All Things Working Together To Bring Us Salvation

Epiphany Homily 2025

The story of God’s people, the Israelites, from Abraham to Jesus was a series of a few triumphs and many tragedies. Look carefully at the histories recorded in Scripture and you’ll see that the tragedies were caused by poor human decisions, while the triumphs were caused, sometimes very dramatically, by divine intervention. The prophet Isaiah ministered in Israel from just before the tragedies that caused the fall of the larger, non-Davidic kingdom in the north to the reign of Manasseh, probably the worst of David’s descendants. Jewish tradition records that Manasseh was so evil that he had Isaiah murdered.

But Isaiah had visions of a future triumph, and he wrote them down in the last chapters of his contributions to the Bible. Today’s reading comes right after God’s promise that when He himself comes to Zion as Redeemer, God would make a covenant with the peoples and send His spirit into them, His words into their mouths. Moreover, this would continue in their children and grandchildren, generation after generation and forever.

Thus the Magi coming to Bethlehem, bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh, are seen as fulfillments of this prophecy of Isaiah. Darkness, ignorance covered the earth. But the birth of Jesus brought a great light, that the nations symbolized by their wise men would see and walk by. The covenant to be established by the Messiah was not to be only for the Jews, but for all people. All of us, from the Middle East and Far East, from Africa and Asia and Europe and the Americas, are called to discipleship, to right living and right worship.

We see in the life of St. Paul how the strength and power of Christ’s message and sacraments were effective in changing lives, raising up communities all over Greece and Anatolia. But all the apostles were actively taking the message and community of Jesus all over the known world. Here in his letter to the church at Ephesus Paul speaks of the mystery of Christ was made known to him by revelation. What is that mystery? Paul first heard and saw it as he was traveling to Damascus from Jerusalem, intent on arresting and punishing every follower of Jesus. Paul saw the light. It was so intense that he was unable to see anything else. He heard the voice of God, but it was the voice of the risen Jesus Christ. That voice told Paul that he was persecuting—who? Paul was persecuting Jesus Christ Himself, by persecuting His body, the believers. Paul was no fool. He did the math. Jesus equals God and Jesus equals His Church. So Paul had to do a complete 180 turn and not only become a Christian, but become a Christian evangelist. He had to tell the whole world—or at least the part he could get to—that not only was Jesus the redeemer and savior, but that each one of us could sacramentally die with Jesus and rise to a new life, empowered by the very Spirit of God. And that was for every human being, not just those circumcised into the covenant of Abraham.

We’ve been reading the Gospel of Luke since the first day of Advent, but the story of the Magi and Herod is only found in Matthew. Let me encourage you to read those early verses of Matthew to remind you of how so many different people enabled Jesus to live and come to be from Nazareth, even though He was born in Bethlehem. Many of those actors in this great drama were trying to thwart God’s plan for our salvation, mostly for political or personal gain. But God and his holy angels were acting through a few very holy, enspirited people like Joseph and Mary to do God’s will and bring all of us through to the kingdom of God. May He be blessed forevermore.