Travellers in a Dark World: A Homily on the Magi for Epiphany

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Sunday, 4 January, 2026, The Epiphany of Our Lord.

Readings for this Sunday: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

The first Sunday of Epiphany is a magical time in the church year because, in the afterglow of Christmas, we get those three wonderful and exotic figures that we call the Magi, the Wise Men.     In the crêche they are the loveliest figures (well, next to the angel) with their lavish robes, turbans, and gifts.  Some churches start the crêche figures of the Magi at the back of the church and move them forward gradually throughout Advent, until we get to this Sunday when they finally arrive at their destination (though sometimes churches will put them into their Christmas Eve nativity plays, and why not?).

We don’t know exactly who the Magi were, what they looked like, where they actually came from, or even how many they were (for some reason the number three struck, presumably because of the three gifts, but it could have been a whole caravan!   In the Christian tradition, they represent the kings who Isaiah said would come from afar to worship the God of Israel, gentile rulers who show that Christ is born for the peoples of all the earth.

In popular art, they are often portrayed as three figures riding camels (which may have been their likely ride but certainly makes them exotic to westerners) at night, three figures shilouetted by the light of the star they follow. 

I’m sure some of you got at least one Christmas card like this, though Christmas cards seem to be less of a thing these days as we send less and less paper mail.  Often in these images it appears as if the Magi are travelling through am empty desert landscape, but this year in particular it seems like they are moving through a landscape that looks a lot like the world we live in.

Saturday morning we woke to find that a minor king was toppled by an Emperor.   Now “king” and “emperor” aren’t really words that you hear in the news anymore, but they exist.   Emperors have names like Trump, or Xi, or Putin.  Kings today (not the nice ones like Charles) have names like Maduro, or Bolsonaro, or Kim Jung Un.  When the Wise Men came to Jerusalem, they came to the court of one of these petty, vicious hireling kings.  At Herod’s court, three learned travellers found themselves in a world of ruthless power politics, and rulers who, for all their strutting and blustering, were like their counterparts today, deeply anxious and insecure.

Herod was a king, but we might better call him a puppet, a stooge on the Roman payroll.   His father came to power because he ruled Galilee for Julius Caesar and raised taxes for the Romans.  Herod himself was useful to Mark Antony, and after the Romans captured Jerusalem the Roman senate named Herod king of Judea.   So Herod wasn’t a king like David or Solomon.  He was basically a small mob boss who worked for a big mob boss.   

So for the Magi to come to Herod’s court and to tell him that they are looking for “ the child who has been born king of the Jews” (Mt 2.2), well, that is as one commentator has noted, “an extraordinardily naïve question”.   We can imagine the buzz of conversation among Herod’s courtiers going dead silent at this point, and Herod’s face freezing.  

Small wonder, as the gospel says, that Herod was “frightened”.  He must have been wondering, “What do these foreigners know that I don’t know?   Is there a rebellion against me, or worse, are the Romans going to replace me?   I’ve got to get on top of this”.  So Herod, who is a master of cunning, enlists the Magi as his unwitting spies, so they can tell him where this child is, so he can kill him.   If you look at the histories of this period, Herod wasn’t reluctant to kill people.  He had even had his second wife Mariamme executed for plotting to overthrow him, so he was as ruthless as they come.

The Herods and Caesars of today are as ruthless as Herod, even though they live with greater scrutiny of their actions and are a little more devious.   Even so, one of the strange things about the times we live in is that no one seems sure how to stop bad powerful people any more.    Ruthless, powerful people have journalists murdered, they enrich themselves and their families through blatant corruption, they invade other countries and they break rules, and it seems like all we can do is shrug.   The 21st century seems more like the world of Herod than it seems like the world we grew up in, where rules and shame still mostly worked.   So maybe we can relate more to these travellers who passed through a scheming, ruthless world, searching for their true king.

