Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6, Psalm 72, Matthew 2:1-12
Our Jewish sisters and brothers dance with the Torah scroll once a year, in a celebration called Simchat Torah. It marks the end of a yearly cycle, a schedule of readings that takes them through that foundational text. The formal Torah is, of course, only the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, Genesis to Deuteronomy, so much easier to get through in a year than the entire Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures we re-order and erroneously call the Old Testament. Christians have a more complicated task, for not only must we read the Hebrew Scriptures because Jesus makes little sense outside of the Jewish trajectory that runs from Moses to Maccabees, but we must also read about the life and ministry of Jesus himself, about the growth of the early church, and about the early and evolving understanding of what Jesus meant, an understanding that would continue to evolve long after the formal canon was closed, that continues to evolve to this day as we humans learn more, experience more.
Eventually, many Christians settled on a three-year cycle of readings, a combination of the Hebrew Scripture, always including a psalm, of non-gospel New Testament texts like Paul’s letters, and a gospel, combined in a three-year rotation. The version used by twenty-three denominations and Christian movements in North America is called the Revised Common Lectionary. The United Church of Christ is part of the organizing body, the Consultation on Common Texts, that developed and manages this schedule. We do not, however, dance with our Bibles at the end of our three year cycle, though maybe we should.
The lectionary schedule allows us to feel part of a broader movement of Christianity, and brings a certain discipline to preaching, forcing preachers to deal with texts we might otherwise avoid like a biblical plague. But the lectionary has flaws as well. Because it is based on ancient church customs around feasts and holy days, it can jump around in ways that feel random, even without the wild card of a moving Easter. Last week we had twelve year-old Jesus, this week he is a toddler. Because few of us read all of the assigned texts for any given day, and few attend worship every Sunday anymore, things can feel even more erratic. And then there is John, the oddball gospel, that doesn’t even get a year of its own, instead interrupting when it contains a story we love that is absent in the other three gospels, and there are many of those.
Worst of all, at least to me, is the fact that the lectionary often lifts texts out of their broader context, edits readings removing parts that are inconvenient. If we had been true to the lectionary, we would have never mentioned the sons of Eli in last week’s reading about the boy Samuel, the idea that God was determined to kill them, for we don’t like that ancient understanding of God, a God who punishes. Like fundamentalists, we have our own form of pick-and-choose Christianity.
This week’s reading is another where we select the parts we like and excise those portions we find inconvenient. We get wise people minus the violence, which isn’t true, for in Matthew’s gospel, inserted here out of season for Epiphany, the life and ministry of Jesus is bookended by violence at the hands of human authorities. Never mind that we mash-up the two very different Nativity narratives, leaving us with a story that is theologically impoverished but sentimentally satisfying.
Sentimentality is deadly, for our faith, for our lives in a real world that requires struggle, that rewards adaptation.
Those three kings are not kings, and there are not three of them. They are not in the stable with the shepherds, for Matthew has neither in his gospel, Jesus presumably born at home. In fact, it is far more likely, given the timing in Matthew’s text, that Jesus was young but no longer an infant when they arrived, two or under, as we will see.
Given the use of the term Magi in the Ancient Near East and their direction of travel, it seems probable that they were followers of a religion founded by a man who was born of a virgin and who began his public ministry when he was thirty. That man was Zoroaster.
These priests of Zoroaster would have been trained in astrology. They read the signs in the sky, the Christmas star of legend, and traveled to see the newborn king in Canaan, which upset the incumbent king to no end. Herod the Great, the ambitious builder and cruel despot, asked the priests to help him identify the child who would be king. They didn’t and so, according to Matthew, Herod orders the slaughter of all boys two and under in Bethlehem. Fortunately, the text tells us, the Holy Family fled the violence in their homeland and found refuge across the border in Egypt. That is another whole sermon, but I’m afraid that any Christian that doesn’t get it by now never will.
The great Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes “Perhaps no event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction of Christmas than the death of these children. Jesus is born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants.â€
That is the rest of the story, not la-di-da frankincense and myrrh. It is dead toddlers in the streets of Bethlehem, the gospel author quoting Jeremiah, mother Rachel “weeping for her children,†refusing to be consoled “because they are no more.†I’ve always said that a real Christmas pageant would include all the little boys prone on the stage with red ribbons around their necks, though no one has ever taken me up on that idea.
The author of Matthew is casting Jesus as a new Moses. This story parallels the first chapter of the Book of Exodus in the Torah, where Pharaoh orders the Hebrew midwives to kill all male children, and when they do not obey, commands his own people to cast all newborn Hebrew males into the Nile, death by drowning or crocodile. The good news is that like Luke’s census, Matthew’s massacre of the innocents probably didn’t happen. It does not appear in other gospels, nor does it appear in secular texts of that age like the “Antiquities of the Jews†by Josephus, which catalogs many of Herod’s other acts of cruelty.
Whether it actually happened or not, it is the story we have. And it was a credible story in that context, for brutal violence was the rule rather than the exception, much as it is today, for children are still being slaughtered, in Yemen to protect the power of Saudi tyrants, in Florida and in Connecticut, to protect a tyranny of corporate profit and the power of threatened racial violence.
