Epiphany: Universalism as God’s Immigration Policy
Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12
Epiphany Sunday places us on a perilous journey of identity discovery through studies (science) and risky adventures of faith (and reason). The recognition of our collective citizenship of the whole world comes after a genuine conversion. Ask a convert what it means to abandon former ways, and you will hear a battle cry and an endless struggle with enemies within who pretended never to have existed! The choice to stand on the side of God, truth, and justice activates hidden enemies and unleashes wars and strives! Let us fight to throw open every closed border because the Creator left them open as a proof of our collective citizenship of the earth.
The Gospel today draws us into a world quietly shaken by the birth of a child. A world that pretends that there is no God and prefers to rule without God. But as the world buries its head in the sand, Jesus is born in Bethlehem, unnoticed by the powerful, yet his coming disturbs kings (and our democracies), unsettles cities (the strongholds of atheism and secularism), and sets strangers (God-seekers) on a long and risky journey. The strangers who are God’s children all along but remain unacknowledged because of distance and ignorance. Epiphany is like reading a Will to reveal the real intentions of a testator! Jesus does not announce himself with political maneuvers, armies, or parliamentary coups. He reveals himself through a star, through Sacred Scriptures, and through the restless hearts of seekers wanting to assert and claim their identity and place among the children of God.
Wise men arrive from the East—foreigners, outsiders, people without the Law or the Prophets, yet loved and by God and enlisted among the naturalized children of God. They do not belong to the chosen people, so the chosen people thought, yet they are the first to ask the most important question: “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” It is striking that this confession of Jesus’ kingship comes not from Jerusalem, not from the Temple, but from Gentiles who have read the signs of the heavens and dared to follow them. God speaks to them in a language they understand, the language of creation and nature, showing us that divine grace always meets people where they are, but never leaves them where it found them.
Herod, by contrast, knows the Scriptures but not the God they proclaim. He is troubled—not with wonder, but with fear. For him, the birth of a king is a threat, not a promise. Around him, all Jerusalem is troubled as well, a city accustomed to living under fear and compromise. Here the Gospel confronts us with a hard truth: it is possible to know the Bible, to know the traditions, even to know where the Messiah is to be born, and still refuse to move toward him because of selfish-ambition and the inconvenience of the truth of Sacred Scriptures. Knowledge alone does not save; it must become obedience to God’s commandments.
The scribes can quote the prophet Micah with precision. Bethlehem is named. The promise is clear. Yet they stay where they are. The wise men, who possess only a star and a question, who understand nature and creation, set out to seek and find the Savior. They attained the knowledge of the Creator through Creation. Hence, they travel farther, risk more, and when the star leads them to the child, their search turns into joy—exceedingly great joy. The risk that leads to God is always followed by a happy ending – finding God. This joy is not excitement at an idea but delight at the presence of God. They enter the house, see the child with Mary, his mother, and they fall down. Before words, before gifts, before understanding, there is worship.
Their gifts speak without speech. Gold confesses kingship. Frankincense proclaims divinity. Myrrh foreshadows suffering and death. In their worship, the whole mystery of Christ is already present: King, God-with-us, and the one who will give his life for the world. Even at his birth, the shadow of the cross is not absent—but neither is the promise of glory. In some ways, the risky journey of the Magis foreshadows the perilous journey of a Christian who chooses to seek out and follow God. It also announces the audacity of hope that animates Christians who risk their lives to find and remain in the company of God—the non-conformists of earthly and human conspiracies.
Herod pretends he wants to worship, we see this with our leaders today, but his heart seeks control and consolidation of his power. This is the parennial script of the anti-God. On the contrary, the wise men truly worship, and their hearts learn obedience—there is no duplicity in a Christian. The wise men did not worship before now because they waited to find the Lord to worship him, and not the idols and statues erected by power-drunk oligarchs and pecuniarily possessed anti-God mongers. Warned in a dream, the wise men return home by another way. This is not merely a safer route; it is a changed life. No one encounters Christ and returns the same way they came. To meet him is to be redirected.
Matthew equates the rising of a star from the orients with the birth of God’s universalist adoption of humanity as his children. Paul will equate the rising star with “those who are far”. The luminaries—sun, moon, stars—will turn to human beings for Paul because the imageries of the starry night and sandy beach were God’s symbols of the myriad children of Abraham at covenant discussion with God. Epiphany announces the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant of universalism of God’s children and borderless world. Paul is conclusive in his identity assertion and immigration declaration: “that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel”.
Epiphany asks each of us where we stand. Are we troubled like Herod and imprisoned by the fear of non-conformity with the world and evil, afraid of what Christ might change in us? Are we informed like the scribes, yet unmoved because we are used to evil and virtue unsettles us? Or are we seekers like the wise men, willing to journey, to kneel, to offer what we have, and to go home transformed? Let bring in all refugees and immigrants because they too have equal share in the citizenship of the world. No one has the right to close any borders because the Creator keeps all borders open!
Today, the Church rejoices because the light has appeared—not only for Israel, but for all nations. Christ’s epiphany is revealed as the arrival and takeover of a God whose power is love, whose throne is humility, and whose kingdom cannot be secured by fear. May we have the courage to follow the star placed before us, the humility to fall down in authentic and true worship, and the grace to return by another way, abandoning our old ways of sins and collusion with the architects of human destruction and border closures, but carrying Christ’s light into our universalized and open borders world.