San Williams, Presenter
Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
"Humbled By God"
Some of you are familiar with the series on National Public Radio called "This, I Believe." In this series, people from various walks of life are given a couple of minutes to air their thoughts about a single deeply held belief. One recent speaker struck a chord with me and many others. His name is Richard Rohr. Rohr is a Franciscan Priest, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In his spoken essay Rohr discussed about how he has learned to trust mystery and to be comfortable with ambiguity. He mentioned that he usually spends the season of Lent in a hermitage, where he is alone for forty days. "The more I am alone," he declared, "the more I surrender to ambivalence, to happy contradictions and seeming inconsistencies in myself and almost everything else, including God. Paradoxes don't scare me anymore." Well, apparently paradoxes didn't scare Matthew, either. Otherwise, he wouldn't have passed along the episode of the Wise Men's visit to the baby Jesus. The story of the Wise Men is one of happy contradictions, seeming inconsistencies, and paradox.
In the first place, we don't really know much about these strange visitors from the East. Even though all sorts of legends have developed around these rich wise guys, they remain mysterious to us moderns. Their proper name is Magi, a term which designates a priestly caste of Medes. One source identified the Medes as ancestors of present day Kurds. The Magi interpreted dreams and omens, and claimed the gift of prophecy. They worshiped the elements: earth, wind, water and fire. The only temples they had were fire temples, generally situated on housetops, where the sacred elements were kept burning night and day. Of course, theologically, these foreigners' visit to Jesus has been interpreted as a signal that God's offer of salvation is extended to all people. Yet among the Gospel writers, only Matthew recounts the story of three elusive visitors from the East who over the years have come to add such an exotic flavor to the Christmas story.
The mystery deepens when the Magi attempt to locate the place of the Messiah's birth. The Magi come first to Jerusalem, because the capitol city is the obvious place to find a new King. Besides, the plot line for the Magi's visit is all laid out in Isaiah 60, the verses that we read this morning. The prophet wrote these verses after the Hebrew exiles had returned to Jerusalem in the 6th century B.C.E., only to find their capitol city in shambles. The towers had been torn down and the economy was in utter ruin. In the middle of the devastation, Isaiah invites his depressed, discouraged contemporaries to look up, to hope, to expect everything to change. "Rise, shine, for your light has come." The prophet anticipates Jerusalem as the center of an empire. He pictures the wealth of the nations streaming to Jerusalem in camel caravans from Asia, bringing gold, frankincense and all manner of wealth. No wonder, then, that the wise men from the East come first to Jerusalem. It's the logical place to expect the birth of a new king.
Once in Jerusalem, naturally, the Magi inquire of Herod just where in the city they might find the new king of Israel, and Herod is threatened by this news. Since he is currently the king in Jerusalem, he doesn't want to hear about any interlopers. But Herod does a strange thing. He calls the Old Testament scholars from the local seminary and says, in effect, "Tell me more about Isaiah 60. What's all this business about camels and gold, frankincense, and myrrh?" The Old Testament scholars tell him that while those verses are in the Bible, the wise men, if they want to find the Messiah, are using the wrong scripture. They should be listening instead to Micah 5. Since Herod, like many politicians, is not too familiar with scripture, the Old Testament profs quote Micah 5 to him: "But you, Oh Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel...and he shall be the one of peace."
You know the rest of the story. Herod sends the visitors to Bethlehem to find the Messiah, instructing them to report back to him so that he, too, can worship the new king. What he actually intends to do, though, is not to worship him, but to kill him. But the magi find the Messiah in a manager in the town of Bethlehem. Overwhelmed with joy, they worship the child, offer their gifts and then return home, bypassing Herod and Jerusalem.
Now contemporary Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that what Matthew gives us in this story is a kind of paradox. He is presenting us with two alternative visions about how God is present with us in the world. Isaiah 60 suggests that God is present through the powerful--powerful people in powerful places such as Jerusalem. According to this vision, if you're seeking God's presence and work in the world, then you should look among the powerful and the influential--in the capital cities, the corporate board rooms, and among the decision-makers of the world. Surely it's here, among the powerful, that the future is shaped, where changes are made and everything truly important takes place. If it doesn't get printed in the New York Times, it must not be very significant. This, says Bruggemann, is essentially the vision presented in Isaiah 60.
But Micah 5 offers an altogether different understanding of how God is present in our world. It suggests that God's presence in the world may be more mysterious, more hidden and humble that we might reasonably expect. After all, Bethlehem is a less prestigious place than Jerusalem. A baby lying in a feeding trough is a different picture of a king than is a powerful ruler on a throne. Micah imagines a God who slips in at odd times, in odd places, taking the future out of our hands and away from our control.
Just think: What if those Old Testament scholars that Herod called in had only remembered Isaiah 60. What if they had told the wise men to stick around the capital city until some really important royal news broke? What if they had thought themselves too important to travel the nine miles from Jerusalem to the homely little town of Bethlehem? They would have missed the Christ Child altogether. Yet they came to Bethlehem in awe and wonder at the mystery and the paradox of God whose presence is made known in powerlessness, true royalty wrapped in rags, eternity glimpsed in vulnerable human flesh.
The philosopher David Hume disparaged the impotence that he saw in the Christian view of the vulnerable suffering Son of God. What good is such a weak God in the face of the world's great evils? he wondered. The New York City preacher, Maurice Boyd, answers Hume by recalling the scene in Moby Dick, the one in which Ahab rages to God, saying that it is only when the Almighty God comes to us as the lowest form of love that we are able to receive God. Ahab screams: "Come to me as a power and there is that here which to the last gasp of this earthquake life will resist Thee. But come in Thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss Thee." What Hume called divine impotence, Christians call grace--an Omnipotence we may worship with a kiss.
Friends, as we begin a new calendar year, we're tempted to pin our hopes for the world on the people who have influence, wealth and power. We look for news out of Jerusalem, Washington, Moscow, Baghdad or London. And while the decisions that come out of these places are surely important, Matthew doesn't consider them to be conclusive. Rather he invites us to trust the mystery of a God who is transforming the world by the lowest form of love. This is the paradox, a Mystery that we can embrace with joy.