Epiphany and Stewardship

We’ve all laughed at the many internet jokes about what would have happened if three wise women had arrived in Bethlehem instead of three wise men. 

They say the wise women would have asked for directions, brought along a casserole, and given practical gifts like diapers instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh. One joke mentions that at least they’d have wrapped the presents.

Let’s take the tired old joke seriously for a moment and ask why the Magi brought the newborn Saviour such curious gifts?

Saints and scholars have thought about the question over many centuries. You’ve heard their rich answers many times: in the first place, these are gifts fit for a king. Gold is an obvious way to pay homage to a ruler. Frankincense, St. Irenaeus wrote in the second century, was used in worship, so it indicated that Jesus was divine. Myrrh was a more complex symbol: it was used for embalming, so it symbolized that the child was born to die.

That rich symbolism gets the three wise men off the hook for being impractical—and by the way, the Gospel never says there were three of them, only that there were three gifts. Almost as if the gifts were more important to the story than the givers.

But today, I want to defend the wise men from another direction, and see if we can learn something practical from them.

I want to ask how the wise men decided on those three gifts. Did they know Jesus was our King, God come to die for us?  Surely not.

Did they, like the joke suggests, just lack better gift-giving ideas?

The answer, if we accept the powerful meaning of the gold, frankincense and myrrh, is that they were divinely inspired to bring those treasures. Whether they were men of prayer or not, tradition holds that they were pagan astrologers—people who looked for guidance in the stars, people who sought wisdom beyond their human understanding.

It’s not much of stretch to think that God who guided them by a star may have guided their choice of symbolic offerings, or to say that the prophecies they heard from the priests and scribes at Herod’s court opened their minds to the truth about the child they were seeking,

None of that’s really new to anyone who’s already heard a few homilies on the Epiphany. But I said we can learn something practical from this story, which at first seems long ago and far away.

The lesson, it seems to me, is that there are two aspects to our important decisions. The first is looking at the needs. By this standard, the magi would indeed have brought casseroles and some warm baby clothes.

The second is asking God to guide us.  Of course both ways can work together. Discovering the right thing to do usually begins by figuring out what needs to be done.

Most of my own decisions tend to focus on what needs to be done. Maybe you work the same way. But it can mean missing out on God’s guidance, the guidance he offers to disciples who really want to follow the star that leads us to Christ.

It’s been a few years since we talked about stewardship inthe parish. Lately, we’ve been hearing more about discipleship. But stewardship is discipleship. It means striving to put God first in all things and to follow where he leads.

This celebration of the Lord’s Epiphany is a perfect time to think about stewardship and to ask God to guide our decisions, especially our spiritual decisions, as the New Year begins. The bulletin this Sunday offers a planning tool. It can help us move forward in 2020 on the discipleship path.

Most of you will remember the simple formula for Christian stewardship: time, talent and treasure. The bulletin points to the wise men as models of all three forms of sacrificial giving.

Not only did they offer costly and appropriate treasures—they also gave of their time. One source estimates that their journey took about four months and covered over fifteen hundred kilometers. They used their talents—we assume their ability as astrologers helped them to recognize and follow the guiding star.

No less than at the time of Jesus, following God asks us to offer him our three T’s, treasure, time and talent. Not only because we see needs all around us—although that’s important too—but because by reflection and prayer we’ve come to know what God wants of us.

Let me end with a quick word about these three T’s in the context of our parish family—hoping that every one of you will take a bulletin and use it to discover what God’s asking you to do right now.

Time is the most precious commodity in our hectic modern lives. It’s the gift God wants most from us. He’s not asking for all our time—he knows the demands you have to juggle at home, work or school. But he wants—he needs—some of our time. A planned commitment of time to prayer, service and sharing. There are concrete suggestions inside the bulletin, because as I often say, if we fail to plan, we plan to fail.

Talent is a backbone of any community. We don’t all have the same gifts. But in the parish we have all the gifts needed, as long as everyone shares the natural and supernatural gifts God has blessed them with. Christmas at Christ the Redeemer is an absolute showcase of talents—parishioners used their artistic, musical, hospitable, charitable and liturgical talents in wonderful ways. But imagine if everyone did the same, finding ways to become actively involved in the life of the parish?

Treasure tends to come last on the stewardship list, although we notice that gold was the first gift the Magi offered at Bethlehem. Maybe it comes last since our financial offerings can often be the easiest gift to share—although never doubt that there are many parishioners who make real sacrifices to support the parish and other good works.

But your financial support is a foundation of our efforts to make Christ’s coming known and meaningful—especially to the young and those who have not heard of him. Our efforts at parish renewal simply cannot succeed without your generosity.

This year’s Christmas collection was the largest since I arrived in the parish in 2007. I want to think there’s a reason for that. More and more we are becoming a community of engaged people—parishioners recognize that we are doing great things together. I believe the connection between stewardship and discipleship is becoming clearer: as more and more parishioners share their time and talent, it becomes natural to share generously their treasure as well.

The start of the year is a good time to assess prayerfully the level of your financial support for the parish. Some of us decided years ago on an appropriate Sunday offering, If your financial circumstances have changed, the Lord may be inviting you to increase—or even to decrease—your weekly donation.

Most of you will remember the stewardship challenge offered a few years back by our Covenant of One:  

ONE hour of time spent in prayer each week.

ONE hour of talent each week serving others according to your own gifts.

ONE hour of income each week to God’s work in our church.

The front page of the bulletin connects all this to the great feast we’re celebrating today. It ends with these wonderful words: “Maybe all we need to know about the Magi is that they made themselves available, they followed and they gave. Today, let’s learn from them and maybe we’ll have an epiphany of our own.”