P. Pojman, Philosophy of Religion (Long Grove: Waveland Press, Inc., 2001/2009).

[4] 1 John 4:8.