Sunday, January 1, 2017

Matthew 2:1-12


Sermon


Matthew 2:1-12 (NRSV)

 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:

6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ”

7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

 

Year ABC
Epiphany Sunday
January 1, 2017
Cross~Wind
Title: The Seeker in You

Introducing the text 


            Matthew 2:1-12 is the story of the visit of the magi. The biblical background for this story is in Numbers 22-24. Balaam is a man with magical and prophetic powers who came from the East and predicted that a star would rise from Jacob (Numbers 24:17). Another part of the biblical story that inspires and frames this text is the birth of Moses. Matthew will emphasize the trustworthy character of the magi. They follow the sign they see in the heavens. They take great risk in obeying their vision. They see a light in the heavens, a sign that the light has dawned upon the world in Jesus. They became part of Christian devotion long before the shepherds. Traditions concerning their names and personal stories arose early. The number varied from 2 to 12. The number of 3 comes from the list of gifts they brought. These traditions are generally consistent with the story of Matthew, offering a positive example of bringing all that we are to the feet of Jesus and worship him. They are not Jewish, of course. They stand outside the people of God while being an example to the people of God.

Introduction


In many ways, the visit of the “magi” in Matthew 2:1-12 is a symbol of humanity.[1] I would like to focus upon a painting that might help us reflect upon this possibility.

Although most nativity scenes show the Magi crowded into the stable of Jesus' birth -- along with the shepherds, animals, an angel, Mary, Joseph and the baby -- the Magi were almost certainly later visitors, coming perhaps as long as two years after the birth of Jesus. By then, Joseph had no doubt found better lodging for his family, which is probably why Matthew says the wise men entered "the house" to find Jesus. However, whatever the time and place, these Gentile visitors from the East "knelt down and paid him homage." In older vocabulary, they "adored" him. They finished what they came to do.

However, Leonardo da Vinci did not. Over the centuries, various painters have portrayed this visit, but one of the most famous -- despite its being unfinished -- is da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi.[2] Da Vinci's unfinished work still exists and is on display in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Though uncompleted, art critics recognize it as one of his most important works.[3]

Would it not be great if people considered our unfinished projects as important? Imagine all the stuff you could let go of, saying, "It's not finished and now it never will be, but it's got high value nonetheless."

If you adopt that as a policy this year, good luck with that!

Most of us do not have the genius of da Vinci, of course. If we are going to contribute in this world, we will need complete most of our projects.

Regardless of reasons for not finishing his painting[4], the Magi finished their work of adoration; da Vinci did not. How about us?

If we do not finish a project, we usually have a good reason.[5] Some examples: 

- You practice for eight weeks for your solo in the community Christmas pageant. Then, eight hours before the performance, you lose your voice.

- You vow to spend more time helping your son with his homework, but then your job presses you into longer hours at work.

- You resolve to be intentional about your devotional and prayer life, so you rearrange your schedule to allow yourself a half hour of quiet time at home. Just as you are getting into your prayers, the first of three telemarketing calls interrupts and the kid next door rings your doorbell to ask you to buy candy for his school fundraiser.

Application


The magi are the classic example of seekers. In the spiritual realm, we usually think of the seeker, who becomes a follower, who becomes mature in their faith, and who reproduces their faith in the lives of others. Yet, if we think of these as spiritual growth stages, every stage remains within us. We never finish a stage.

What about the seeker in you.

First, let us reflect upon who is searching.[6]

            The magi were strange and foreign.[7]

            They are the ones who, lacking a certainty about where the Messiah is to be born and about who he is, lacking the scriptures themselves, are on a search. Others may be content to stay home, going over the old slogans and formulae, keeping to well-worn paths, but the magi venture forth.       

The magi were outsiders.

