The Epiphany of Our Lord 2025 - "Not For Quitters"

Saint Matthew 2:1-14

I had experienced the phenomenon many times in my life but up until this year I didn’t know it had a name.

At the beginning of each new year new faces would begin to appear at any health to which I belonged.  One could spot them a mile away by their outfits.  Some looked like they were left over from high school or, at best, college phys ed. classes.  A little tattered and torn and much the worse for wear.  Other outfits looked brand new, like they just emerged from a sporting goods store bag. 

The owners always appeared a little lost looking at the weight machines as if they were creations from outer space.  Some gave up trying to figure them out and just used them for benches.

In the comic “The Duplex,” one guy observes “I hate in January when the gym fills up with all the newbies who hog the machines. Look at that bozo sitting on the leg press. He’s been texting for ten minutes.”  Then he turns to his girlfriend and says, “That’s where I like to take my selfies.”1

Seasoned veterans of the health club scene always knew we could wait the new people out and before long they would find other things to do with their mornings.

What we didn’t know that there was an actual date assigned to the day they would disappear until an Apple watch commercial that has been playing on almost every sporting event I watched over New Year’s told us that the second Friday in January, this year January 10, was known as “Quitters Day.”  

The premise of the commercial was obviously if you purchased one of these Apple watches, it would motivate you to the point that you would not be a quitter.

The history of this very pejorative term dates back to “2019, {when} extensive research was conducted by Strava — a social network for athletes —  found that approximately 80% of people who made New Year’s resolutions have tapped out by the second week of January. {By} Making deductions from the available 800 million user-logged activities in that year, Strava even went on to predict that the second Friday of January was the fateful day when the motivations of most quitters begin to decline. 

An accompanying article stated the obvious.  “The key to not quitting something you started is to not just decide to do something but to be totally devoted to doing it.”2

The main characters in today’s Gospel were not checking their watches but checking the stars and when they found that one star that seemed to them to be specially special and totally devoted themselves to finding out what was behind this celestial phenomenon, they decided that they would not quit even though there were countless obstacles in their way.

The first may have been their families.  I’ve always wondered how their spouses and children reacted.

Did their children stare at their fathers with stunned expressions on their faces until they yelled: “Mom!  Dad’s looking at the stars again!”

Did their wives reply? “I’ll show him stars.  Where’s my rolling pin?”

Still the three astrologers were not going to give up.  They closed up their storefront tarot card reading businesses, put away their crystal balls, and began their search until they found what their were looking for.  They were determined not to quit.

Even the weather and conditions of travel did not slow them down.  As W.H. Auden wrote in his poem, “The Adoration of the Magi.”

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.’

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

A hard time we had of it.

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.3

Still they didn’t quit.

Even when they found themselves in the wrong place face-to-face with evil incarnate in one person they didn’t quit.  Face to face with Herod, they simply, naively ask:  “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”4

As my former pastor Shannon Kershner observed: 

I cannot even imagine the way his blood pressure must have risen when the magi asked him where was the child who had been born King of the Jews. “King of the Jews?!,” he must have thought. He was King of the Jews. That is what Rome declared, and that was the way it would forever be.

Following the normal way power works in our world, the king responded to his own fear not with a spirit of openness and courage, but by holding on to his power even more tightly and deciding to do whatever was necessary to keep it.5

That’s the way power works observed another pastor friend Shawn Fiedler:

Fear is a powerful, haunting thing. Fear grabs hold of the powerful; a false reality is created, and using their resources of plenty, they protect themselves at any cost.”6

Up against this kind of power they could have quit but they didn’t. Even when Herod lies right to their faces with an unctuous: “Go and search carefully for the young Child, and when you have found Him, bring back word to me, that I may come and worship Him also.”7

They don’t quit or even cower before Herod and his kind. They see through Herod like a cheap suit. They know that Herod and his kind always lie.  They are good at it.  They’ve spent their whole lives saying the most outrageous things and puffing themselves up with their own self-delusions so that lying comes as easy to them as breathing. 

The intrepid seekers have come to far to quit now.  With their newfound information and the correct coordinates they head off until they find what they have been looking for. 

And now the star, which they had seen in the east, went in front of them as they travelled until at last it shone immediately above the place where the little child lay. The sight of the star filled them with indescribable joy.

So, they went into the house and saw the little child with his mother Mary. And they fell on their knees and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts—gold, incense and myrrh.8

At this point they could have called it quits but, and don’t miss this, after they had completed their mission and done what they set out to do their lives were in the greatest danger.  Disobeying Herod put these outsiders outside the law and who knows what Herod would have done to them.  Still, “they left for their own country by another road.”9

T

he image of the Three Kings, and really, who cares if there were three or not or whether their names were Casper, Balthazar and Melchior or something else entirely.  Who cares if they came from the Orient or more likely  Persia  the very region were so many conflicts rage today? 

This image reminds us that life is more than a moment from a Christmas pageant but is about people who did not quit.  It is about people who looked evil in the eye and turned their backs to go another way.

It is about people who never quit making choices for good and that is where we fit in.  

There are, there will always be, temptations to give in and give up. We will always face temptations to quit and throw up up our hands and say, “What can we do in the face of the Herod’s of our day?” 

But we know, deep down in our heart of hearts we know, that to put our faith in some earthly leaders is folly.  To trust some is pure foolishness.  And to believe their words are dangerous.

We also know there is another way.  We know that there must be another way.  There must be someone else to follow, to put our faith in, to trust. There must be another leader whose way is not built on lies and deceit but whose ways are always justice and peace.  There is another one whom we can’t quit on.  There is another one whom we must be totally devoted to finding and then holding on to.

We cannot give up on his ways.  The Wise Men met Jesus once and it changed their lives.  We’ve met him countless times in story and song and so we do not quit on following his way, holding on to his promises, and finding in him the one true light of our lives.

Like the magi we have found the one, been touched by the one, who came among us to rule not with power or might but the power of love.

Following his ways and never quitting. Never quitting on his promises we’ll be found once again by Jesus Christ, who at the beginning of each new year, at the beginning of each new day, never quits showing us a better way.

Christ’s way! The way that never quits.  The way that never gives up!  

________________

1. Glenn McCoy, “The Duplex,” The Beacon-News, January 3, 2025, sec. Section 1, p. 11

2. Tamkeen Kiani, “Quitters Day,” National Today, August 23, 2023, https://nationaltoday.com/quitters-day/.

3. W. H. Auden, “The Adoration of the Maji” in “Poems about the Three Kings: A Majestic Journey,” PoemVerse, May 27, 2024, https://poemverse.org/poems-about-the-three-kings/.

4. St. Matthew 2:2. (NIV) [NIV= New International Version (Colorado Springs, CO International Bible Society, 1984).

5. Shannon J. Kershner, “Lessons Learned.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. January 4, 2016.

6. Shawn Fiedler, “By Another Road.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. January 6, 2019.

7. St. Matthew 2:8. (NKJV) [NKJV= The New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Incorporated, 2014).

8. St. Matthew 2:10-12. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).

9.    St. Matthew 2:12. (NRSV) [NRSV= The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)