[Sermon] Another Road

Hector Garfias-Toledo, Lead Pastor

January 4, 2026 + Sunday of the Epiphany

As the What Do You Fear? worship series comes to a close, the story of the magi reminds us that Christ’s birth does not instantly erase the powers of fear and domination. Herod is still in power, and the world looks much the same—but God is already at work. Guided by a star and warned in a dream, the magi refuse to let fear dictate their path. Instead, they choose another road, trusting God’s leading even when it disrupts the old order. Epiphany reveals that God’s new creation unfolds within a broken world, not apart from it. Fear does not stop the journey; hope sends us forward in a new way.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Grace to you and peace from God—Abba, father, mother, creator, parent—and the Lord Jesus Christ, our savior, our Lord, the Messiah, the one born in Bethlehem, God with us. And we said, amen.

As I said earlier, I think—and David just reminded us now—I think that it is still time to say that may happiness and joy be two more blessings among many others to each one of you and your loved ones in this new year that God has given us, to continue to be God’s witnesses in this world and to be extensions of the divine compassion of God’s never-ending love.

Like every year, I believe that many of us are already thinking, What am I going to do different this year in my life? How is my life going to be different, or how am I going to make the life of somebody else different?

It’s a time for New Year’s resolutions. It’s a time for confessions, too. And I’m going to start by asking: how many of your New Year’s resolutions from last year did you really accomplish? Who wants to start?

You didn’t expect this, right? Can you imagine if that was the case—if we had to really share with others what we were able to do or not? In any case, these New Year’s resolutions are made by many of us with a sense of horror, of someone haunted: I need to eat less sweets. I need to start going to the gym. I need to call my sibling whom I haven’t called for a long time. I need to like those whom I don’t really like.

We get to this point of the year when we reflect about these things, and one of the ways that we do it, in one of the traditions in Mexico where I was born, is through the piñatas. And I don’t know how many of you have been able to participate in a real piñata celebration in Mexico.

There are many kinds of piñatas. There are two specifically that are part of the tradition and that have a religious or spiritual meaning. The one that you see on your left—no, on your right, I’m sorry—is a piñata. You see that it has these cones coming from the clay jar that is inside, and there are seven of them. Each one of those seven cones represents the seven capital sins that, in the Roman Catholic tradition, are considered.

The reason for that is that during the celebration, in this spiritual celebration of the people, when you come with a stick, you come and you try to take them down. The stick that is used to break the piñata represents the power of God beating up the sins of the world. When we were kids, we were blindfolded, and then you make—you know—turn a few times so you don’t know where it is. But the point is, and what it means, is blind faith—which I have some theological considerations about that, but anyway—that faith, with the power of God, is able to take down the sins of the world.

And when we are able to do that and the piñata breaks, guess what? There are fruits and candies, which are the reward of being able to defeat the seven capital sins. So there is a whole spiritual meaning behind that celebration.

The other piñata that you see on your left is what we call the star piñata. And the symbolism of that is: what did we read today in the gospel? The magi followed the star. It represents the star that guides us. Now, why do we break it? That’s another story that I have no idea about. Why do we take down the star that is guiding us? I don’t know. But maybe, by the end of this message, of this reflection together, we will find out.

But I wanted to share this with you because I think that this is a way that reminds us that we are looking for change in our lives, that we want to take down those things that are distracting us from following Jesus, and that there is nothing in the end that is going to prevent us, because the power of God is with us. And that the reward—if we can say that, the blessing of it—is the joy of abundance, sweetness, and nurturing.

So, as I was reading the passage earlier this week, I was thinking that we don’t really know what the magi were looking for in a Messiah. The Bible doesn’t tell us what. The Bible just tells us that they saw the star and they went to find him. Were they looking for peace, for hope, for joy for their land and among their people? We do not know.

On the other hand, we have this other famous person, Herod, who inquired where the Messiah was to be born. And one interesting thing in the passage, if you notice, is that Herod recognizes Jesus as the Messiah. However, I think that one of the points of this story is to help us see that there were two different ulterior intentions.

The magi were looking for the Messiah for a reason that we do not exactly know. And Herod was looking for the Messiah for the purpose that we already know. Herod believed that the magi owed him their loyalty, that they were going to tell him what he wanted them to do, that they were going to tell him where Jesus was found.

In other words—and if I take this to our contemporary situation—I would say that politicians believe that they own our vote and that we are going to live for whatever they tell us we need to do.

