Feast of the Epiphany - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2006

With the Feast of Epiphany we celebrate the fact that the first people, after Joseph and Mary, to recognise and adore Jesus were foreigners.  Matthew was not so much interested in building up the number of figures around the crib.  Right from the start of his Gospel he wanted to insist that a key message of the gospel was inclusiveness.  He needed to emphasise this because he was writing for a community that experienced tension.  On the one hand were converts from Judaism familiar with and comfortable in their Jewish ways, perhaps instinctively elitist, and very sensitive to boundaries.  On the other hand were converts from the pagan Hellenistic world of the wider Middle East, probably Syrian, enthusiastic, but without much knowledge of  Jewish background and not sensitive to Jewish taboos.  The combination was a recipe for headaches.

In some ways the Church today, like Matthew’s community, experiences tension.  We live in a time of amazing cultural change, and we are children of our times. How do we approach the tensions as disciples of Jesus? The central Christian concern at all times is to love.  The birth of Christ reminds us of that.  And that love is often quite difficult.  

In a Church of people with differing attitudes, what does love mean?  We often distinguish loving from liking.  I think that that distinction can sometimes be dangerous.  I think that loving involves being open to like, hoping to like, even when not succeeding at it.

Except in very rare instances, loving means presuming honesty in the other.  Presumably we’re all doing our best to know, love and follow Jesus.

Loving, then, means seeking to see the heart of the other, a readiness to listen to what the other is saying, to the depth of feeling there, and finding out their reason for saying it.  We can’t argue with the feeling, but we can often discuss the reasons behind the attitudes.

Loving means being ready to reveal what we think, how we feel, and (if we know) why we think and feel the way we do.  Loving doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with one another.

In a community of people with different attitudes, we can’t all get our own way.  We will often have to compromise.  What matters is not what I but what we, the community, can realistically, given our differences, arrive at.  We can’t compromise conscience, of course, and we’re never asked to.  The problem area is usually that of practical issues of Church order – what we choose to do together, and how we do things when we are together.

It is the responsibility of the leader of the local Church community, the Parish Priest, to make certain decisions.  As well as being responsible to the local community, he is also responsible to the bishop, and through the bishop, to the constantly developing tradition of the wider Church.  It is a difficult role, and the leader doesn’t always, from our point of view, get it right. What then? We make our view known to the leader – first.  We try to get the leader to change, not by bringing pressure to bear but by sharing our point of view.  That was Jesus’ way.  If we are not prepared to do that, then we keep quiet.  Among the immature, destructive responses we can get trapped in, are the perennials: gossip and instinctive criticism.  It can be hard work loving in a time of cultural change, but it does give unequalled opportunity for human and Christian growth..

Getting back to Matthew’s concern in bringing a group of foreigners right into the crib.  Can we handle the fact that others, different from us, whatever the differences might be, really do recognise and love Christ, possibly even more than we do?