This sermon was preached for Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord, Sunday, January 5, 2025 at St. Andrew's, Ayer. The texts for this sermon were: Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12, and Psalm 72:1-7,10-14.
Believe it or not, a huge part of priest training is on nonviolent communication and conflict resolution, particularly re-learning how to apologize effectively. Mostly we focused on intent vs. impact. Basically, what’s most important is not your intention behind what you said and did, what’s most important is the impact it had on other people. In particular, the job of repairing and reconciliation is all about really hearing what others experienced, acknowledging the impact of your words and actions, and then doing your best to fix it. It’s really not about explaining what you meant to do or all the things you hoped would happen. I suspect we’ve all been on the receiving end of those apologies: I’m sorry I didn’t mean…I’m sorry you feel that way…it was an accident…And doesn’t it mean so much more when the other person takes a deep breath and says, you know what, I made a mistake. What matters most here is that you got hurt. Here’s what I’ll do to fix it.
This framework is simple, but a game-changer - a life-changer. Where it starts to get really interesting, though, is when you apply this framework of intent vs. impact on top of ethical decision-making. For instance, biblical heroes start to look different when we only consider the impact of their choices and not their intentions.
Take the wisemen. Let's consider the immediate impact of their actions on the people around them. The wisemen set out to find a newborn king, foretold by prophecy, confirmed by the rising of a unique star in the Western sky. But nearing the end of their journey, they readily admit they don’t really know where they are going, or whether they are on the right track. So they seek help from the local ruler, King Herod. In doing so, they get the important information they need to find the baby, but they also alert a jealous tyrant to the presence of a potential usurper. They promise to let the king know where to find him right when he’s most vulnerable and unable to defend himself. Yes, after worshipping baby Jesus, they act to protect the child. They go back on their word and skip out on visiting King Herod again, taking a whole other route home. But that decision is made too late for the children of Bethlehem.
We often skip over this next part of the story in children’s pageants, so you may not be familiar with it, but later in this same chapter, Matthew reports: “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.” The Church marks this tragedy, the Massacre of the Innocents, each year on December 28. It’s a day when we especially remember that the slaughter of innocents on the orders of power hungry tyrants has not abated. That it’s still happening today.
Now, certainly, the wisemen did not intend for their actions to lead to the deaths of innocent babies and toddlers. But their tipping Herod off to the existence of a new threat to his power, and then subsequently enraging him by sneaking off, did exactly that. The immediate impact of their choices was the slaughter of innocents. So does it matter that the wisemen’s actual intention was to celebrate the arrival of a new king, to pay him homage and share in his family’s joy?
On one of her podcasts this past week, Jewish atheist chaplain Vanessa Zoltan reflected on how difficult it is for us to determine when we are being too hard on ourselves and when we are letting ourselves off the hook too easily. To illustrate this dilemma, she told what she called a story “about someone who did something deeply imperfect, yet glorious.”
Vanessa said: “When my grandparents got arrested by the Gestapo, their neighbor, a seamstress, went into their house before the guards came back to loot it. She rescued a lot of my grandparents’ belongings, including their wedding album. This woman did not fight the Nazis, she did not run out onto the street screaming when my grandmother got arrested. But she did more than anyone else. And I’m not sure there was much more that she could have done, actually. But she didn’t let perfection be the enemy of something and I’m grateful to her.”
Like the wisemen, the neighbor’s choice - her choice to not intervene - doomed innocent people to immense suffering. Nothing the neighbor did could undo that mistake. But she still chose to do something: too late, yet just in time; imperfect, yet brave.
We celebrate the wisemen today because their recognition of Jesus’ kingship fulfills messianic prophecy and foreshadows the inclusion of gentiles into God’s great plan of salvation. But I also do think we can celebrate them for their wisdom and moral courage. For bravely changing their plans when they got new information. For imperfectly trying to correct their mistakes. Yes, visiting King Herod in the first place was a costly blunder, one others paid for with their lives. But it was also incredibly brave to later defy that same king when they realized they had put the child in danger. Their intention to protect Jesus is holy, and it matters.
Back when I learned how to pray the way Muslims pray, I learned an important religious concept that I carry with me still. Before a Muslim sets about praying, they pause to state their intention, or niyyah. It reminds the pray-er that even if they make a mistake while praying - even if they say the wrong word or do the wrong movement - their prayer still counts because what matters most to God is the desire in their heart to honor God. We have similar concepts in our ritual practice, too. The intention of the priest and the worshipping community is what ultimately makes the Eucharist valid, not that the exact right ritual is followed to a T. It’s not me, or you, who does the consecrating, after all, it’s God. If it weren’t that way, I’m not sure I would have the courage to do what I do every Sunday. I’d be so terrified of slipping up I wouldn’t be able to step up here and celebrate.
But that’s what can happen anyway, in our lives. We can be so terrified of making a mistake, of the potential impact of our actions, that we choose to stay silent, choose not to act. Then worse, faced with the horrifying consequences of our action or inaction, we can continue to hesitate to do something, anything to correct our mistakes, to apologize and make amends, however imperfectly, however late or insufficient. We let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And we judge others, secretly or out loud, for not doing more. For not screaming when their neighbors are dragged away.
If God didn’t exist, then intention really wouldn’t matter at all. We would be judged solely on the concrete impact of our lives on other people, beings, and the environment. That judgment would be made by our fellow human beings and it would have no eternal consequences. The worth of a person could be calculated in raw, utilitarian numbers: carbon footprint reduced, dollars donated, lives saved.
But that is not what our faith teaches.
Because God exists, because, as the priest prays every Sunday at the beginning of every Episcopal Eucharist, “to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid,” we believe and trust that intention, our internal experience, does factor in to God’s view of us. We believe that God does see our yearnings, our desires and hopes. And we believe it’s Jesus Christ, who lived and breathed and died alongside us as a human being, who will be our ultimate judge. And he has promised grace. Grace, grace, grace. Above all things, grace.
More than that, because God exists, we can also trust that the impact of our actions and words is not only all down to us. God can and does step in, in some mysterious way. God takes our imperfect choices, our faulty plans, and every foot we’ve ever stuck in our mouths and makes good come from it anyway. God takes a horrific public execution on a cross and uses it to save the world.
Rather than forfeiting all personal responsibility on the one hand or giving into perfectionist paralysis on the other, the Good News of Jesus’ grace and God’s providence is precisely what gives Christians the courage to act, boldly and imperfectly.
That is why I find the Thomas Merton prayer to be one of the most hopeful of all. I think it is the wiseman’s prayer, in more ways than one:
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
The wisemen could not see the road ahead of them, not clearly anyway. All they had was the star, and their desire to worship God. They trusted a dream to tell them the right road, even when they felt lost, even when they barely escaped the shadow of death caused by a jealous tyrant. It is their desire to pay homage to Jesus, and then their desire to protect him, that we celebrate today. We celebrate their imperfect moral courage.
As I look toward the new year, 2025, I do believe that what lies ahead of all of us will require moral courage, wisdom, humility, and the willingness to risk making mistakes. Of course, the truth is that this is always the case, in any moment of history. Christians will always be called to moral courage in the face of uncertainty, the evil machinations of empire, and tragic violence. And we will always fall short, even with the best of intentions. The question becomes, in the wake of messing up, what do we do next?
My prayer for this new year is that we will be guided by our desire to reflect God’s will for this broken world. I pray we will be brave enough to change our minds, gracious enough to admit our faults, and humble enough to ask for directions. That we will do something, even if it’s just imperfectly going about fixing our mistakes.
Amen.
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