Follow the Star
This is the sermon I preached last Sunday, 1/5 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The gospel text was Matthew 2:1-12. What in the world is Epiphany and why do we celebrate it? Epiphany means "showing forth." It names the day that the church tells Matthew's story of the magi from foreign lands who follow the light of the star and "see" Jesus as Christ. This is important because this acknowledges that the greatest gift given by the God who comes down to be with His people, is to be shared by Jew and Gentile alike. The irony here is the wise men who were not Jewish scholars were the first to recognize the sign of the star in the sky and the importance of its meaning. It's commonly believed that the star would have also been seen in Jerusalem and Judea but somehow the Jewish scholars were asleep in the temple. Even if they saw it, they either ignored it or didn't look in the Jewish scriptures to find out what it meant. More importantly, if they did unders...