Epiphany 2

A reflection on 1 Samuel 3:1-10 by The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski

The rectory at my former parish in the Chicago area had a wooden deck outside the kitchen that over looked 2-1/2 acres of land, bordered by a small section of woods. At one time this deck had surely been the site for family cookouts and fun, but, because the house had been empty for three years, the deck was practically unusable due to a tilt from end to the other. Underneath the deck various animals had built dens and so it had also become a wild life habitat.
One day, as we were moving in, my dog stated barking wildly at the sliding glass door that led to the deck. And, there outside, standing on its hind legs, was a woodchuck, baring its big buck teeth. This continued for several months until ventually the woodchuck moved on, finding a better home somewhere in the neighborhood.

Over the next few years the various underground dens that resided under the deck, became home to rabbits and an occasional possum. The rabbits we enjoyed, but the possum we evicted, immediately with vinegar and moth balls.

One year we were startled to discover that a red fox had moved in under our deck. Later we realized that it was a couple, a male and a female red fox. Then, by late winter, the baby foxes made an appearance. Thankfully the red fox is a timid creature, mostly vegetarian, and more afraid of humans than we are of them.

As spring unfolded we were delighted to see the fox family, usually late at night, out in the yard, playing. In this case one fox would place himself way out on the perimeter of the yard while the other brought the babies out of the den and taught them to follow, and play, and become fox. At first we thought there were only one or two babies, but in time we saw them all, 8 in total. And very cute. For the next few months the fox family and the Pilarski family learned to live side by side, two very different families, different species, living in harmony.

Easter came early that year. I remember it was a long day, three services followed by a family gathering at my mother in laws. Instead of the usual relaxing and feasting, we ordered Chinese food and began the long process of packing her house. We spent hours going through her belongings, organizing, packing, and preparing to move her from her home of 50 years to a nearby condo.

After all that work was done my family and I headed home, exhausted. But no sooner had we arrived home than we discovered that something was horribly wrong. Our animals knew it first – the dogs were pacing and pacing and grumbling, the cats running here and there from window to window, yowling. Dan and I began the process of investigating the situation. After some effort we realized that one of the baby fox had fallen down the window well and was stuck at the basement level of our house. It appears that in their nocturnal playing the baby had wandered off and fell into this open chasm. The momma fox was beside her self trying to look out for the others and call her baby back to her. But the baby was unable to climb up a four foot drop lined in sheet metal.

Dan and I called the wildlife rescue company only be told that they could not do anything. We knew better than to try and fish the baby out or open the window from the basement and grab it. We knew we had to find a way to get the baby out, if for no other reason than the crying of the baby was upsetting all the animals in my house, both human and otherwise. Finally Dan, the ever resourceful one, decided that we needed to build a ladder to put into the well and hope the baby could and would climb out.

And so we did. Using a 1 x 6 board as the base, we nailed wooden strips cut from 1 x 2 board, creating a solid platform with steps. As we built the ladder, the crying escalated. The dogs got more anxious, the cats yowled louder, and our kids were beginning to panic. Then, as if the chaos wasn’t bad enough and the anxiety high enough, and our fatigue great enough, we realized that another baby had fallen into a second well, and so we now had to build two ladders. Awhile later, the ladders built, and, with me keeping a careful eye on momma fox, Dan slowly went outside and placed a ladder in each of the wells.

Back inside the house we watched as the momma fox called to the babies. To our amazement, one baby, and then the other, figured out how to climb the ladder. As they came to the surface of the ground the momma caught each baby by the scruff of its neck and hauled it to the safety of the den. Within thirty minutes, or so, of placing the ladders in the wells the babies were safe. And our house was quiet.

For me this story is like a parable - of a time of great anxiety when, somehow, two otherwise incompatible members of God’s creation, came together, worked together, and turned chaos into peace.

The reality of God’s love, of the peace of Christ, becomes a reality in our lives, in our world, when we are able to listen to God’s call to us, working together to turn the chaos of our lives, and our world, into the peace of Christ. Our scripture reading today reminds us that, listening and hearing God is a challenge. As human beings we put up lots of roadblocks to God. Thankfully God calls us over and over until our response becomes like Samuel’s, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.”

Last week in his sermon Ed gave us a lesson on what it means to be a Christian, and to follow Christ. Appropriately so Ed grounded this teaching in the baptismal covenant, pointing out that being a Christian and following Christ, or in the language of our readings today, Listening to God, is done by living into the five points of the covenant – continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, seek and serve Christ in others, respect the dignity of others, share in the breaking of the bread, resist evil, whenever you sin, repent and return to the Lord, proclaim the Good News of God in Christ, love your neighbor as yourself, strive for peace – and, most importantly we can do this with God’s help.