Something we might well ask is why these three men, wealthy and learned, would have left their comfortable, far away lives and made the long journey to seek Jesus.   T.S. Eliot well imagines the discomfort of their journey in his famous poem.  Herod’s advisors had told him that a king of Israel would be born in Bethlehem, and they were quoting the prophet Micah (Mi 5:1-6), but the Wise Men weren’t Jews, so why did they care?

Perhaps all we can say is what is often said about the Magi, that they were willing to be led by something far above the scheming kingdoms of earth, that miraculous, westward leading star.    In all the scriptures around the Christmas story, the light breaking into the darkness is a sign of God’s revealed truth.    For Isaiah it was the promise that a people too long used to darkness would see the dawn of a new light.  For John in the prologue to his gospel, the light was the truth come into the world, a light no darkness or evil could extinguish.

The Magi’s trust in that guiding star is an encouragement to us to believe that there is still light and truth and goodness in the world, and that we are called to follow that light and truth and goodness as they did.    The world can seem terribly dark at times, and the Herods can seem like the winners in the struggle between dark and light.    Indeed, the frankinscense and myrrh of the Magi are gifts that look towards a tragic outcome.   

In T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi”, there is much foreshadowing of the cross, and indeed one of the Wise man asks, “were we led all that way for Birth or Death?’  Death is further layered onto Matthew’s nativity account in Herod’s massacre of the boy children of Bethlehem, and if history is full of anything, it’s full of massacres and atrocities.    The birth of Jesus does not end the world of tyrants and massacres, but it does put the tyrants on notice.  The mystery of the Incarnation is that Jesus is born to die, and in his dying and rising to life again, the slow but sure undoing of death and sin and tyranny begins.

Like the Magi before us, it may seem at times that we also travel through darkness, but we are never far from the light, the light of God’s truth and goodness and faithfulness.  As believers, we follow a king who makes the kings and emperors of our time look like foolish and petty and doomed.   Like the Magi, we follow the light of God’s truth and goodness, because we know that the light will lead us out of the darkness.

The Art of Christmas: A Homily for Christmas Eve

A Homily preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Christmas Eve, 2025.  Texts for tonight: Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2: 1-20.  

 Try to imagine a Christmas without certain images in your head.  No magical star, no wise men and camels, no manger and animals, and not just no religious themes, but no reindeer, no jolly Santa, no Christmas trees, nothing. I don’t think you can, or at least, I don’t think I can.   The Christmas story first existed as words on the page, with no illustrations, but that’s never been enough.   For centuries, we’ve been imagining and recreating the Christmas story in paintings and sculpture and arts and crafts of all kinds.   

If I asked you to name some of your favourite images that you associate in your head with Christmas, it might be an image from popular culture, like Charlie Brown hopefully trudging home with his little tree.

 

Maybe it’s a favourite Christmas ornament, like this one with a Currier and Ives print.

(In our house the Starship Enterprise can be found close to the top of our tree amidst the angels, dogs, and coloured balls).

You might also think of a beloved nativity set or creche, like this one knitted by a parishioner of All Saints.

In our house there’s a treasured crêche, it’s a gift from a dear friend, a set of figures that were hand cast from lead and lovingly painted with tiny brushes.   They are absolutely beautiful, not just because of the work that’s gone into them, but because of what they represent.

The Nativity Set or crêche speaks to many of us, I think, because in it's own simple way it allows us to see something of the whole mystery of Christmas.  It combines earth and heaven.  There’s the physical world, the blood and messiness of birth, the ordinary animals in the rough little barn, combined with the metaphysical world, the extraordinary star overhead and the angels that are out there announcing the birth, speaking to shepherds like they spoke to Mary and Joseph.   There is all of human society, from the exotic and wealthy kings or wise men, to the ordinary shepherds who live rough and dangerous lives.   And there is the baby itself, a human child who has somehow come from beyond the veil of eternity, on whom everything depends.  As the old hymn says, “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

I would say that the appeal of the Nativity image is that we see our ordinary human selves and a loving, rescuing God in the same frame.   Take this painting by Georges la Tour from 1644 called The Adoration of the Shepherds.

