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But wait...there’s more!
A sermon preached by Terry Fach at Trinity Church on January 3, 20101
Scriptures:
Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12
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This Wednesday is the beginning of the Christian feast of Epiphany. It is the season that follows the 12 days of Christmas. Tradition links it to the wise men or “magi” who came from the East to find Jesus, as we hear in Matthew’s telling of the story. That is a significant linkage. Matthew’s version of this story of Jesus’ life is written for a Jewish audience. One of the interesting things he does is to incorporate quotations and references to the Hebrew bible (or Old Testament). He wants to show that the coming of Jesus is a fulfilment of the hopes and expectations of the prophets. But even though Matthew’s gospel is presenting Jesus as king of the Jews and the fulfilment of Israel’s history, the guys in the story who actually figure out where he is are not Jews themselves!
Now, Matthew was not the first to speak of kings coming from the east to Jerusalem. That part of his plot comes straight from the prophet Isaiah’s poem which was what Jews were hearing in Jerusalem around 580 BCE.
The Jews who first hear these words had been in exile in Iraq for a couple of generations and had come back to a bombed-out Jerusalem. It was pretty grim. How would you like to come back to your home city to find the streets full of rubble, the economy in ruins, and no one to lead you out of it?
In the middle of this mess an amazing poet invites his discouraged and depressed fellow citizens to take heart and to renew their hopes: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you...Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn...A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.” (Isaiah 60: 1, 3, 6)
The poet anticipates that Jerusalem will become a city of prosperity and a centre for international trade. Camel trains loaded with goods will come from Asia and the standard of living and comfort will rise.
Like Matthew, the wise men know about Isaiah 60. They know they are to go to Jerusalem to take rare spices and gifts of gold and frankincense. They know they’ll find the new king of peace and prosperity. But Herod hears of the plans and he is disturbed. He is fearful. Not surprising, because he had been consolidating his power in Judea for 33 years. He had been given the title “king of the Jews” and the last thing he wanted was a rival.
So, in his panic he calls together the leading scholars of the Old Testament and says to them: “Tell me about Isaiah 60. Listen, it looks like a king is supposed to be here somewhere...but what is all this business about camels and luxury goods from the east?” The scholars drop a bomb: you’ve got the wrong text, Herod. And so have the wise men waiting outside. Isaiah 60 will mislead because it suggests that Jerusalem will be restored and have its wealth restored and become the centre of the next great global economy. In that scenario, the elites will still hold their former positions of power and wealth and everything will be the same as it was before. But it ain’t gonna happen that way!
You can imagine Herod’s disappointment and anger. “What, you’re telling me that Isaiah’s prophecy has it wrong? Have you got a better text?” (Maybe it is like being told that your favourite hockey team is not going to make the playoffs...when it’s only January!) The scholars look around nervously. They’re afraid of Herod. They know that he would stop at nothing to protect his power. Finally they tell him that the right text is from that voice of the lowly and oppressed, the prophet Micah.
‘And you, O Bethlehem in the land of Judah, are not least among the ruling cities of Judah, for a ruler will come from you who will be the shepherd for my people Israel.’
Surprise! This voice for a hopeful future is a peasant voice. It’s a voice that is not impressed with the towers and leafy boulevards and commercial banks of Jerusalem. Micah anticipates a different kind of future, and a different kind of leader. This is not going to be a king who uses political ambition and conventional power, but one who will listen to the folks who have no power or status.
Herod convenes a meeting with the wise men, tells them the whole truth, and we know how the story goes. They head for dusty, unpretentious, unnoticed, Bethlehem. It is turns out to be a very appropriate place for a king who will challenge the very form of power represented by Herod of Rome, and the arrogant learning of religious intellectuals.
This is where the tale of two cities, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, take us to the message of Epiphany. On the one side is Jerusalem with its centre of the universe reputation; on the other is Bethlehem with its faint promises and dim hopes. Where would you rather find your king? It’s a great temptation to align our expectations for God with our own expectations. We want stability and safety and predictability. We want a life where we have some power and some influence. We want security, and we want to be in control of our lives. We don’t want surprises, right? Surprises are as often upsetting as they are happy. And maybe we just don’t like things to change. It’s easy to keep on thinking about our lives and about God the way we always have. Any surprises will throw us for a loop. We want Jerusalem, not Bethlehem!
Now, it is an amazing thing to me that the wise men don’t call the whole thing off right there. They find out that there is a king in the vicinity, but he has no credentials and there will be no big parties when they get there. Amazingly, they choose to keep going—they go to Bethlehem.
Now here is what I think is most interesting. Bethlehem is nine miles south of Jerusalem. The wise men had a long intellectual history of studying these things. They were experts . They were employed by their rulers in much the same way as specialists are employed by modern governments today. They understood calendars, tides, medicine, different religions, alchemy, metallurgy, and many other subjects. But on this journey they missed their goal by nine miles. Nine miles!