God does not ask us to do these things, follow Christ and love as Christ loves, all on our own initiative. God asks us to do these things and then God helps us do it. And that is the foundation of trust. Working together toward the same objective of listening to God, and following God, ultimately enables us to live through all kinds of anxiety calmly and with a deep sense of hope, whether it’s building a ladder for a baby fox, or building a church community.

The Feast of Epiphany, transferred to Sunday, Jan. 4

A Reflection on Matthew 2:1-12 by The Rev. Vern Woodlief, Deacon



“O Little Town of Bethlehem”. . . a hymn dear to us. “Bethlehem” means “House of Bread” or, we might say, village of grainfields. . . a lowly place, yet chosen as the birthplace of Christ, who is the Bread of Life.

Matthew presents Herod, the older King, as cunning and cruel, understandably unnerved by the announcement that there is a new King.

Herod has magnificence; Christ was born in a manger.
Herod had energy; Christ was a helpless little babe.
Herod had power and used it to cruel ends; Christ had compassion and a different power.
Herod was crafty; Christ guileless.

There is lots of discussion about the Magi. They were men skilled in philosophy, medicine and natural science. All men believed in astrology. They believed they could forecast a man’s future by the star under which he was born. The Magi nightly studied the stars so when a brilliant new star appeared, it seems as if God was announcing some special thing.

The ancient world was anticipating the coming of a king. Roman historians knew of this. Herod summoned his chief priests and scribes who quoted Micah 5:2 to him. “But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Herod sent the wise men to find this child so he could come and worship him.
And this brilliant star led them. . . led them to the Light of the World.

Sam Portaro in his Brightest and Best comments on the Magi.

“The magi may not have been what we have thought them to be. The number of the magi, now accepted as three, is logical conjecture, based upon the number of gifts recorded in Matthew’s gospel, but there is no specific number in the text. Is it not possible that there were only two magi and that one brought an extra offering? Or might there have been more – say six – all of whom pitched in to pay for the three gifts? We cannot even be sure that they were kings; the term magus was often a contemptuous name for iterant magicians and entertainers.

“I rather like the notion that the magi might have been traveling entertainers, member of a class commonly accepted as fools in every sense of that word. Of course, such a possibility radically alters the asymmetry of the crèche, where the exotically adorned kings clearly upstage everyone, including the winsome animals and the Holy Family itself. In that regard, the magi are the most modern of all our religious symbols, sympathetic icons of power and wealth that draw more attention than a child born in poverty, more attention even than God.

“There is something right about a troupe of wandering artists whose whim to follow a star brings them to the cradle of Jesus. That might explain their unthinking stupidity of dropping in on Herod, asking the whereabouts of his local rival. Surely a genuinely learned person of the period would have known enough of local politics and human nature to surmise that no one in Herod’s position was going to countenance a second king within his own borders. That they may have been itinerant entertainers is also a likely explanation of their later mistrust of Herod and their ability to slip out of his territory quickly and without incident, even as they probably skipped town on other occasions when the heat was on.

“. . . There is no reason why Matthew or any other gospeler would have had cause to call these people Kings; had they been kings, would not those who recorded the story have surely marked that detail with some pride?

“Yet, we want the story the way tradition gives it to us. As it stands, the story suggests that the rich and powerful, the learned and the astute are the first to recognize and name the infant Jesus a king. This validation accords with our own belief that superior intellect and study produces insight, that trust is suspect until it is acknowledged by power and wealth. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, not only at the manger but in life.

“What is more difficult – and hence more exotic, mysterious, and wonderful – is the possibility that some simple foolish people drawn to the side of the manger, might surrender everything to the unknown child therein. How these travelers came by their gifts, we cannot know. But is it so strange that entertainers and magicians should possess gold, frankincense and myrrh? If we lavish material wealth on their modern counterparts, is it not conceivable that they might have come by those gifts in the course of their travels, as recompense for their talent to amuse?

“There is only one thing about this story that we can hold with any certainty – whoever these people were and wherever they were from, they were henceforth called “wise.” Their wisdom was not necessarily the precondition of their visitation, but it was certainly the one gift they took with them from that stable.

“Wisdom, then, is not the prerequisite to relationship with Jesus, but the product of knowing the Lord. Those who encounter God come away with more and better, than what they bring. And is this not always the case in every relationship? If we ever come to know wisdom in our relationships, are we not always wiser on the way home?”

Jesus came into the world to live and, in the end, to die for us. The gifts of the wise men were gold for a king, frankincense for a priest and myrrh for one who was to die. Even at his cradle they foretold that he was to be the true King, the perfect High Priest and the Savior of the world.

May we too, follow the brilliant light.