Homily: “Then they opened their treasures”
I was a rather strange child. And perhaps the best example of this “Strangeness” is exemplified by Christmases past. I have 6 siblings, 3 brothers and 3 sisters. On Christmas Eve it was the family tradition that Dad took all of us out around our small town to take in all the neighbors’ Christmas lights. While we were out, that’s when “Santa Claus” came. So upon our return we would walk (or more truthfully) run into the house to be greeted by a small pile of toys set aside for each one of us.
Now, here’s where the “strangeness” comes in. I would always play with my toys alone and when I was done with them, for the time being, I would carefully put them back in their boxes. I would strive to come as close as I could to returning them to that state they knew before the box was broken open. If they had been wrapped I’m quite sure I would have re-wrapped them! Now no one else could play with my toys for fear that they might not only possibly break them, but even just scratch or smudge them. Decades later after I had been collecting small toy cars called: Matchbox cars for years I finally, grudgingly gave them away to my oldest nephew and they still looked brand new. Within days, I’m quite sure, my nephew demolished them! Because he “played” with them. He “enjoyed” them. He felt no need to over-protect them!
I have never had a problem receiving gifts or even being sincerely grateful for them. But I’ve often struggled with giving “my” gifts away. Maybe because, even as a child, I somehow intuited that to risk the gift was to risk my “self.”
There’s a line in our gospel passage from Matthew that stands out to me this Epiphany. We are told the Magi “opened their treasures and offered them.” It’s a simple two step process: They opened and then they offered. And as one commentator on Matthew tells us: “The gifts communicate what the gift-bearers are and what they want to give.” The Magi didn’t just give gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they gave themselves. They were giving their own longing to believe, their own longing to surrender, their own longing to participate in God’s on-going work of salvation.
So you could say: “I am the gift of God.” “You are the gift of God. And none of us can stay in our safe, pristine boxes, wrapped in pretty paper and protected against reality. Just as much as, like the Magi, we cannot stay safe at home and we too must launch out onto journeys into unknown lands. We must befriend our own strangeness, our own estranged selves. We don’t know the gift until we give it away. Just as we don’t fully know ourselves until we give ourselves away.
Let us listen again to those beautiful words from the Prophet Isaiah, which we just heard:
“Arise, shine for your light has come, the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you.
Raise your eyes and look about; they gather and come to you…
Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart will throb and overflow.
The prophet is speaking of you and of me. When we follow that simple two-step process as modeled by the Magi: Open and Offer, then the gift of who we are; who we are becoming, and who we were created to be comes to light, is made manifest: The giver is revealed as the gift.
As for that strange child carefully repackaging his Christmas gifts. I hope I’ve learned as an adult what I would not always allow myself as a child: the reckless power of play. As a child I felt the gift was so wonderful it had to be preserved at all costs. As an adult I’ve learned the gift is so wonderful it has to be given away at all costs. Only then is the gift understood. Only then can we begin to know who we are in the eyes of God.
So what is the particular “strangeness” that haunts you? What is the well-preserved box you keep yourself in? What is the foreign land beckoning you to a new journey? And how are you being invited this Epiphany to break open the treasure and offer the gift that is yourself? The Magi struck out on a journey to see a Newborn King. They found him and in his eyes they found their deepest selves and therefore they had to go home by a different route. They had made their way to Bethlehem by a well-measured and carefully crafted map. They went home along an unknown and unpredictable path. And I imagine they loved every minute of it!
We are the gift. And our light is only made manifest in giving that gift away.
Chiaroscuro Spirituality 