I am glad that you seekers are here, that your journey has brought you by this way. At one time, all of us were seekers. I do not believe that stage of our spiritual journey behind us completely. Even if we have searched and found, something of the seeker remains in each of us.[8]

This ought to be a good Sunday for the seeker side of you, because our scripture is a story about some people on a journey, people engaged in a search. This Sunday we focus on those seekers from the East, the wise men who came to Bethlehem to see Jesus. With this story, we complete our celebration of Christmas, the Feast of the Nativity. Most of us have already concluded our Christmas celebrations, put away the tree and the decorations, and exchanged the gifts. The church in its wisdom entreats us to linger just a while longer to reflect upon the meaning of Christmas before we rush headlong into a new year. These seekers from the East have something to teach us, if we will pause, and reflect, if we will walk with them a while along their journey.[9]

Second, in what ways does the Bible suggest God communicates?

An important part of this story is that the people who had scripture did not see what God is doing, while those who had no divine revelation saw and listened to what God was doing in nature and in their lives. As important as knowledge of Scripture is for our growth as followers of Jesus, we need to have care that our knowledge is only in our heads, blinding us to what God is doing. The seeker who remains within us needs to keep alert to the ways God is seeking us and speaking to us. It might not be through a star in the heavens. It might be in a friendship, the voice of a child, or an event in the news.

Third, can we know the will of God in a given situation?

Ponder this story in light of how the Magi needed discerning minds and hearts if they were to do the will of God.

Fourth, we may trust our conviction if it passes the following test: is it loving? Is it kind? Is it honest? Is it for the good of others? Is it unselfish on my part? Is it consistent with the teachings of my faith?

Fifth, let us reflect upon whom the magi found at the end of their journey.

            Matthew begins his gospel, this most Jewish of gospels, and the gospel where everything is backed up by reference to the Jewish scriptures. He begins by saying that it was these outsiders, these pagans, these magicians who were the very first to come to the baby Jesus, to see him for who he was, to lay down their gifts and worship him. In other words, Matthew says that this baby is God’s gift for the whole world, the people out beyond the boundaries, the people who get confused about these boundaries between respectable religion and primitive magic.[10]

Conclusion


            I wonder if they were disappointed. After all, they travelled many miles and many days. A bright star guided them. I wonder if they had hoped to find something more. We are like that, are we not? We always want something more. Satisfaction seems so difficult for us to find.

Yet, you are a seeker. You are here because you are looking for something more. The worldly wisdom, by which you function in much of your life, is not adequate to the task of the demands of your life at this point. The stars you have been following, by which you have made your way through the world, are growing dim, and you are looking for a more trustworthy guide. You do not think of yourself as a particularly gifted person. You do not seem blessed with great spiritual perception, not destined to perform heroic and saintly deeds. Yet you have come searching, and you have brought what you have. Moreover, if you should encounter God here, something beyond the stars, you are willing to lay down what you have at the manger and worship.

We are at the start of a new year. We may start some projects that need to remain unfinished. Persisting in a project that is just not working is not wise. For most of us, life is an unfinished project. We always have more we would like to do.

As we stand here at the beginning of a new year, it is a good time to think about the faith-projects before us.  

- What is the project you are struggling with?

- What is the next step in that project?

- What is keeping you from taking that step, or implementing the step?

- What has God called you to do that suddenly seemed to fall apart?

- What naysaying comments do you need to ignore?

- What hindrances are really indicators that you are on the right track?

- What last-stage problems are reminders to call afresh on God?

- In the coming year, how can you build accountability into your life to encourage faithful discipleship?



