Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 2, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Today we celebrate Epiphany Sunday. Actually, it isn’t technically Epiphany until next Thursday, January 6; but never mind. We’re marking it today. It is the day in the church year when we commemorate the visit of the Wise Men to the infant Jesus as told in Chapter 2 of Matthew. An epiphany is an appearance of God, and we call this day Epiphany because it marks the first appearance of God in Jesus Christ to the Gentiles in the persons of the Wise Men.

Now, in the late first century when Matthew wrote this story it was important for him to say that God came in Jesus to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews. That was a big issue in those days. It is, however, hardly an issue in our day. Those who, like Matthew, Luke, and Paul, insisted that the revelation of God in Christ was for Gentiles as well as for Jews carried the day 1,900 years ago. So we have to ask: Does Matthew’s story of Gentiles coming to Christ mean anything in our day?

I trust it won’t surprise you that my answer to that question is yes. That Gentiles can come to Christ is not an issue for us, but those figures who came to Jesus in Matthew’s story aren’t just Gentiles. Matthew calls them "magi" in the original Greek. Scholars tell me that that word meant those who constituted men of science in those days, namely, astrologers. In those times they were the people who occupied themselves with the life of the mind and with discerning wisdom. Most English translations call them "wise men," and that’s not a bad translation. Whether by today’s standards they were wise or not, they were men who pursued the life of the mind. They were the intellectuals of their time.

Now, whether or not Gentiles can come to Christ is not an issue for us, but whether or not intellectuals can is. It is for many Christians who reject the life of the mind and, more importantly for me at least, it is for a great many intellectuals in our world today. The truth of the matter is that most-not all but most-people in our culture who pursue the life of the mind, who consider themselves intellectuals, consider Christianity to be intellectually suspect or even disreputable. They consider it incompatible with reason and therefore false, nothing better than an ancient superstition not worthy of a serious person’s time and attention. I’ve known extremely intelligent people all my adult life with that attitude toward faith. When I was in graduate school at the University of Washington in the 1970s, my Ph.D. advisor was considered something of a freak by most of his colleagues because in addition to being a world class scholar he was a practicing Christian. That combination was, and is, very rare in secular academic circles.

The most vocal and visible parts of Christianity in our country today do their level best to prove these intellectual detractors of our faith right. They push the pseudo-science of creationism on the public schools and insist that one of the great discoveries of the human mind-the processes of evolution-is incompatible with the faith. They insist on an utterly untenable literal treatment of certain ancient writings-the Bible-and reject the use of the tools of the mind in understanding them. They deny the understandings of modern medicine and psychology and insist that ancient human cultural understandings and prejudices are the word and will of God. If all of that were what Christianity really is, I’d be right there with its learned detractors calling it nothing but ignorant superstition. I’d say about Matthew’s story of the Wise Men: Maybe first century intellectuals could come to Jesus, but twenty-first century intellectuals sure can’t.

I suppose it’s obvious, however, that I don’t think that that’s what Christianity really is. I mean, here I am, an ordained Christian pastor, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I make no claim to great wisdom; but, as most of you know, I do value the life of the mind very highly; and I know that Christian faith is perfectly compatible with the life of the mind.

So why do so many intellectual people think that it isn’t? The answer lies, I think, in the fact that since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century Western culture has essentially reduced the life of the mind to the techniques and truths of science. For most of modern Western culture only that is true, and only that is worthy of study and acceptance, that can be discovered using the scientific method of observation and (supposedly) objective testing.

Yet for most of human history people have known that the life of the mind includes much more than that. Science deals with one level of reality, the level of that which is observable using the five common senses, however they may be aided by technology. The human mind, however, when it isn’t fettered with the shackles of rationalism, knows that there is more to reality than that. There is what Paul Tillich called the "depth dimension" of reality. This is the realm of the spiritual, the reality of which is actually quite apparent to the human mind when it is freed from the blinders of scientism, that is, science elevated above its proper role and function to the status of exclusive truth. The liberated mind knows the reality of Spirit, and the liberated mind thirsts for Spirit’s refreshing, life-giving water.

The mind freed into the reality of the spiritual has no interest in denying the truths of science. It accepts those truths gladly. They too are the product of the human mind, which is, after all, one of God’s great gifts to us. The mind freed into the reality of the spiritual, however, is never satisfied only with the truths of science. It seeks deeper truth. It seeks spiritual truth. That’s what those Wise Men of Matthew’s were doing as they journeyed across the desert to Bethlehem so long ago. Jesus Christ is our spiritual truth. Wise Ones sought him at his birth. Wise ones seek him still. Amen.