Framed between Mary on the left (with her adorable and rather ordinary jowly face) with her hands clasped in prayer (a typical posture for Mary in these sorts of paintings) and Joseph on the right are two shepherds.  Then there is a servant girl carrying a bowl of water, another ordinary touch, she’s a working girl with a job to do.  Joseph on the right is depicted as old, according to the tradition that he was an older man.

No one is talking, everyone is watching the baby, except for the lamb in the centre, which is busy munching hay from the crib.   The lamb may have theological significance, pointing to Jesus’ role as the Lamb of God, but here it is just an ordinary, animal, doing what hungry animals do.

It’s often said of this painting that La Tour is showing off his technique as a painter by having all the light in the painting coming from the one candle that Joseph is shielding with his hand.  

In a lovely meditation on this image, Sean Rubin writes that 

“If you want a materialist explanation, by all means assume the candle is lighting the scene. Most candles don’t shine that brightly, but then again, neither do most infants. Maybe the baby really is just a baby. Or maybe you’re missing the implications.”

And maybe as Rubin suggests, the implications are cosmic, that Jesus is indeed what John’s gospel said he is, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, coming into the world” (John 1:9).

 

If we look at the two shepherds, the one in the foreground looks like any young man driving around Collingwood in his pickup, just put a ballcap and a puffy coat on him, whereas La Tour gives him a bit of a lacy shirt, we see the collar above  his rough coat, because maybe he has a girl somewhere that he dresses to impress, even though he’s a working man.    We can only guess at his thoughts but it’s unusual for a young man to stay that still.  The man to his left is mostly in darkness, but he has a smile on his face as if he’s found an unexpected moment of peace.   His touching his cap, a gesture of respect because he seems to know somehow that this is no ordinary baby, and he's holding a recorder, so maybe he's about to play a lullaby or something merry,

If La Tour meant for us to identify with anyone in this painting, I think we are meant to see something of ourselves in these shepherds.   For Christmas has come once again into the business of our daily, ordinary lives.     We’re here tonight because some sort of voice, maybe an angelic choir heard even subliminally, something has prompted us to come out of the cold and dark to linger in the light of the crib.    

All Nativity images speak to us, but tonight I hope this old painting has reminded us of the greatest gift that the Christmas story offers us: the reassurance tat there is light, and truth, and goodness in the world.    Jesus invites us to pause just for a moment, to be still amid the endless chatter and noise of our information-mad world, and to receive this simple message, that we are not alone, that we are loved by God, and that we are forgiven of whatever it is we fear keeps God away from us.  Take this message with you when you leave this palce tonight, and like the shepherds, go on your way rejoicing (Lk 2.20), because light has come into the world.

Water We Can Trust: A Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent

 Readings for the Third Sunday of Advent (Yr C):m. Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146:4-9 OR Canticle 18 (Luke 1:47-55); James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water (Isa 35:6-7) 

Most of us have spent our lives trusting the water that comes out of our taps.     You might have lived or travelled in parts of the world where that isn’t the case.     Just before Covid I spent three weeks in Ethiopia, in a fairly decent hotel, and still had to force myself not to hold my toothbrush under the tap, as I habitually do.   

Because we take safe water for granted at home, it came as a bolt from the blue yesterday when Collingwood got a boil water advisory.  Those of us with longer memories immediately thought of Walkerton and took the warnings seriously.    This morning we learned that the water main has been repaired, and if we’re lucky, the water advisory will be lifted early next week.   In the meantime we will keep calm and carry on, and take appropriate precautions at our coffee hour today, but it has certainly come as a shock in the run up to Christmas.

