The Glory of the Ordinary
An Epiphany Meditation on Matthew 2:1-12
This is the first article/chapter of an Epiphany series called Hidden Glory. Because this begins the series, I am making it, and the second article/chapter, freely available to everyone. The rest of the series will only be available to paid subscribers.
MISTAKEN GLORY
This year, Christmas has felt different. The carols have still played. The tinsel was just as bright and the lights still blinked away with their happy little glow. But the joy and laughter has seemed more subdued, smiles have looked a little tighter, and almost everyone has appeared to be turned inward a little more. I’m not surprised. It’s difficult to rest when we are burdened by so much anxiety. It feels wrong to celebrate too much when our neighbours and friends are in so much pain. Hope becomes a distant mirage when just getting through each day is a major accomplishment. But we pay a price when we restrain our wonder.
Our capacity for awe is one our greatest strengths. Our stubborn refusal to give up on glory in even the most inglorious situations can be a life-saving source of hope. When we are attuned to amazement, we become open to unlikely solutions to stubborn problems, and visions of unexpected possibilities in life’s dead ends. In a greyscale world, the sight of even just a tiny smudge of colour can be the difference between despair and resilience. But when our aptitude for wonder is dulled, we become disconnected from the sacredness in ourselves, others, and our world. Life becomes purely functional and beauty loses its meaning. Without awe, we become shadows of ourselves as our creativity, curiosity, and sense of comedy fade into dust.
It is easy for generations born into turbulent times to view dreams as unnecessary luxuries and to turn our focus to the practicalities of surviving the challenges of being alive. But somehow we are never able to completely release our longing for more. In our grief and desperation we ache for a better life, but, we can become confused about what really matters. We can be conned into seeing banality as brilliance and cynicism as originality. And we can begin searching for glory in all the wrong places. In the last few years the values in much of Western society have shifted away from what is truly valuable to what can cause a stir in the marketplace. We pay millions of dollars to live vicariously through celebrities and ‘influencers’ while dismissing those who call us to think, speak, and live deeply. We idolise dominance and winning, while ignoring the loneliness in our souls as our society becomes ever-more fragmented. Our standards for glory are unspeakable wealth, impossible beauty, unlimited fame, unrestrained freedom, and ultimate power. But in our quest for this kind of glorious life, we are missing the point—and our souls know it. We need a new definition of glory, a new capacity for genuine wonder, and a new map to guide our expedition into lives of awe.
FOLLOWING THE MAGI
As the Christmas season comes to an end, the New Year invites us into a celebration known as the Feast of the Epiphany. The name comes from the Greek word epiphaneia, which means ‘appearance;’ or manifestation. In English an epiphany is an experience of sudden insight, revelation, or realisation. Every year on 6 January, the Christian Calendar turns to the magi who came from “the east” to worship the child Jesus. And then in the weeks that follow—continuing all the way to Ash Wednesday—we are given a kaleidoscope of glimpses of how this Jesus was viewed by his friends and foes and how he manifested the divine glory in his life and ministry. In the Epiphany and the season after, we are challenged to change our definitions of glory, to open ourselves to new experiences of awe, and to look for divine splendour in the most unlikely and unexpected places.
The story of the magi appears only in Matthew’s Gospel, and is almost certainly more myth than fact—the traveling star is just one clue.1 But for the writer of the Gospel, this story is an important device for helping us to understand Jesus’ identity and mission. While we may love to sing the carol, We Three Kings of Orient Are, we get a deceptively distorted picture from its lyrics. It was not kings, but magi—most likely Zoroastrian priests—who came to worship Jesus. There is no biblical record of how many magi there were, although we have assumed there were three since only three gifts are mentioned. And they did not come from what we know as the Orient, but more likely from Persia.2
In this simple story, the Gospel writer communicates a multitude of messages. Prophecy is fulfilled as the magi, representing the Gentile nations, come to worship Israel’s Messiah. But Jesus is also presented as both a new Moses—surviving attempted execution by a ruler—and as the embodiment of a new Israel—as his family fled and then he was “called out of Egypt” to finally grow into his ministry.3 But there is another aspect of Matthew’s narrative that is directly related to our relationship with glory, awe, and wonder.
