Sunday, January 6, 2013: Matthew 2:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6

When I was growing up in a Lutheran parsonage on the prairies of North Dakota, our congregation hosted mission festivals during Epiphany. One week our family entertained two missionaries: a missionary to Japan who’d been born in China to Lutheran missionaries but then forced out by the communists, and a missionary who’d worked in Taiwan after the closing of the bamboo curtain. They filled my imagination with romantic dreams of a world far away.

That year, probably 1953, the weather was colder than it had been in years, and we gathered in church with the coal furnace in the basement feebly sending its dry and pungent air into the meeting. People came through the dangerous cold—it was 45 degrees below zero for at least a week—to hear these people from far and exotic countries. (In 1953 we had no television, only radio, newspapers and books.) We had sent these people out to places we seldom heard from, and they were coming back with thrilling and amazing stories about people to whom they had taken the good news of Jesus Christ. I was enthralled and wanted to return to the East with them.

Epiphany meant mission. That made sense to me because of the imagery of light. Jesus was the light of the world, and he had come into the world to bring the light to everyone. And it was our job to make sure everyone heard about Jesus. About that there was no doubt, even in this place so far away from anywhere of importance.