Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12

The sight of the star filled them with delight, and going into the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling on their knees they did him homage.

I am not quite sure where to go with this scripture. Researching it has led me to some wonderful sermons and to some scary opinions.

The Rev'd Canon Anne Mallonee, vicar of Trinity Church - St. Paul's Chapel in New York, expressed her meesage of the Epiphany in her sermon on January 6, 2005 - Jesus came to show us the light and we are all included, all invited to step into the light. It was a message of hope, of inclusion, of love and of reaching out.

I also found messages based in fear, and that saddened me.

Who were the wise men? there is much speculation about this and the only gospel they appear in is Matthew's. We do know that they were foreigners, from the East. The wise men, learned men, sages of their time were probably steeped in the mystery schools. They have been idenitfied as astrologers, they were used to gathering information from deep observation and the patterns derived from nature, mankind and the interaction between nature and mankind. Thus they were not surprised to find that a star led them to the birth of the Messiah.

One definition of Epiphany is the manifestation of the light.

Lead me from the unreal to the real.
Lead me from the darkness to the light.
Lead me from death to immortality.

Upanishad invocation
(Hinduism)

It is through Epiphany that we see a connection between Christianity and the other schoolsl of mysticism.

Andrew Harvey, in his book The Essential Mystics, calls Christianity "The Way of Love in Action" and he writes,

One of the most significant results of the revolution of the sacred feminine is that it is leading to a radical reassessment of the Christian tradition. The patriarchal accretions of two thousand years of authoritarian misinterpretation of the Christian message are being discarded to unveil the revelation Christ came to bring again in all its starkness and urgency; Mary is being increasingly turned to not merely as the Mother of God but as the most poignant of all humanity's images of the divine Mother; the witness of the Christian mystics is being increasingly celebrated for its humble accuracy, range and devotion to the transformation fo reality through service. Many Westen seekers, like myself, have been on long complex journeys into the depths and disciplines of Eastern mysticism to find at the end of them a renewed wonder at the Christian inheritance.