[1] A few years ago, Houston Smith, great scholar of world religions, entitled his PBS series on the world’s religions, “The Long Search.”
[2] Leaders of Florence commissioned the artist in 1480 to paint this 8-by-9-foot work for the main altar of the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto, near Florence. He was 29 at the time, and he worked on it for quite a while, getting the piece to its brown ink and yellow ocher groundwork stage. Then he moved to Milan and left it behind, never to work on it again. Eventually, Florence gave the assignment to another artist who provided the requested painting to the monastery in 1496.
[3] Actually, da Vinci may have deliberately decided not to finish the assignment. The financial arrangements for the painting were weighted against him right from the start. The monks' promised payment was a third of some land the monastery had received in a bequest, but they stipulated that da Vinci could not sell it for three years following the completion of the painting unless he sold it back to the monks for a price set in their favor. Attached to the land was a legacy of 150 florins, which da Vinci was supposed to repay to the monastery in installments. When the first installment came due, he had no money to pay it, and, in fact, had to request an advance from the monks so he could keep working. Da Vinci was also required to provide, at his own expense, all of the paint and gold used on the painting. The commission even included a penalty clause where da Vinci lost everything he'd invested if the painting were not completed on schedule.
[4] Da Vinci himself had a reputation as being unreliable at completing commissioned works. While he would devote months to the concept and composition of the work, he had no appetite for the actual labor of carrying out the painting itself. Moreover, he may have had a problem receiving payment from those who commissioned him.
[5] Usually, it is not that we do not plan to finish, or even that once into a project, we make a reasoned decision to let the thing go, which sometimes is the better part of wisdom. Rather, with those things we think important to finish, we still have to deal with flagging energy and/or unexpected hurdles. Sometimes it's almost as if some chaotic force is triggered when we're within sight of the finish line -- something like the Allstate Insurance "mayhem" commercials (check them out on YouTube) -- which delights in sidetracking our plans.
- You finally start the kitchen remodeling project, but then the sump pump fails and you have to deal with a flooded basement. Somehow, you never get back to the kitchen remake.
- You have been working in your community to establish a shelter for the abused. Just as it seems you have finally gotten popular support for the idea, your attention to the project starts to wander.
[6] In our text, these people, who came to the manger, were not three, they were not wise, and they were not kings. They were all people on a journey.
[7] We guess that they must have come from Persia. That is modern- day Iran. They were not Jews, not people of the book. They were aliens. Yet they were the first ones to see that Jesus was the Christ, the first ones to worship him. How surprising it is that Matthew, among the most Jewish of the gospel writers, has these magi as the first to see who Jesus is, the first to worship him, the first to offer him gifts.
[8] Our church would be nearly empty if, I declared, “Next Sunday, I don’t want anyone here but the thoroughly committed, the absolutely certain.” If we are honest with ourselves, we could all look at times when we have fallen and doubted. Who knows, maybe no one would show up!
[9] This is a beloved story of visitors from the East who journeyed to Bethlehem and knelt at the feet of the baby Jesus. It is such a vivid story that believers after Matthew continued to develop it. For one thing, a tradition arose that there were three wise men. Matthew does not say that. He says that they offered three kinds of gifts to the baby Jesus – gold, frankincense, and myrrh – but he does not say that there were three of them. Where do we get the notion that they were “kings”? Matthew calls them “magi,” that is, magicians, people who dealt in very strange magic potions, who used incantations to perform certain feats of magic, people who looked at the stars, trying to figure out the course of the world. We are not told all of that about them, at least not by Matthew. What Matthew does tell us is that they were people on a journey, seeking something, following a star.
[10] I wonder if they were disappointed. After all, they travelled many miles and many days. A bright star guided them. I wonder if they had hoped to find something more. We are like that, are we not? We always want something more. Satisfaction seems so difficult for us to find.
 

Going deeper


Matthew 2:1-2 is the story of the visit of the magi. The story is unique to Matthew.Raymond Brown thinks that this story was sugggested by the story of Balaam in numbers 22-24, a man with magical powers who came from the East and predicted that a star would rise from Jacob.[1] The story should remind us of the birth of Moses.

Matthew 2:1-12 (NRSV)

 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, [Some people read this verse in a way that suggests his birth was around 7 BC. Matthew will stress the trustworthy character of the Magi. They follow the signs of the times. They take great risks to be obedient to their vision.] 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, [Numbers 24:17] and have come to pay him homage.” [The point here is not speculate what the light was, but rather, that light had dawned upopn the world through Jesus. Of course, they did not have scripture to guide them, so they relied on what nature told them.] 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; [suggesting the opposition of the Jewish people.] 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. [Given the aimosity we know existed between Herod and religious leaders, we are surprised to learn that Herod called together the chief prists and scribes and inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.] 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: [Micah 5] 

6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ” 

[We see here that the Jewish leaders had scripture, but did not listen in the same way that the Magi had listened to nature.]

