A week into our first New Year’s in Puerto Rico the neighbor boys asked our twins: “¿Qué les trajeron los reyes?” “What did the kings bring you?” Three Kings Day, the last of the twelve days of Christmas, was a much anticipated event. Like the celebration of Sinterklaas in the Netherlands, children prepare for the day by placing hay in their shoes the evening before. For the kings’ horses, of course. Three Kings Day is still all about gifts; the gifts received, not given.
Three Kings Day, the feast of the Epiphany in the Christian liturgical calendar, is a new year’s festival. Many Christians, however, celebrate another, more secular, New Year’s festival: Resolutions. If Christmas is for giving others gifts, Resolutions is for giving ourselves gifts: no more smoking, dieting, more exercise, be more friendly, don’t touch what isn’t yours, and so on. And we fail, every year, usually. So, what kinds of resolutions?
An Epiphany
One of our resolutions may be to put Christ back into Christmas, make it less commercial. Next year, of course. Perhaps take over the Dutch tradition of small gifts, with poems, several weeks before Christmas. Too counter-cultural, I’m sure. Or do the twelve days of Christmas. In Puerto Rico we once practiced this: one gift a day for each child until Three Kings Day. We thought it was a good thing. We had a twelve day lament. Our laudable goal of connecting two important events on the liturgical calendar met with resolute opposition. We stuck with the Puerto Rican tradition of having a family night on “Noche Buena,” the night before Christmas. We still do.
Three Kings Day, Epiphany, is not about us receiving gifts, however, but about Christ receiving recognition of his kingship, and that from the ends of the earth (Ps. 72:10-11), right under the world’s nose. The powers that be were not pleased with this recognition (Matt. 2:3, 7-8), and sought to destroy him (Matt. 2:16-18). Herod’s agents slaughtered many children in Bethlehem.
Giving Christ gifts put him in danger; he escaped to die another day. It also places the giver in danger: to give Christ gifts is to honor his Kingship and no other; it puts the giver in deadly conflict with the powers of this world. But is that not what Paul urges his readers to do? Give Christ the gift of undying loyalty, be a living sacrifice in body and soul (Romans 12:1-2).
Sacrificial resolutions
Whether you want to quit smoking, clean up your language, work on your lust or greed, it will cost you dearly. You yourself have to change. The world’s inhabitants agree, it is good not to covet another’s spouse, to quit smoking, not to overeat. All are worthy goals and resolutions. But, what kind of resolutions is the church capable of, what goals does it consider crucial, worth dying for; what can the church resolve to do that the world has no interest in, and even opposes?
Let our worship connect more with the church of all ages, its hymns, prayers, and liturgies, for the sake of those whom the Lord will gather into his fold today. Serious worship takes place in the presence of God, not in the presence of the world. Let us be noticeably Christian in our liturgy and life-style. Let our worship be undefiled by the culture of this world.
Let us read Scripture as it has been once for all delivered to the saints. As in early Christianity, there are those today who would add “gospels” because, it is argued, the church did not give a fair hearing to other voices. But the so-called gospels of Peter, Philip and Judas take away from the apostolic testimony about Jesus Christ. The world loves these gospels; it makes Jesus more palatable. If Jesus was married he is a real guy, one “we can truly understand.” What can be wrong with that? Besides, those gospels give more room to women. Isn’t it time to expose the male dominated foundations of the church? So the argument goes. Let’s not add to Scripture for the sake of the world.
Let the church examine its ways with multiculturalism. Let it have an epiphany and resolve not to mirror the world’s desires for tolerant pluralities that have a strange way of undermining the truth we have confessed throughout the ages. Are the ecumenical creeds and the post-Reformation confessions really only true, or mostly true, for their own time? Let our commitment to the creeds and confessions remain as firm in 2057 as it was in 1857, 1907, and 1957.
None of these possible resolutions is easy to keep; we’ll be working on them way beyond next Epiphany. Until Jesus comes again. May he find us faithful, if tired to the bone.
