"The Camels are Coming!"

A sermon preached by Rev. Deana Frances Dudley

at Christos MCC, Toronto, ON, and Holy Fellowship MCC, London, ON

January 4, 2003 – Celebrating Epiphany

Scripture: Isaiah 60:1-16, Matthew 2:1-12

Well Christmas is almost over. Actually, it’s technically over on Tuesday, on Epiphany, the 12th and last day of the Christmas season. Or, if you’re Orthodox, that’s when Christmas actually begins!

But for us, as we celebrate Epiphany, or the manifesting, the coming of Jesus, the light of the world, we also read of the 2^ND set of visitors to the Christ child. Luke tells us that on the night of Jesus' birth the visitors were local shepherds who came as the result of a noisy and spectacular pronouncement by a chorus of angels.

But in Matthew's gospel we learn of the later, majestic, visitors. This gospel speaks of magi from ‘the east', who brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We usually think of the Magi as part of the tableau on Christmas eve, but that has more to do with getting it all into one night and with finding enough parts for all the children in the Christmas pageant than it does with the story as recorded in the gospels! But based on the evidence in the text, including the distance they likely traveled, the extensive preparations needed, the political negotiations with Herod along the way, and the account of the slaughter of the innocents, it’s estimated that these magi may have arrived when Jesus was about 2 years of age.

And every year the lectionary text paired with Matthew’s account is the same one from Isaiah: Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of God has risen upon you.... And nations shall come to your light, and rulers to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes round about, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far, and your daughters shall be carried in their nurses arms. Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice; ... And a multitude of camels shall cover you...

That’s the part I like: a multitude of camels shall cover you... Now I’ve always enjoyed this text. Imagine being covered by a multitude of camels. It’s just too weird. A Bedouin game of Twister gone amok. Don't try this at home. Since I’m sure my camel obsession is well known, this year I decided it needed a little more investigation, so I read every single passage about camels in the Bible. This you COULD try at home, there are only 59 of them. So let me tell you a few of the significant Bible camel stories.

Pastor Deana in conversation with a camel at En  Gedi, Israel.  Pastor Deana is the one on the left.

It began with Abraham and Sarah, who set out to make a new home. They obviously had camels, because one day they decided that they should get a wife for their son Isaac. So they sent a servant off to Mesopotamia with 10 camels, to find Isaac a wife. (Now ten camels was a lot, but Abraham was rich. I told Anne on the way to church tonight, that I think she is a 20 camel woman.) And when the servant got there, he stopped by a well and prayed for some woman to come and give him a drink. And he said, "O Lord, God of my master Abraham, grant me success today, I pray thee,... Behold, I am standing by the spring..., and the daughters of the city are coming to draw water. Let the maiden to whom I shall say, 'Pray let down your jar that I may drink,' and who shall say, 'Drink, and I will ALSO water your camels – let her be the one whom you have appointed for thy servant Isaac." So watering the camels was to be a sign.

Well, along comes Rebekah, she gave Abraham's servant water to drink and then offered to water the camels and so the servant took her back and Isaac and Rebekah were married. Now if this sounds like a search for a submissive woman, it’s not. I don’t think so. A camel can drink 100 litres of water in ten minutes. And there were 10 camels, so that’s 1,000 litres. Rebekah wasn’t a submissive woman, she was a super-woman.

Anyway Isaac and Rebekah had a son, named Jacob who went off to another land to get a wife, worked 14 years to get her and came back with 30 camels, so he was very rich. Camels are a sign of prosperity.

The next time camels appear in the Biblical story is when Solomon is the King of Israel. And the Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones. Camels bearing gifts. Beginning to notice a trend here?

Well things went down hill after Solomon, the people of Israel ended up as exiles in Babylon. Then one day the prophet Isaiah said, in this very passage that Wil read, we’re all going to go home, and not only will we get home, but we’ll be rich again, so rich in fact that "a multitude of camels will cover us." That means the whole land will be covered with camels, bringing gifts like the Queen of Sheba brought to Solomon.

And then, once more, we see camels bearing gifts. Matthew records in our gospel lesson tonight, that three Magi came from the east and brought gifts. Matthew doesn’t actually mention the camels, but they’re implied. That’s why we always have a camel with the Magi in our CrPches. When I was in Israel, in Bethlehem, the one souvenir I bought there was a set of carved olive wood nativity figures. And the set only came with one camel. So I didn’t haggle with the guy over the price, I just haggled with him over the number of camels, and got him to throw in two more, one for each Magi.

