Epiphany Sunday 8 January 2006 Trinity, St. Louis

The Rev. Anne Kelsey

“What could a baby know of gold ornaments

or frankincense and myrrh,

of priestly robes and devout genuflections?

But the imagination knows all stories before they are told

and knows the truth of this one past all defection.

The rich gifts so unsuitable for a child though devoutly proffered,

stood for all that love can bring.”

From The Gift by William Carlos Williams (1)

Epiphany begins the new year with myth and tradition, stories and presents, described by the American poet William Carlos Williams. It’s a season for words like wonder and awe, and thinking of bright stars in a dark cobalt sky, of richly embroidered robes and gold crowns, and for imagining that we can hear the distant sound of singing and feel the beating of angels wings close by. But as we know, the greatest gifts are likely to be much more humble, and brought by plain ordinary folks like you and me.

Before Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote The Little Prince he few mail planes in Egypt, Morocco, the Sinai, and West Africa. (2) When he was serving as the chief of the airport at Cape Juby he encountered a tribe of fierce Moors, who had a slave. This wasn’t unusual. They called him “Bark”, which was the name for all slaves who had no names and no identities of their own. They were all called “Bark”. This one had been a shepherd, with a wife and three children, and he’d been tricked into leading some traders into the country, where they bound him and sold him into slavery.

But every night Bark said to Saint-Exupery, “I was a drover and my name was Mohammed!” Every night he also begged to be hidden on the plane to Marrakech, so that he could escape. The young French pilot was so distraught over this, that eventually he bargained with Mohammed’s owners, and with the help of several friends, bought him and set him free with a great ceremony so that the Moors would be impressed and not try to kidnap him back. The other pilots, who were not given to sentiment, thought that Mohammed shouldn’t be cast out into the world without any money. They got together and from their own meager salaries raised a thousand francs. They flew him to another little town where they got him a bus ticket home. But he arrived in the morning and the bus didn’t leave till the evening, so Mohammed spent his new found freedom wandering the streets feeling like a king. He sat at a café and ordered coffee, and said to the waiter, “My name is Mohammed!” He came across a group of children playing, and went into the little shops nearby. He came out with toys and candy, balloons and magic tricks, trinkets, golden slippers and cheap necklaces, and he gave them to the children. He spent every last franc gave him on street children he didn’t know and would never see again.

If Epiphany means a light going on inside you when before there was a kind of darkness, then surely there was something like that going on inside Mohammed in the hours before he got on the bus to go home. Who knows what kind of revelation he had, what insight. Why didn’t he save his money for his own children? Why didn’t he get things for himself? Why did he give everything away? His motives may be forever unclear, but it’s plain that the three kings who brought priceless gifts to the infant Christ don’t have a thing on Mohammed, the former slave

The stories of kings and slaves, pilots and fierce desert tribes, like all great stories, touch us deeply and work within us. We know that each of us is poor, one way or another, some with little money and others with little charity. We know that each of us is rich, one way or another, some with great wealth and others with great charity. And we too would like to be liberators and givers, generous and loving, but find that it’s more complicated and difficult than we’re prepared for. The journey from the poverty and despair of our hearts to freedom and faith takes us the long way round through life and its surprises. Antoine de Saint-Exupery couldn’t have known that he literally give someone the gift of freedom, nor could the pilots have predicted their own compassion. And who knows what lay behind Mohammed’s gifts to the children. We might guess love.

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The words just roll off our tongues. Symbols of money, worship, and death. That’s what we receive from God, and it’s what we give. They’re the parameters of our religious and spiritual life. Those gold coins the king carried weren’t chocolate, and neither what you put in the offering plate each Sunday. It’s real. It’s a real gift, given freely and gladly from the depths of your heart, just like kings and slaves. The smoke of incense fills the sanctuary on Sundays during worship, when we come together not just as individuals hoping for our own private moments of revelation and comfort, but as a community committed to looking beyond ourselves. Lastly, we give God our own death, the death of the old self renewed in baptism into the life of Christ, into his death and resurrection.

Epiphany was marked at the church of my childhood with a great festive celebration. People brought their Christmas trees to the church parking lot, where they were piled high and burned in a huge bonfire watched over by the local fire department, while we hopped up and down with the cold snowbanks behind us and the flames warming our faces. It was exciting to be doing something so dramatic and so unusual and somewhat dangerous. I don’t think they do it any more. Then there was a supper in the parish hall with lots of food, and the young adults dressed as kings and queens in Renaissance costumes. There was candlelight, and there was laughing, dancing, and singing. It was enchanting, and magical and fun. I wanted to dress up as a king or a queen, to be part of the whole great lively scene.

At some point a light went on. I had an Epiphany, a little one. Although I couldn’t name it then in the theological terms that I learned later, I knew in some deep way that I was already part of a community. The community belonged to me and I belonged to the community by virtue of our shared baptism in Christ. It was and is a community that values the strange and terrible journey of the heart from despair to hope, from death to life. It was and is a community ready to tell the stories of death and resurrection which move us into more compassionate life. It was and is a community urging its members to give themselves away, over and over, even through the most difficult trials and challenges.

I’m not too worried about living up to the standard of the kings, with their royal treasuries, but Mohammed’s example makes me look hard at myself and what I’m willing to give. On this Epiphany I hope that the light goes on in each one of us, and that this year we work at making this church a place so profoundly wonderful that all our imaginations will be swept up in its net, but especially the imaginations of our children. All of us need liturgy and pageantry, candlelight, story, and song, but the youngest ones among us need it in order to become enchanted with this community and this church. Making this happen is part of our gift to them, as their wonder and excitement is part of their gift to us. May this be the year of great gifts.

1 The Gift William Carlos Williams

The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, 1939-1962, vol. II.

As the wise men of old brought gifts

guided by a star

to the humble birthplace

of the god of love,

the devils

as an old print shows

retreated in confusion.

What could a baby know

of gold ornaments

or frankincense and myrrh,

of priestly robes

and devout genuflections?

But the imagination

knows all stories

before they are told

and knows the truth of this one

past all defection.

The rich gifts

so unsuitable for a child

though devoutly proffered,

stood for all that love can bring.

The men were old

how could they know

of a mother’s needs

or a child’s

appetite?

But as they kneeled

the child was fed.

They saw it

and gave praise!

A miracle

had taken place,

hard gold to love,

a mother’s milk!

before

their wondering eyes.

The ass brayed

the cattle lowed.

It was their nature.

All men by their nature give praise.

It is all

they can do.

The very devils

by their flight give praise.

What is death,

beside this?

Nothing. The wise men

came with gift

and bowed down

to worship

this perfection.

2 This story is told in Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery