Secrets, Plots, and Mysteries
Matthew 2:1-12; Ephesians 3:1-12
Sunlight is a commodity this time of year. The darkness tricks us into thinking that it’s time for bed. I start thinking about putting on my pajamas only to look at the time and see it’s only 7:30pm!! January in North Alabama is long, cold and dark as it is. I wonder if I could make it in a place like Northern Alaska where there are only a few hours of daylight this time of year. Did you know that anything living above the Arctic Circle currently is experiencing what is called polar night, where the sun doesn't rise above the horizon. During this time of continuous night, however, the stars are visible for all 24 hours. Even the dimmest stars can be seen by the naked eye. In extreme darkness, even a shimmer of light can seem bright.
The season of Epiphany begins tomorrow. It’s a season that challenges us to look for the Light of God as it is revealed even in the darkest corners of life. This story of the Magi found in the gospel of Matthew is further revelation of who Jesus is and what God intends to do in the world. But first, we must look at who these Wise guys really are.
The key figures in this part of the birth narrative are the strange and exotic “Magi from the east” (2:1). Christmas lore has interpreted them to be wisemen, or kings as the song goes, “We Three Kings from Orient Are bearing gifts we traverse afar.” Were they kings? Perhaps under the influence of OT texts, the idea of kings has been made popular such as in Isaiah 60:3: “And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.” They traversed from afar, but from how far, we don’t actually know. Were there only three? They came bearing three gifts and thus, the common interpretation that there were three of them carries on. In the 8th Century they were given names based on three kings of eastern lands. These were perpetuated through artistic interpretations – both visually and as in the opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors: Melchior, king of Persia; G/Caspar, king of India; and Balthasar, king of Arabia. Intriguing, well-meaning embellishments of the story may be done in the spirit of Christmas, but we must remember that these details are quite EXTRA to the biblical text. These wise ones, in other interpretations, have been thought to be nothing more than pagan, soothsaying, tarot-card reading magicians of their day. But a scholarly consensus seems to favor a third meaning for this context: they were astrologers. Since their observation of the stars prompted the visit from the magi in the first place, this seems to be most plausible. We can also assume that they are Gentiles. Their occupation and the question they ask, having arrived in the Jewish nerve center suggest as much. “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” they asked. They are seekers. They are Gentiles whose desire was to worship the one whose star had appeared in the sky. They traversed afar to find him. They wouldn’t turn around until they had done so. [1]
The point of view from Matthew’s gospel, unique from the other gospels, is Matthew’s dedication to convince his readers that Jesus IS the long-awaited Messiah. He is the one the Jews have been holding out hope for. His story from chapter one is laying out the plan of God to produce a Messiah out of the lineage of David. But that list of male and female, Jew and pious Gentile names, which is a sermon for another day, suggests that the chosen family of God, or becoming a brother or sister of Jesus, is not based on physical descent from a common ancestor, as with old Israel. Becoming a sibling of Christ depends on one’s willingness to be led by Light. Light seems to be the love-language of God. This is how Gentile magi find their way into the birth story of Jesus. God sent Jesus into the world to be worshipped by both Jew and Gentile.