And that's pretty much all the light we can shed on camels in the Bible. Which brings us to the Magi, or, perhaps I should say, the camels BRING us the Magi, and our gospel lesson from Matthew.

So here we are at the end of Christmas. And a few days ago we entered a New Year. Who can tell me the name of the month that starts the year? January. Do you know how it got its name? It comes from the Roman god, Janus. Look at this picture or an ancient Roman coin with Janus on it. Isn’t it strange - he’s got two faces! He’s looking both forward and backwards - at the past and into the future. He was known as the god of doorkeepers, the god of beginnings, and eventually gave his name to the first month of the year.

Now, the first month of the year is kind of hard on some of us. With the possible exception of the end of April, tax time, I think sometimes, the most dreaded time of year is the first week in January. Sometimes it seems like from Thanksgiving until New Years’ everyone’s constantly partying. We stuff ourselves with turkey and stuffing, homemade cookies and cakes, pumpkin pie. Once-a-year delicacies appear New Year's Eve, like smoked salmon, caviar and champagne (if your taste buds are grown up) and eggnog (if your taste buds are still young). I can actually go both ways on that. We stay up late, spend lots of money, act nicer – and what do we get for it? January.

There’s a major post-holiday let down. Not to mention the post-holiday bills. So we all suddenly wake up one morning in January, overweight, exhausted, and in debt. And the Christmas lights and ornaments that looked so nice a month ago, have to be taken down and put away. Bummer.

AND it’s cold. Whose idea WAS it to put our biggest holiday in the middle of winter, anyway???

January, February, March.... all the really cold and dreary months have to be faced head on, and there’s nothing to look forward to but the appropriately sacrificial season of Lent to mark their passage. THAT’s when we REALLY need a Christmas.

And Janus is really the perfect symbol for this time of year. Because January is a kind of a hinge time – a vantage point from which we can still see back into the past year and yet can also face forward and look expectantly at the year that lies ahead.

January isn't just a time to sigh over "how far" we've got to go to lose that weight or pay those bills or see the spring flowers again. January is also a vantage point from which we can plot the course of the New Year. Janus does look backward to the past, but he also looks forward to the future. January has to become the start of the hope month, not just the end of the party.

Part of the problem with January is that it generally still carries some baggage saved from last January, and all the January’s that went before. Without any definite idea about "where to," we tend to repeat each year in much the same way. With no sense of ownership about the future – about this coming year – it might look bleak.

Some folks use January to look back on the past year and compose an annual list of disappointments and failures: didn't get the big promotion; didn't win the lottery; didn't learn to control the temper; didn’t get that relationship I was chasing after. But this approach undermines our spiritual life in two ways. First, it tempts us to blame someone else – usually God – for all our failures. Second, it makes us increasingly skeptical that God would ever really take any interest in us or our future.

So we need to take a more hopeful, January forward-look at God's intentions for humanity in general and us in particular, and find a vision which can usher us into this New Year. If past January’s have seemed spiritually debilitating, we need to look with a spirit of hope at the "where next" of this January. Yeah, the party’s over. But we need to realize that the coming year promises more than just dieting and dues-paying.

We need to understand, and to tell the world, that THE CAMELS ARE COMING! There’s a multitude of camels coming, bearing gifts.

Think about light for a minute. Epiphany is the season of light. If I’m facing the light, going toward the light, what do I see? The light! But if, like Janus, I look back, what do I see? Nothing but my own shadow. And if I focus on that, well, frankly, that’s just really stupid, because the fact is, there IS light. The shadow is evidence of it.

Don’t go toward the shadow; go for the light. Let’s use this January to begin creating a future built on hope. It’s a time of living a faith that looks backward to the evidences of God's great gift to us in Jesus Christ and forward to the light of Christ’s love shining upon ALL people. We’re moving from the darkness and cold of winter into the overpowering light and eternal warmth of Jesus Christ. Emmanuel has come to us, we have seen his star. May the world, may our communities and our families know this light through our reflection of it. The real work of Christmas is just beginning.