About 15 years ago, I was in the habit of reading a story to the children at the preschool in the church I pastored. This was often a humbling experience. Very young children have trouble saying the name “Pegâ€â€¦it often comes out as “pig.†I was respectfully addressed as “Pastor Pig.†Having a life-long battle of the bulge, it was hard not to take this personally.
In the advent of 1993, I was telling the Christmas story to the 4-year old afternoon class. It just so happened that there were several church children in this class so they all felt like the knew me and were very comfortable saying anything that was on their mind. I finished what I thought was a brilliant retelling of the Christmas story when little Samantha called out “Pastor Pig, Pastor Pig you forgot part of the story! You didn’t tell the part where the evil King kills all the babies!â€
It helps to know that Samantha had a very challenging 2-year old brother and a brand new baby at home. Perhaps this story gave her some hope or secret delight. But this part of the Christmas story somehow doesn’t fit with the enchantment of the crèche, with Mary and Joseph and the little sheep and shepherds and magi. But Samantha was right, the real story is far less enchanting than the manger scene suggests and it is far more like real life in the near east even today. And just as it was important to Samantha, it is important to us that we tell the whole truth.
The story of the Slaughter of Innocents follows the mysterious appearance of the Magi. Last year, our lay preacher clearly had not had any biblical training on this subject and was quite adamant that “Magi†could not possibly mean astrologer because she didn’t believe in such things. Ah, that reality were only what we believed in.! What a comforting delusion.
The “wise men†were astrologers (the meaning of the term Magi) and were always known to be astrologers until US evangelicals had a problem admitting to such. Astrology is foundational to Hinduism and to most every other ancient religion on a global basis sharing the same signs of the Zodiac on every continent. This is not part of our understanding of reality in the 21st century but it totally was accepted as reality in the time and place of Jesus. Why should we be horrified that the writer of Matthew honored astrologers for worshipping Jesus?
In my readings of the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda and of The Jesus Sutras, I have learned that there are scrolls in Tibet and India and stiles (similar in shape to the Washington monument) in China that record both this visitation of the Magi to Jesus as a child as well as Jesus coming East to stay in Buddhist and Hindu monasteries during this lost years between age 12 and 30. I have found three sources of this information but nothing in the western press since 1920s. (New York Times) Just like the fact that the wise men were astrologers the thought that Jesus went to India to learn the ways of yoga are beyond our comfort zone – just seems wrong to us. But it is a legend that is told even today among both Christians and Hindus in India.
In addition, the oldest writings about the wise men in the early church fathers taught that the star in the East that the magi followed (translated as the “rising star†by the most accurate translations) was the star of inner knowing known to mediators of Yoga and of Orthodox Christianity.
Why does any of this matter? Because in this day, in this time of terrifying events and the need for hope, we need to know that God is far more than we know God to be. God is not limited by geography, time, by correct doctrine or heretical belief, by religion, political persuasion, or terrorism. God is only limited by our willingness to let God be God and to obey God’s commandments summarized by Jesus to be: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.†What a different world this would be if religion were not a source of delusion nor a source of power over others. That would be my New Years wish and the hope of God’s blessing us with God’s presence in the form of Jesus of Nazareth.
Epiphany and the New Year
January 3, 2008 by thepracticalmystic
thesoulpurposedotorg 
The celebration of the Transfiguration on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany is a Lutheran cobniitutron to the Church Year calendar begun in the sixteenth-century by reformers Johannes Bugenhagen and Viet Dietrich. Their sermons demonstrate their thinking that both Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration are epiphanies of how He is and will be, and are therefore like the first manifestation of Jesus to the Magi. Also, celebrated on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, the Transfiguration offers a glimpse of Jesus in all His divine glory, and a preview of what is to come, before the Church descends into the shadowy valley of Lent.The Church Book for the use of Evangelical Lutheran Congregations, know in short as the “Church Book”, was published in 1869 by the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America. The Church Book along, with its Common Service, established a pattern for nearly every English hymnal that followed.Philip H. Pfatteicher comments, “the whole [Lutheran] church is in debt to the authors of the Church Book and the Common Service, who gave to the Lutheran Church in North America a liturgy which reflected a consensus of the ‘pure Lutheran liturgies’ of the sixteenth century and by this gift returned the Lutheran Church to the ancient ways of the Church of the West of which Lutheranism has theologically and confessionally always been a part, even when it did not remember it.”Besides establishing the Common Service—the English liturgy for the celebration of Holy Communion, the Church Book established a liturgical calendar of feasts and festivals for Lutherans in North America. The Common Service Book of 1918 added to that list, as did The Lutheran Hymnal of 1941, the Common Service Book, and Hymnal in 1958, etc. The Church Year has continued to change and grow; it has never been static.The Common Service Book expanded the breadth of the Church Year calendar published in the Church Book. It is in this revision of the Church Year calendar that many days were added, not that they were necessarily ‘new’, but the editors worked to establish the precedence of feast days, that is when two feasts coincided or when a feast day fell on a Sunday. It is in this revision of the Church Year calendar that Transfiguration was anchored to the Last Sunday after Epiphany. Also established at this time were the Sundays of Advent, the ‘Gesima’ Sundays, Ash Wednesday, the Sundays in Lent, the days of Holy Week, the Ascension and the Sunday following Pentecost, and the Feast of the Holy Trinity. The rubric (direction) accompanying the change stressed the invariable nature of celebrating these days without omission or variation. The hymn books of the LCMS, WELS, and ELS have continued the practice of celebrating the Transfiguration on the Last Sunday of the Epiphany, while beginning with the Lutheran Book of Worship, the ELCA calendar has allowed for the celebration of the Transfiguration on August 6 in addition to the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. ScotK