The cross, that symbol we have flattened to three hours and three days, then emptied completely, skipping the waiting and fear, was meant to be a slow and public torture-execution followed by desecration by neglect as the corpse remained on the cross as a warning to others who might dare defy Rome or its puppet kings, for the real king in this story isn’t carrying gifts, he is stripping the poor of all they had and ordering the slaughter of children.
Which brings us to the tradition and theology behind this Sunday on the Christian calendar. We have traditionally associated Epiphany with the Magi. Epiphany comes from a Greek root that has to do with light and what is revealed. It can be found in words that mean to cause something to be seen, to show oneself, to shine. Scripture is full of light imagery, more powerful in that age before electricity and light pollution, when so much of the world was dark.
And that’s the thing. Christ is a light in a dark time. When we strip the scripture story of despair and violence, we are handing people a flashlight in the glare of the noonday sun, totally pointless.
Israel, the name given to the patriarch Jacob after his night of wrestling, the name taken by the nation, means to struggle with God. Our faith is one of struggling, of light in the dark, not of light in the light. And there is always dark, even if we pretend it isn’t there, wrapped in our entitlement and sentiment.
There is always dark. There has always been dark. We should not be thinking we are the star, nor should we have the hubris to believe that we are the source of light. We are but lenses through which God’s light shines, the light of love and creation, divine data spoken into the universe.
All three readings today, from the 72nd Psalm, Trito-Isaiah, and from Matthew, all three reverse the traditional Christian paradigm, which tells us to take the good news out to the nations, something half-ashamed progressive Christians rarely do. But maybe we don’t have to, for all three readings have people moving toward the light, earthly kings coming to Jerusalem in the psalm, all nations coming to the restored Israel in Third Isaiah, Zoroastrian priests traveling to see a new king in Matthew, a baby that would bring light in a dark time.
We are meant to shine with God’s light, with Christ’s light, to be on fire with the Spirit in such a way that others are attracted to who we are and what we have. It is our job to welcome them, to partner with them and with the Spirit to polish them so that they too might shine, might be a conduit for holy light in a dark work.
God’s light did not appear under the noon day sun. It was night. It was dark. If we go tramping about through life pretending that it is daytime when it is actually night time, we are going to come to a bad end, at best tripping and falling, at worst plummeting to our death. Sentimentality and denial may be fine for those who are nearing the end of life, who leave no loved ones behind, who are not attached to family or community, but for the rest of us who care about community and family, it is necessary to confess the darkness and seek the light.
There is evil about. We have no time for Pangloss and Pollyanna.
Many of you have grandchildren who are scared to go to school, for active shooter drills have told them that the world is not safe, and the world is not safe. At least in that they join every brown-skinned person in America, for they too are scared to leave the house, for deadly force is all too frequently used against them, and rarely against those of us who are white, even if we are armed to the teeth.
Scientists have determined that we are running out of time when it comes to saving the planet from human-caused climate change, a truth we see in the news headlines, in fire and in flood of apocalyptic proportions, yet the greedy seek short-term suicidal profit, weakening already too weak environmental protection.
Lying, cheating, stealing, are valorized. The times are as dark as when Caligula was on the Roman throne. We are exhausted by the bad news, inclined to turn off the news. I know I am, which is easy to do as a white person in Blue Hill, far from the chaos. But I am not far from the chaos. The chaos is happening on MDI in our national park, at the Bangor airport in the control tower, wherever the Coast Guard is needed.
Gen X and Millennials need more than potlucks, as much as we love potlucks. They need light, white-hot spiritual light that reveals what is true, that makes clear the way forward. They need something to follow, for if they are not moving, then they are not moving. In an age when all forms of social life are collapsing, when the Moose Lodge and even the mega-churches are in free fall, you better offer them something challenging, something engaging, or you might as well turn out the light, lock the doors, and leave all in darkness.
Light is light because there is dark. Easter is Easter because there is Good Friday. Christ arrives, a vulnerable baby, threatened by Herod in Matthew, dis-located by Augustus in Luke, not to bring light into a world of light, but to bring light to people who were scared, who were running out of hope. And when he started his public ministry, it was not to give them empty promises, but was to call them to action.
Light does more than just dispel the dark, does more than illuminate what is rotten. It is also the source of life, of growth, for the spirit as for nature. It reveals love and compassion and obedience in unexpected places, a widow with her small coin, a Samaritan lifting a beaten man out of a ditch.
You may choose to ignore the tricky parts, the hard parts, of the scripture story, of life itself, cocooned in the bubble wrap of sentiment. But I choose to live in the real world, where people are hurt and broken and scared. They need light and hope and love. They don’t need easy answers and false promises. They need truth. They need the whole story, not just gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but a hurried flight across the border. They need to know that love wins despite the dark, despite the wrong, despite the violence.
I choose the whole story, not a flashlight in the noonday sun, but a light in the darkness, a star in the sky, a savior born in muck and vulnerability. I choose a Holy Family on the run. I choose the courage to enter Jerusalem, where his enemies sought his execution. I choose the sorrow and fear of Gethsemane. I choose an open tomb, angels, and light.
What will you choose?