Epiphany - Year A
January 6, 2008
University Lutheran, Clemson
Matthew 2:1-12
Not a Private Matter
This Christmas has been very relaxing for me. I have been burning up accumulated vacation days as if they were fall leaves. Most of the time has been spent at home, getting ready to say good-bye to Kat, as she departs for Germany. A fair amount of time has been spent in North Carolina, with my momma, my brother and sister, and all their children. They have more children than me – when you consider that they are all married or about to be married. And they are all starting to have babies. Babies are everywhere. We have commented that all of those babies might be one of the reasons why Mom is doing as well as she is. There is just so much excitement associated with their comings and goings.
You also realize, sitting there and observing these cousins, how differently they feel about their babies and the way in which others interact with them. Malia is likely to dump her son (Jay) in your lap and leave the premises all together. Scott would never consider such a thing. He hardly wants Josh and Luke to be out of his sight. Rushy’s son is the most delicate. In fact, Landon spent three nights in the hospital between Christmas and New Year’s. There is no reluctance to let others hold the little feller, but he is so small and sickly. His mother keeps a pretty close eye on him at all times. Children are a precious gift. And each of us arrives at our own level of comfort with regard to others handling, holding, or feeding. Way too often, the assumption is made that a baby is a public invitation to offer advice or comment. All too seldom, we treat children as if they were public property; forgetting that mothers and daddies quite often want everyone to leave them and their off-spring alone.
I wonder, in re-considering Matthew’s story of the visit of the three wisemen, what sort of thoughts or feelings might have been running through the minds of Mary and Joseph. They are in their own home, minding their own business, when these strangers from the east came knocking on the door. It is only in Luke’s gospel that Jesus is born in a barn. Here, in Matthew, Jesus is quite comfortable with his mother and father in the “house.” (Check out verse 11 if you have never noticed this divergence from Luke’s more popular recounting of the birth.) Of course, it is entirely possible that the visit of these learned men comes days, weeks, or perhaps even months after Jesus’ birth. These “astrologers,” most likely having come to Israel from Persia, come to the place where Mary is staying and assume that they have every right in the world to be there. Every right to consider the baby’s first days a public event.
And, I guess you would have to say, that they do.
The visit of the Magi is Matthew’s way of letting us know that this child has significance beyond what it is that individual believers choose to believe about him. The visit of these learned men exposes Jesus as something more than the cute little first-born of Mary and Joseph. While this child may go on to become a powerful preacher and do amazing things on the way to his execution and eventual resurrection, his significance is not dependant upon those actions of his adult life. This child’s impact on the world begins at the moment of his birth. They come, and their arrival makes it clear that the birth of this baby is an event which has implications for the whole of God’s creation. They, and all the world, has a right to be there. Because of this birth, life on earth will never be the same again.
We have allowed the story of Jesus’ birth to follow the path so often taken when we speak of religious life in general. We have sat passively to one side while Jesus’ birth is turned into some privatized event or feeling. As with the whole of Christian faith, we have begun to think of it as a matter of individual consequence – something which has meaning only because of what we do on our own when we are all alone.
However, the birth of Jesus is not this kind of an event. Maybe if we only had Luke’s version, where a poetic mother speaks of the lifting up of those or low degree. Perhaps if the only parts of the story to be told were Zachariah’s solitude experience in the temple or the moving of Elizabeth’s fetus. Maybe then we would be somewhat justified in thinking of this birth as some cute and quaint event affecting a few traveling peasants. But, there is more to the story. Moreover, these other parts make us aware that the birth of Jesus is not something which we can choose to acknowledge or choose to ignore. The birth of Jesus is not that kind of an event.
A star appears in the east. Learned men from a foreign land observe this star. They come to pay homage to the king whose birth the cosmos has announced. They know that this birth isn’t something of consequence only for those who happen to be living in the small villages on the banks of the Jordan. The ruler of the universe presses the heavens into service. The one who made the stars is announcing a birth which has implications for us all.
And, so, these visitors come. And they barge in. And they have no regard for Mary’s privacy. They realize that this birth belongs to them, too. The retelling of their story is an announcement that it has implications for everyone else.
We tend to allow the birth of Jesus to reinforce the mistaken notion that religion is a private matter. We have moved the experience of God out of that which is communal and carefully stored it in the category of things which are between me and God and no one else. It is common, in our day, to speak as if God has significance only for those who choose to call upon Him in prayer, praise and thanksgiving. We have been hoodwinked into believing that God is a factor only if I choose Him to be. The story of Epiphany is a reminder that what has happened has happened because of what God has chosen to do. Whether we choose to believe or not – the action remains the same. God has come into the world. The creator of the cosmos has made use of the heaven’s stars in order to say to the whole of creation “I have come.” There is nothing private about this. There is nothing left to the whimsicalness of human reaction.
Governments and political systems remain relevant for only as long as the population supports them. Ideologies run their course and are replaced by the next fad. What happened in Bethlehem isn’t that kind of an event. These events remain relevant even if all of its devotees were to fall away.
I am as caught up as any in the struggle to understand my faith in the context of a shrinking world. I don’t have answers to those who ask why the teachings of Islam or Judaism should have a lesser impact upon my life than the words of Jesus. But the story we gather this day to retell is one which says to us that these images and these occurrences have significance beyond the importance we, as individuals, may choose to assign to them. God is the actor. God is the one who decided the course of human history. I struggle to understand my faith in the context of a shrinking world because while I respect what God has done in other places at other times I must not overlook the significance of what God did in Bethlehem.
When a cute little baby is born, the mother has her right to privacy. She needs time alone so she can nurse and care for the child. The baby born to Mary needed that kind of support too, but his life also had another dimension to it. God had already decided what the birth of this child would mean.
We are at the beginning of our Church year. During the weeks and months to come we will have opportunity to learn, from what Jesus says and from what he does, exactly how our lives and our world have been changed. God has acted. Things are going to be different.
Amen.
