josephholubsermons
January 8, 2012
Matthew 2:1-12
(Read Matthew 2:1-12)
This past week we were at our home in Buena Vista, and I was sitting on
the deck in the afternoon.
The highway in the sky was sketched with the white vapor trails of jets.
The shiny jets and their white tails were clearly visible
reflecting the bright sunshine against the azure Colorado sky.
At one point, I counted eleven separate trails.
As I sat there looking into the sky, I was transported back in
time to one of my most
primal memories.
It is the memory of a feeling, and the feeling is a deep-seeded longing - a core restlessness. Perhaps it was the result of growing up in a conflicted family environment, but I can distinctly remember laying in the grass of the Illinois prairie looking up at the sky and watching the planes overhead flying westward into the sunset, and at the core of my being burned a consuming yearning to be on one of those jets, a yen to take wings and fly into a new future free of conflict and emotional turmoil. As I sat in the serenity of my surroundings this week, I reflected on how that longing has driven me and played a major role in the shaping my life in the five decades since.
The story about these magi has always fascinated me, and I see a connection between them and my inner yearning. They come across as rather mysterious and enigmatic figures. The gospel writers Mark, Luke and John make no mention of them at all - only Matthew. The popular view places them in the Christmas story kneeling at the manger alongside the shepherds, but in fact Matthew makes no mention of that. All he says is that they came at the time of King Herod which could have been as long as a couple of years after Jesus’ birth. Almost all depictions have them numbered as three, and some even give them names, but Matthew again makes no mention of those specifics. He only says they offered precious gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. In fact, the traditions that have grown up around these so-called magi are just that – traditions that have no biblical basis. The liturgical calendar does not even place them in the Christmas season, but portrays them as the event that ushers in the Epiphany season on January 6th.
Many biblical scholars believe they are not historical figures at all, but are a part of a body of tradition that developed over a period of decades after Jesus and before Matthew wrote his gospel some 50 years after Jesus in the 9th decade of the first century.
To me, the point is not whether they were historical figures or the result of tradition, or whether there were three, five or ten of them or what their names might have been. I am looking for what they mean - why Matthew included them in his story in the first place. What is Matthew revealing? What is Matthew telling us? What does Matthew want us to know about his experience of Jesus by weaving these characters into his gospel testimony? To me, that is the point!
The first huge thing we must take note of is that the magi were not Jews, but “wise men from the East,” meaning representatives of a learned class from ancient Persia. In other words, they were anything but Jews appearing in the gospel that is arguably the most Jewish of the four gospels. Matthew references Jesus as the Jewish messiah more than any of the other three gospel writers. That in itself should cause us to ask the obvious question, “What were foreigners from a faraway place and a diverse culture and a strange religious paradigm doing on the doorstep of Jesus, the Jewish messiah, worshipping him?” The question begs to be addressed.
This is where my right brain kicks into gear (as I trust did Matthew’s), and I embrace this story metaphorically (symbolically) not literally. The message is in the metaphor! It is Matthew’s literary way of declaring that even though Jesus was born a Jew, and Matthew asserts Jesus distinctly as the Jewish messiah, he and his community experienced something incredibly extraordinary in Jesus that transcended ethnic, cultural, national and religious barriers. They experienced something in Jesus that was universal; not just for Jews but something that could touch all humanity-every human life; something that had the power and capability to minimize and melt the boundaries that divided and separated human beings from one another that fostered hatred, fear, prejudice and conflict. In Jesus they experienced the reality that the divine disregards boundaries and resides in all people, calls all people, and most significantly brings all people together into a reconciled whole. Matthew’s faith in Jesus caused a radical transformation of perspective that even though his community knew Jesus as their messiah, he was not exclusively their own, but he belonged to the world. Embracing Jesus caused them to look differently at the world and relate differently to people and cultures who were dissimilar - outside of their conventional comfort zones.
Those magi following a star; a star we might call the star of the universal human yearning for something more, cause them to climb on their camels (or whatever it was they rode in those days) and journey to a faraway and unlikely place. I don’t think my inner restlessness is unique only to me, but rather it is a part of a universal human experience - a yearning for something more that we look for, long for, search for that propels us to many places and experiences looking for fulfillment, satisfaction and fuller humanity – and our quest takes us to many things that make big promises to do just that.
We may try some form of security, but in the end we can find ourselves living behind great barriers, prisoners of the walls of our own making, living defensively and preoccupied with self-interests never feeling secure enough. I am old enough to remember times, in our national life, for example, when we actually had civic and civil conversations about the common good, empowering the poor and disadvantaged; empowering students and workers to a better life; how our lives were interconnected and inter-dependent. Those conversations have all but ceased and been replaced by conversations about only what’s good for me and my security, and they are conversations that are almost always punctuated by a craving for more, more, more!
We may think that a new job, new house or a new spouse might fill the void so we pursue it on our quest to be whole, only to find the restlessness travels with us and that after a awhile, the new thing feels pretty much like the old thing.
Some may turn to some kind of buzz or thrill, seeking one after another,
but after each buzz the restlessness persists, requiring an even greater
buzz and the cycle continues ceaselessly.
Some may try conformity at any cost, even willing to sacrifice values, and in the process lose their sense of self and become more lonely than ever, surrounded by people, but feeling isolated and adrift.
For me these inscrutable magi represent this universal human quest; the quest for that experience that can touch me in my core being like nothing else has be able and quiet the desperation. Who are the magi? They are you and me! I know because I am restless so much of the time. My soul longs for that place where I know I belong; that encounter that calms my quiet desperation; an experience of grace that empowers me to love myself for who I am without rationalization, and to love others without restriction.
I am restless, so I embark on a quest, following numerous stars of promise until I find something authentic. It’s like a "homing mechanism" imbedded in my soul – but where will it take me? Where has it taken me? How about you?
The magi are Matthew’s way of bringing all humanity through Bethlehem to consider Jesus. I am gripped by the story’s concluding verse, “…they left for their own country by another road.” For someone who is a bit of a poet and a mystic at heart, that’s an irresistible metaphor that stimulates my imagination.
You see, the journey doesn't end at Bethlehem. Bethlehem is not a destination, but the beginning of a new journey. For me, the Christian life is a journey – that’s my operative metaphor - a journey following Jesus, which is to say following the love of God and Spirit of God that was embodied in his life; the love of God that is transformative - that can make me whole; that can quiet the restlessness in my soul. It’s a journey that always challenges me beyond where I am right now: intellectually, theologically, politically, socially – in every way that I am a human being. It is a love that leads me past fears which confine me; across boundaries I never dared cross before to connect with and know the real people that live beyond that are different and diverse from me. It’s a journey takes me past my pitiful self-indulgence and self-preoccupation to engaged others and, like Jesus, do what I can to empower others. It is a journey upon which I am always becoming.
Oh, of course, there I times I get afraid and lose heart. I want to stop
and stay where I am, get comfortable and settle in.
There are times I want to quit
following the love that calls me and beckons me. But when I do, at those
times I find I lose that growing, dynamic, vital edge to my faith and
life experience. I can get
dogmatic, parochial, narrow and defensive.
I retreat into the safety of doctrines or sectarianism, or I can
become arrogant and entrenched in certainty that guts life and the
Divine of mystery– none of which is transforming and fulfilling, but
inhibit the creative and dynamic Spirit of God that always calls and
beckons me beyond where I am to risk new experiences of Divine love.
So let the journey begin (or continue) and I pray that along the way we will experience a new kind of restlessness - the overwhelming desire to keep following the child of Bethlehem into never-ending adventures of a fuller humanity that are waiting around every bend in the road. Amen.