‘Where that Bread is, there is Bethlehem’: encountering Emmanuel with the Magi

At the evening Eucharist for The Epiphany of Our Lord, 7.1.24

Matthew 2:10-11a

“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage.”

In the quietness of this evening hour, on this day when we celebrate the Epiphany of Our Lord, we reflect upon the Magi adoring the Christ Child.

They see the Christ Child and they kneel before Him in adoration.

That immediacy might lead us to think that the experience of the Magi - who could see, reach out, and touch the Christ Child - is significantly different to our experience, as we assemble this evening for these Holy Mysteries.

We have heard in Saint Matthew’s Gospel that the Magi “On entering the house … saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage".

We, by contrast, gather in a parish church, in a land far away from Bethlehem, many centuries later.

Is this feast of the Epiphany merely a commemoration of an ancient, long past event? 

Or does the Epiphany - the adoration of the Christ Child by the Magi - reveal the meaning of our experience as Christians today?

The poet Malcolm Guite says of the Magi, “when these three arrive they bring us with them” [1]. 

We begin with the recognition that the Magi are like us: they are Gentiles, not descendants of Abraham, not of the people of Israel. 

Their worship of the Christ Child - when the Magi knelt down and paid homage - is a joyful proclamation that the One promised by the prophets of Israel, Jesus Christ, is Emmanuel, God with us, the world’s Redeemer.

At this Eucharist we have read in holy Scripture of "the boundless riches of Christ", brought to the Gentiles "through the gospel" [2]; and we have offered our praise of Christ, praise we are called to offer throughout our lives: ‘you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ’. 

The Magi adoring the Christ Child reveals the meaning and significance of our confession and adoration of Jesus Christ, proclaimed in the Scriptures; alongside and with the Magi we are Gentiles who confess Jesus Christ to be the world’s Redeemer, God Incarnate, the One in whom all peoples are brought to share in the very life and light of God.

“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother”: the Magi see and, we can assume, touch the Christ Child.

Rather than being an experience entirely different to our own, this reveals the meaning and significance of what we do this evening, as we celebrate the Holy Mysteries.

For here in the signs of bread and wine we see and touch Christ our Lord present with us, for us, giving Himself to us in His Body and Blood, that - in the words of the Eucharistic Prayer - “he may dwell in us and we in him” [3].

When the Magi see the Christ Child, it reveals the truth and reality of this Sacrament: that we in bread and wine upon the Holy Table behold Christ our Lord; that in partaking of this Sacrament of His Body and Blood, “we are very members incorporate in the mystical body” of Christ [4].

One of the great theologians of our Anglican tradition, the early 17th century bishop Lancelot Andrewes, beautifully captured the enduring meaning of the Epiphany when he said, “where that Bread is, there is Bethlehem for ever … the Church in this sense is very Bethlehem no less than the town itself” [5].

To celebrate this feast of the Epiphany is not to merely commemorate an ancient event. 

It is of infinitely greater significance, a manifestation, a revelation of our experience as Christians today, now as we gather in this parish church for the Eucharist.

“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage.”

On this Epiphany Sunday, the Magi’s adoration of the Christ Child reveals the very heart of the Christian life today: as we confess and give praise to Christ our Lord, proclaimed in the Scriptures; as we see bread and wine consecrated upon the altar; as we kneel to partake of this Sacrament - we are encountering Christ our Lord, no less than the Magi, in reality and truth.

[1] From BCP 2004 Holy Communion Two, Eucharistic Prayer One. The phrase is also the concluding petition in the Prayer of Humble Access: "that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us".

[2] Ephesians 3:8&6, from the epistle appointed for the Epiphany.

[3] Malcolm Guite in 'A Sonnet for Epiphany'.

[4] From BCP 2004 Holy Communion One, Prayer of Thanksgiving.

[5] From Andrewes' sermon for Christmas Day, 1615.

The illustration is 'Adoration of the Magi' by Fr. Philippe Péneaud, from the Orthodox tradition. The wood carving is, of course, a renewed expression of the 12th century Romanesque depiction of this scene in Autun Cathedral.