Holy Eucharist January 4, 2026

The Feast of the Epiphany

Sermon preached by Fr. Josh Condon

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On this first Sunday of 2026, I ask you, what have you come here looking for? What did you come here to see? This is the question that John the Baptist asked the crowd that came out into the wilderness to be baptized by him. Jesus said this to people about going out to John: What did you go out there to see? A reed shaken by the wind? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, you went out to see an uncompromising prophet telling the truth.

What are you looking for? As Jesus was walking along, the first two disciples following him in the Gospel of John are kind of edging behind him, and he turns around, and these are the first words in the Gospel of John by Jesus: What is it that you are seeking?

And so as we embark on this year’s journey together, this seasonal pattern of Epiphany and all the things that are to come—tonight, as we burn Christmas trees and eat barbecue, as we celebrate the unfolding and the revelation of who Jesus is—we ask ourselves: What are we actually looking for?

You could say that this year is a sort of pilgrimage, a pilgrimage in which we may not know where we will end up. Certainly there will be surprises. When I was a young priest, when I was newly ordained, I was at a church in Georgia, a fairly large church that had three youth groups. And one of those youth groups, the middle one, always took a pilgrimage. And so we went to Assisi in Italy where St. Francis was from.

If you know anything about St. Francis, you know that he took a vow of poverty. His father was a wealthy merchant dealing in textiles, and one day he just had a moment of realization that this was not a life that was meaningful to him. And so he spent two years wandering in the wilderness, not sure what he was looking for but trying to shed a sense of worldliness—shed the sort of wealth and power that came from the position his family was in, shed the disposition of worldly distractions.

And so while we were there, we went on a walk up into the woods where Francis would wander those years. And we had a destination. There is this story of St. Francis trying to remove his desires to the point that he tries to throw himself into a batch of roses, hoping that the thorns would help him to not think thoughts that were not good and help him clear his head. And the story is that as he did that, God said, “No, no, that’s not what I want for you, Francis,” and all the roses lost their thorns, and to this day they grow without thorns.

So we had to go see these roses. We had to go see this place where St. Francis wandered. And as we walked out of the city, with the big wall that encapsulated the safety of Assisi, headed up into the woods, we got lost.

Now, to put it in context, it was me and three other adults, and there were nineteen ninth and tenth graders. They didn’t all wear the right shoes, and everything kind of looked the same once you got out there. And we didn’t know where we were going. We eventually found this destination with the help of a docent, a guide who had come along and realized that we were headed in the exact wrong direction. We found this place and it was neat, but I barely remember it. What I really remember is being in the wilderness with these young people and not knowing where we were going, not knowing if we should turn back, not knowing what the destination was going to look like—just being out there on the journey.

And so there’s something about a journey in which the destination is somewhere out there, but here we are on the pathway that opens up space to see things anew, to experience a setting that maybe was not what we had in mind, to find ourselves in a place with others where we could appreciate each other’s company.

And so I think about that when I think about these wise men from the East, brave enough to follow this star, brave enough to head out into the wilderness together, maybe thinking they were going to one thing but it looks like something completely different. In fact, they arrive at Herod’s palace, which would have been the right place to look if a new king had been born. And they arrive looking for—they don’t know what—something glorious, something magical, something significant. They’ve come all this way. They’ve brought treasure chests with these fine things in them. But they don’t know what they’re looking for. They don’t know what they’re seeking.

And so they head off to Bethlehem following that star. And they arrive to find a young family—poor, without status—out there in the wilderness. And they take great joy in that moment. They worship this baby. They celebrate this new king. And then they’re told to go home by another way, not to go tell Herod, to keep the baby safe because Herod was angry. When he realized the wise men were not coming back, he got really angry. And so not only did the wise men follow their dream home, but the Holy Family also left that area out into a whole different wilderness on a path, on a journey, to Egypt to keep the baby safe.

And so what was this path for? What was this journey about? What was it that was being sought?

Well, friends, I believe it was this unfolding of the journey, the pilgrimage, the walk in the wilderness—maybe seeming lost, maybe not knowing the destination. It is the path of God’s unfolding story, of God at work in the world in ways that are unexpected. Not finding a new king in a palace, but out in a poor village. These wise men knew that as well as any. And as we enter into this year ahead together, we ask ourselves: What is it we are looking for?

In the midst of a world in which the powerful have their own agendas, how do we seek Jesus? How do we seek the Prince of Peace? Where will we find him? In halls of power that wage wars and prioritize the wealthy over those who don’t have enough to eat—where will we find Jesus? We may wander. We may find ourselves headed towards a destination that we do not understand or know. We may feel like we’re lost at times. But we continue to seek for the one over whom that star stopped. And we will find that one who came into the world to save us and to save the world. We’ll find that one likely looking into the face of the people we serve.

Looking into the face of the people who we serve for Room in the Inn or the children on our angel tree or those we serve in Kenya. We may see the face of God in those around us who are afraid to leave their homes. We will see the face of God in places that we cannot yet know. But I believe this is what we’re looking for. This is what we are seeking. We are seeking a God that undoes all hate, undoes all suffering, undoes all pain—seeks reconciliation for us and for our world.

And whether we find it by the way we know or go another way, God will always be with us, calling us ever deeper into the journey that God has in store—a journey in which God is revealed in the most unlikely places to the most unlikely people for the sake of the most unlikely who are in our midst and in our culture and in our world.

So may we seek out, may we look for God in Jesus by serving those around us and our world.

Amen.