7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” [It seems strange at this point that Herod did not send troops to follow the Magi.] 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. [Today the gold would be worth $600,000, while the frankincense and myrrh would be worth only $15 a piece.  Frankincense and myrrh are both resins that come from wounds in the bark of trees that grow only in northeast Africa and southern Arabia.  Both, along with being expensive, had a healthy quality to them.  Myrrh was a perfume as well as a cure for almost anything.] 12 And having been warned in a dream [divine intervention] not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

[Interestingly, the Magi were part of early Christian piety long before the Shepherds.  The catacombs, where the early Christians often met for worship, contain paintings of the magi 200 years before there are paintings of the Shepherds.  The number of relics for them far exceeds those of the shepherds.  It was not until the protestant reformation that the shepherds gained prominence, mainly because so much of what they considered superstition had begun to surround the magi.  As early as 207 AD, Tertullian described the magi as kings in this fashion: "For the East generally regarded the magi as kings...” and he goes on to say that this symbolized the riches of the East, and even idolatry, to be given up for Jesus.  This view prevailed so much that by 500 AD, authors simply assumed that they were kings.[2]  We do not know the first time anyone gave the number of Magi.  Some accounts have only two, and there are some in which there are twelve.  However, very early in most areas of the church the number was three, based on the analogy with the number of gifts. 

            The names of the magi differ, but one early description, dating from the 700's AD, goes like this:

The magi were the ones who gave gifts to the Lord.  The first is said to have been Melchior, an old man with white hair and a long beard...who offered gold to the Lord as to a king.  The second, Gaspar by name, young and beardless and ruddy complexioned...honored him as God by his gift of incense, and oblation worthy of divinity.  The third, black-skinned and heavily bearded, named Balthasar...by his gift of myrrh testified to the Son of Man who was to die. 

The description of the gifts goes back to Irenaeus, writing between 182 and 188 AD, as he says:

...they showed, by these gifts which they offered, who it was they was worshipped; myrrh, because it was He who should die and be buried for the mortal human race; gold, because He was a king...and frankincense, because He was God, who also "was made known in Judea," and was "declared to those who sought Him not."[3] 

There is even an ancient reference to the death of the magi: 

Having undergone many trials and fatigues for the Gospel, the three wise men met at sewa (Sebaste in Armenia) in AD 54 to celebrate the feast of Christmas.  Thereupon, after the celebration of Mass, they died: St. Melchior on January 1st, aged 116; St. Balthasar on January 6th, aged 112; and St. Gaspar on January 11th, aged 109. 

Though these traditions may seem to get far a field from the biblical text, they are true to the spirit of Matthew, who clearly wants readers to view the magi as a positive example of bringing all that we are to the feet of Jesus, and there worship him.

As Barth points out, generally in the Bible, the opposition to the cult of the heavenly bodies is clear. However, here is one notable exception. This star had in some way led them until finally it stood still over the place where the little child was. The author presupposes a given relaity of this occurrence and therefore of the whole possibility of astrology, and draws upon it as such in his presentation of the birth of Chirst. Yet, this does not meant that he suggests that astrology is an appropriate activity. In this one case, yes, they fit into the divine plan, but one should not assume that this means vindication of the practice.[4] In a beautiful discussion generally of the hidden neighbor, Barth points out that the these wise men bringing their offering to the baby Jeses are an example of such, standing outside the visible church, yet, being an example to the church.[5]


[1] (Birth of the Messiah, 1977, 117)
[2] (Against Marcion, III, 13)
[3] (Against Heresies, III, ix.2)
[4] (Church Dogmatics, III.1 (41.2), 165)
[5] (ibid, I.2 [18.3], 425)

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