O Holy night, the stars are brightly shining. Nadia Bolz Weber says the “story has been nicened up into an idealized picture of multicultural diplomacy… It is ironic turning the Magi into kings” because “everything in Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus is decidedly anti-king. I mean, there is a king, but it’s Herod: a scheming,” plotting, insecure, paranoid, client king [2] known as Herod the Great. He was put in power by the Romans to rule the Jewish people. He is … Not so great; dis-eased by any inquiry about a newborn king of the Jews who could unseat him from his throne. You know the type. He pretends to be interested in finding the boy so that he can worship him, but secretly, he is plotting murder. He plans to “put a hit out on [the] toddler.” One might have expected that all Jerusalem would erupt in great rejoicing at the news of the birth of a new king, one whose star has appeared, but when Herod is troubled, it troubles them. What should trouble us is although the priests and scribes would also believe in the significance of the stars, they were not expecting nor even looking for the star of the messiah. [3]
Instead, the Magi diligently searched for the baby and when they found him they were overjoyed and they fell down and worshipped him. The image of foreign seekers bowing before the tiny child contrasts markedly with the uneasiness of all Jerusalem at the prospect of a new king; and the neuroses of Herod who would eliminate any threat, even a vulnerable child. Having been warned in a dream, Matthew reports, the magi decided to keep the secret of the holy family’s whereabouts, and return home a different way. They refuse to report back to the psychopathic king. Rev. Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary wrote, “Civil disobedience lies at the heart of the Epiphany story: The magi receive an unjust order from a vindictive tyrant. Instead they defy him. May we do likewise,” she adds.[4] After they meet Jesus, they are not the same. Divine revelation changes them. They can go home, but they must find a new way to get there. Following the light of God alters one’s course… over and over again.
Herod, however, will not rest. And we cannot leave the Christmas story with the happily ever after –the wisemen met Jesus and quietly returned home a different way. The end. Hardly, In fact, their visit, followed by another visit from an angel is what turns Joseph, Mary, and Jesus into refugees on the run. They pack up everything and flee to Egypt, who granted them asylum, while Herod’s armies murdered every Jewish boy under the age of two… Just so a tyrant could sleep at night.
So, let us not sleepily walk away from the manger, believing that all is right with the world now that Jesus is in it. Know this, the Epiphany story of Herod and his slaughter of the innocents reveals a God who has entered our world as it actually is. Even a World where:
● School children are not safe in their classrooms;
● Where tourists on holiday are run down by terrorists;
● Where overlords and oligarchs wage unjust war on democracies;
● Where bigots and “proud boys” decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t;
● Where modern-day tyrants who fear losing their thrones insight insurrection;
● Where life doesn’t look like a Hallmark town, but places (homes) are wrecked by wildfires, and hurricanes, and earthquakes.
God knows us and this messed up world we live in… God knows the holy and the Herod in each of us. This is the world God loved so much that he sent his brown-skinned, middle eastern, undocumented refugee son to live and die for it. Epiphany is where the “work of Christmas” begins as Howard Thurman wrote:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.[5]
In the holy mountain of the Lord, creation will be at peace.[6] It is this congregation’s anthem, theme song if you will. But that prayer at the start of 2025 should only be sung if we commit to seek God like the Magi, to bow down before him; and to welcome God into the mess of our lives and the difficult realities of this world as we know it. God came into THIS world to accompany us through those difficult realities and to reshape them.
Remember that it is when the world is at its darkest, that a glimmer of light shines bright. You may have wondered as I have about the increased visibility of the northern lights in recent months. This is due to heightened solar activity as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, known as Solar Cycle 25. During solar maximum (the peak of the sun’s cycle), the sun produces more solar flares which release charged particles into space. When these particles collide with Earth’s magnetic field, they enhance the auroras – what we call the northern lights – making them brighter than we have ever seen and more widespread. This cycle is expected to reach maximum intensity in 2025.
Just when you thought the world was at its darkest, the sun is showing out.
In 2025, when the world seems dark, it can be hard to see the light of Christ and feel the presence of God. We, too, in our places of despair, need the assurance that God is with us, and that God will provide, even if it’s not in the way that we expect.
I don’t know if God will send us a star, but I do trust that God sends other people into our lives and that many of them are bearers of light. When I have been in a place of polar night, other people have shown me the light of Christ.[7] May we be those people: seekers of God, Light-bearers for all to see.
[1] Hare, Douglas R. A. Interpretation commentary Matthew
[2] Bolz Weber, Nadia, Accidental Saints
[3] Garland, David, Reading Matthew
[4] Progressive Christianity posted on Instagram
[5] The poem “The Work of Christmas” is from Howard Thurman’s The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations
[6] Page, Anna Laura
[7] Smith Lisa A. Christian Century Sunday’s Coming Dec 30, 2024 , Where is the light?