The magi in the Gospel story can be seen as representing all who go in search of transcendence. But, like us, they are confused about what divine glory looks like and where to find it. When they recognised the sign in the heavens and interpreted it as announcing the birth of new king in Israel, they immediately set their course toward the palace. In their thinking, as in ours, wealth, fame, and power are the marks of glory and a palace is the appropriate place for a king to be born. But when they arrived, what they found was anything but glorious. The palace may have looked grand, but it was built on corruption by a king and his sycophants who embed the opposite of the values of God’s reign that Jesus proclaimed in his life and message. Instead of the humility to worship a king greater than himself, Herod’s arrogance led him to plot murder—false glory always seeks to destroy its challengers. The world of Herod’s palace was not awesome, wonderful, or glorious. It was a place of deception, competition, corruption, and the insatiable hunger for more that consumes all in its path. Fortunately, the magi had the wisdom to recognise their mistake and the humility to learn how to correct it.
When they finally found the Christ Child, he was in a modest home in an insignificant town. He had no title, no wealth, and no connections worth mentioning. But when they encountered him, they were in awe of the glory and they offered their gifts and themselves in the wonder of worship. This was a world of invitation, not competition; of authenticity, not play-acting; and of divine glory hidden in the ordinary stuff of life, not artificial glory paraded in exclusive clubs and extravagant displays.
GRASPING REAL GLORY
As we wrestle with the challenge of living in this complex and challenging world, there is no shortage of voices telling us that life, joy, and glory are only to be found in the capitalistic race to the top. We are bombarded with messages that promise to reveal the secret to attaining a glorious life. But it takes only a cursory look at our society to recognise that this is a false glory sold by false prophets. The truth is that the real glory, the divine glory, we seek is not far off in some palace. It requires no special credentials or famous connections. It is already with us and within us in the mess, humility, and unpredictability of our ordinary lives.
It is not that our turbulent world has a shortage of glory. It is that we miss the glory in the chaos as we gaze at the bright shiny objects that have been sold to us as valuable. Glory is not found in winning political power, military victory, or economic excess. It radiates in every smile of solidarity between strangers. It gleams in every generous gift of sharing between neighbours. It beckons us in the beauty of babies, the colours of wild flowers, the moodiness of the sky before a storm, the stillness between tender lovers, and in a billion other ordinary and hidden places that might easily be mistaken for worthless and meaningless, but that, if we look carefully enough, are custodians of wonder.
Our calling as those who have seen God’s glory in the Christ Child, is to choose daily to be seekers of, witnesses to, and carriers of glory into our world. To do this we will need to learn to trust our senses as we open them to the hidden glories around us. We will need to nurture the practice of taking notes (literally in journals and figuratively in our awareness) when we encounter authentic beauty, truth, and goodness. And we will need to practice the habits of gratitude and generosity of spirit as we share what we have noticed with those around us.
If we will turn away from the artificial awe of our world’s pretend palaces, opt out of the glory games of our competitive culture, and go in search of the wonder that is found in the unrecognised ordinariness around us, we will discover, even in our anxiety and grief, that divine glory is ever-present and we will discover the power to live fully, authentically, and courageously. And in that very ordinary pursuit, we will find irrepressible joy, inexpressible wonder, and the kind of abundance and glory we really need.
See Shelly Matthews, Commentary on Matthew 2:1-12, on Working Preacher, December 28, 2014, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/magi-visit/commentary-on-matthew-21-12-2 (Accessed 18 December 2024)
See Niveen Sarras, Commentary on Matthew 2:1-12, on Working Preacher, January 6, 2019, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/epiphany-of-our-lord/commentary-on-matthew-21-12-8 (Accessed 18 December 2024)
See Stephen Hultgren, Commentary on Matthew 2:1-12, on Working Preacher, January 6, 2015, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/epiphany-of-our-lord/commentary-on-matthew-21-12-5