Why was it important for the evangelist to make these references? Herod was still in power. Jesus is already born. The magi are looking for Jesus. And in the end, nothing has changed. Nothing had changed by that time. So what might have been going on in the hearts and minds of the people at that time, but also in the hearts and minds of the early Christian church? Or maybe, again, the question for us is: what does this have to do with us today?

God reveals both the current order that is leading us to death and destruction, and God reveals to us and helps us see the new order of life that God is bringing into this world through the birth of Jesus—his life, his death, and his resurrection.

We are called to resist joining individuals and systems that seek to manipulate people and to use us as pawns for the empire’s agenda. And I think that this is one of the main points, especially of what is going on right now in our world.

I believe that one of the points of this story—and maybe the point of the dream that the magi had—is to remind us that we cannot fall prey to the narrative and the manipulation of the people in power, to become instruments of domination, power, and death.

We are not going to fall prey to all the manipulative voices that are distracting us from the call that you and I have as children of God, but also as followers of the light of the Lord Jesus.

The question for me, when I start looking at this whole story, is: why in the world did the star guide the magi to Herod? Why didn’t it guide them directly to Jesus, and then they could just commit to Jesus and go back home and everything would be fine?

The story tells us that God, the unfolding of God’s reign, happens in a real world where the empire and the power of death are present. Remember the piñata? That reminder is among us. But we are going to take an attitude, a position, a way of life that is different.

God’s love, made flesh, comes to us. God encounters us in the midst of our hopes for this new order. And the way that God reveals this to us is through what we call epiphanies. That’s the meaning of the word epiphany: revelation.

Many times in our lives, we need to hit bottom to be able to hear and to see the epiphanies—the ways that God is revealing Godself to us in the midst of all the mess that is going around us. Sometimes we learn in hard ways. Sometimes it’s at the very bottom, when we feel lonely, isolated, and in pain, that we realize that God has been present, or is coming into our lives, every moment, every day.

However, at the same time, epiphanies happen not only in the nice, mellow way that sometimes we imagine—with a big light and angels singing and, “Oh, now I realize that God is with me.” Sometimes it’s painful and bitter and difficult. Sometimes these epiphanies are disruptive and take us to dangerous places that we may not want to go. Sometimes these epiphanies lead us to confrontation with the old order in which you and I live.

I was wondering what the magi did, or what happened to them, when they went back home and shared the experience they had in Bethlehem. The Bible doesn’t tell us. But maybe they were confronting the system in their own communities, and maybe they were confronted by their communities because they were disrupted by the message they were bringing.

Can you see all the connections, and all the things that these stories sometimes make us think about? The epiphanies reorient us and send us another way—not only in a different direction, but in a different way of being. And I think that that is extremely important and part of the key elements of this message.

Neither Herod, nor fear, nor the magi, nor our fears could be an obstacle. Even the unexpected, unacceptable, and incomprehensible will be the means for God. And I believe this is the whole point of the story: nothing can stop the love of God in Jesus.

We are called to move beyond the surface level of these stories, as if they were simply stories of good and evil, outsiders and establishment. We are called to read these stories with a more robust theological understanding—one that is centered on the unstoppable forward movement of God’s new order.

The story is less about vilifying one man or romanticizing another, and more about revealing how God’s kingdom arises and advances in a world that is still dominated by the old order of fear, tyranny, and death. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is an ultimate obstacle for God. Even Herod’s evil is folded into the story, fulfilling prophecy and demonstrating the kind of world Jesus came to save and overthrow.

The unexpected, unacceptable, and incomprehensible are indeed God’s means to come to us, to reveal Jesus to us. Jesus embraces us as we are, but Jesus does not leave us where Jesus finds us. His birth and eventual death were not to leave us where he finds us, but to lead us to live in a different way.

“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road”—in a different way.

As David has reminded us through the young worshippers’ message, today we are here. God reveals Godself to us in community, in the meal, in fellowship, in accompaniment, in prayers, in sitting together, in sharing a smile, in offering words of encouragement, in being present for one another.

Today we will take these star words as a reminder that you and I experience the revelation of God daily in our lives—not to keep it for ourselves, but to reflect it to others through our words and our actions.

As we receive communion today, a sign of the grace of God breaking into this world, we take these words and we go to be church every day, reminding one another of the epiphany of a God who never leaves us alone.

The simple point of this story is that God’s new creation in the person of Jesus has arrived. The old order is doomed—though it rages and feels real, it is doomed. Our call is to see the star, follow it, worship, and take the subversive route of the new way of life in Jesus Christ our Lord, our savior, our friend.

And for that, I think the only thing we can say is: thanks be to God. Amen.