Epiphany invites us to consider our vulnerability to God and his unlikely ways of showing up in our lives. Personally, I know that I would like things in my life to be Jerusalem-style. Tidy, predictable. Solid, secure. Nothing too demanding or fear-inducing. Nothing requiring any sacrificial rearrangement of my life for the sake of the poor and vulnerable. And certainly nothing that challenges my (alleged) control over things. But what if God always comes in the surprise of a Bethlehem? What if we’re all just in the habit of looking in the wrong places? What if we have a tendency to get off track by nine miles on a regular basis? How will we find our way back?
We need an epiphany. An epiphany wakes you up to the essential nature or meaning of things. You experience an epiphany the day you realize babies aren’t delivered by storks. It happens when you discover what you were meant to do with your life. It happens when you realize someone loves you...for no other reason than for who you are. It happens to the apostle Paul when, after a series of dreams (and a visit from another foreigner named Cornelius), he comes to the conclusion that in Jesus God has acted in history not only to redeem the Jewish people, but absolutely everyone! Matthew makes this same point by putting the magi at the centre of his epiphany story. And this only is the beginning of the disturbing surprises. The new king Jesus initiates one reality-shattering experience after another. He abolishes the boundaries of gender, religion, economic and social status because “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.”
Epiphany is our regular, post-Christmas reminder that we are on a journey. We always need to travel those hard nine miles. We need to keep having epiphanies that break through the things we “know” and show us that the essential nature and meaning of things is different than we supposed. That is why the season of Epiphany is also associated with dreams. There are five key dreams in Matthew’s story. And dreaming has its place in our epiphanies too. Not just ideas or hopes for how things could be in the future, but actual dreams! You know the kind of dream I’m talking about—the ones that wake you up in a sweat. Dreams that disturb and disrupt the neat and tidy way we construct our perceptions. We need experiences like that to break through our ignorance and our inertia, to get us moving again. Then perhaps we will be able to see things as they really are, and not as we want them to be.
Speaking of seeing differently, over the Christmas break I went to see the film Avatar with my daughter, bulling our way through the Boxing Week shopping masses at Chinook Mall. It was my first 3-D filmwatching experience. It took me a few minutes to stop ducking and evading the objects which seemed to be hurtling off the screen and into my row. Avatar is a film about awakening to new truths about the sacred relationships we have with each other and with the whole created order. The only way the characters in the film come to this new knowledge is by literally incarnating themselves in the bodies of the Ne’vi people they are trying to understand. They live with them, eat and hunt with them, and fly around on big dinosaur-like birds with them. They enter into a new world of vulnerability and experience that is risky and untried. They do Bethelehem.
This is the story of epiphany: we really only begin to grow and make connections as we step outside of our safe worlds and follow the star. We need to get outside the safety zone, “outside the wire” as they say in Kandahar, and hit the road. It is on the journey that we experience life in new and transformative ways.
It sounds great doesn’t it? Journey, pilgrimage, and adventure? Yet one of the things that troubles me about my western, white, middle-class tribe of Jesus-followers is that there seems to be too great an orientation towards safety and avoidance of risk. Maybe it’s fear of the unknown, or maybe it’s the institutional side of churches. Maybe it’s just human nature to tiptoe through life, just so that we can arrive at death safely. But if there is one thing this story of wise astrologers seeking Jesus teaches us, it is that being a pilgrim, a traveler is not boring. It may well be dangerous. If you read the whole story as Matthew tells it, there is murderous mayhem soon to follow. The magi are asked to report back to the conniving Herod. When they don’t return, Herod decides he is going to slaughter all first born children in Israel to make sure his kingdom keeps the upper hand. In fact, you might say that the closer the magi get to Jesus the more complicated their lives get. But there is no doubt that they find what they are looking for.
As we begin a new calendar year many of us take time to reflect on the year ahead. Some of us may even be the resolution or goal-setting type. That is all well and good. But could it be that what we really need is an epiphany? Perhaps we’re wondering if we’ve seen all there is to see, and God’s presence is dimly felt if at all. We thought we had arrived at a destination, but we’re feeling nine miles off. I suggest we let the Magi be our guides: There is still much to learn. “But wait…there’s more” as they say on those really bad info-mercials. There is still much traveling to do and more “wonders of his love” to behold. But we’ll need to admit that what we “know” may require some unlearning and a willingness to take a road less traveled.
Matthew tells us that the magi found what they were looking for and were moved to fall down and worship. And then they had another dream and took a different road home. May it be the same for us in 2010.
Almighty God,
Your Son Jesus Christ is the light of the world.
May we your people, illumined by your word and your Holy Spirit,
Shine with the radiance of his glory,
That he may be known, worshipped and loved
To every end of this earth;
Who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
One God, now and forever, Amen.
1This sermon draws extensively from two excellent reflections on the Scripture texts for Epiphany C1 by Daniel Clendinin (http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20071231JJ.shtml) and Walter Brueggemann (http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2103).
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