In case you doubted that God has a sense of humour, our first reading this morning has, as I quoted, much to say about clean, fresh water.     Through Advent we have heard wonderful promises from the prophet Isaiah.  On Advent One we heard of the holy city that gathers all the peoples into a new age of peace.   On Advent Two, Isaiah told of us a ideal, just ruler whose reign would bring harmony even to the lion and the lamb, to the child and to the snake.   And today we hear the prophet speak of a way home for exiles who long to see their homeland, a safe and smooth way through deserts suddenly full of clean, fresh, water.

Now it’s very tempting to think of these promises merely as the prophet’s poetic flights of fancy, as Isaiah imagines what God’s future reign might look like, and to be sure, that reign of God is part of what our waiting in Advent looks towards.   However, we listen to scripture because we believe that somehow God speaks to our present reality through scripture.   And so, when we hear the prophet promise clean water when we have none, that should get our attention.

There are parts of Canada where if you talk about clean water, you will definitely get people’s attention.   According to the Council of Canadians, there are twenty-nine indigenous reserves that currently have unsafe water restrictions.     Some of these advisories date back twenty or more years, which means that there are children and young people that have never known clean running water in their homes and schools.    The Council says that seventy three percent of First Nations water systems are at risk for water contamination.

There are also parts of Canada, specifically in Ottawa, where if you talk about clean water, you will have trouble getting people’s attention.    Water systems on indigenous reserves are the responsibility of the federal government, which has treaty obligations to provide services, including proper funding for First Nations water plants.  During the 2015 election, Justin Trudeau promised to end drinking water advisories on First Nations reserves in five years, and this promise was never kept.

Here in Collingwood, I’ve noticed on social media that people are grumbling because the lab workers won’t come into work on the weekend to do the necessary tests.  Imagine how people would feel if the water advisory lasted until Christmas.  Or Easter.  Or for a year or more.   Prosperous Collingwood would never stand for such a delay.   Governments at all levels would throw truckloads of money at the problem until it was fixed.    And yet somehow, in places far to the north of us, these same problems are tolerated.

One of the things that Isaiah points to in today’s lesson is that clean, lifegiving water is part of creation, a gift from God to the world that God loved into being.  As Christians, we believe that our neighbour’s welfare is as important as our own, and this very belief as led to a long partnership among Canadian faith communities across Canada.

What we used to call the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund, now known as Alongside Hope, has been working with several indigenous communities, Pikangikum and Kingfisher Lake First Nations, to bring clean water into homes and schools.    This partnership led to a network that calls itself the Pimatisiwin Nipi (Living Waters Group), and in 2021 the Living Waters Group began partnering with twenty five communities across the North and with the Anglican Diocese of the Arctic to bring clean, safe water to homes and churches.  Imagine coming to All Saints and not having clean water for our many functions

In our recent Regional Ministry Newsletter, our Alongside Hope representative, David Penhale, challenged us to consider helping this clean water project by joining the Advent Conspiracy.   This Consipracy doesn’t require disguises and secret handshakes!  It’s simply a movement that has gained traction in recent years as a rebellion against the relentless monetization of Christmas to drive corporate profits.  Here's how the conspiracy works.

1. Ask yourself what you would normally spend on a present for someone you love.
2. Don’t buy “stuff” this year, give the gift of water!
3. Make a donation to Alongside Hope’s Indigenous Water Partnership (through your church or directly to Alongside Hope
4. You can download a Donation Card
5. Give that Donation Card to your loved one this Christmas to tell them how much you love them

Since Joy and I are frantically downsizing to get into our newer, smaller house, and don’t need any more stuff, we’ve decided that we will give one another the gift of water this year,    Perhaps the Advent Conspiracy will make sense for your Christmas as well.    Whatever you decide, may our prayer be that clean water isn’t just a wonderful prophet’s promise, but an imminent reality, for Collingwood and for everyone, and may our soul’s thirst be met in the living water that Jesus promises all his followers.