Do you still have your tree up?  January 6^th is Epiphany after all.  It is Christmas in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and celebrates not only the birth of Christ but the arrival of the Magi and the star that guided them.  For us, Epiphany is the twelfth day of Christmas (as in “twelve drummers drumming”)—the end of the Christmas season.

Let me say that it is okay if you have taken your tree down.  Epiphany is not just a Sunday, but a season of the church year.  It is a six-week season so, actually, you had better take your tree down because by Ash Wednesday it will be a big, brown tumbleweed in your living room.

For me, one of the most powerful lessons of Epiphany has to do with the Magi.  It has to do with trust.

Picture it: Here were these three (maybe fewer, maybe more) mysterious “wise men,” “Magi,” or “kings” who traveled from probably Persia following a star.  They were looking for “a child who has been born King of the Jews”.

The truth is that the Jews had no king.  Since the Roman occupation, there has been no Hebrew royalty.  Still, they trusted that they had the right quest.  They weren’t exactly sure where they were going so they made the mistake of asking directions of King Herod in Jerusalem (and henceforth men have never asked for directions in order to avoid repeating such a calamity).

Surprisingly, Herod ends up pointing them in the right direction—to Bethlehem which, according to scripture, was where any King of the Jews would need to be born.  When they get to Bethlehem, they find Mary and Jesus.  They worship Jesus and offer him their precious gifts.

The trust part is this: They must have had an image in their heads of what a royal birth would look like.  They were looking for a King, after all.  What they found in the backwater town of Bethlehem surely did not fit that image.  

Where was the palace?  Where were the attendants?  And, maybe most importantly after traveling in the desert for who knows how long, where was the banquet hall?

None of that was to be found.  What they did find was Mary and Jesus in “a house”  That’s it.  How did they know they were in the right place?  How did they know that these were the right people?  How did they know, when they departed, that they hadn’t left these precious gifts with completely random people?  What if the real king was two doors up the block?

Trust.  They couldn’t be sure so they had to trust.  I think we could all use a shot of trust when it comes to our faith lives.  We need it because usually when God calls us to do something—to reach beyond ourselves as the Magi did—it doesn’t make sense.  So we resist.  We ask a lot of unanswerable questions and in the absence of any good answers, we do nothing.  And God’s work goes unfinished.

The Magi teach us that we don’t need answers.  We don’t need to be sure.  We just need to trust.  Trust that our journey is not in vain.  Trust that the person in front of us is the right person.  Trust that we are where we are supposed to be; doing what we are supposed to be doing.