Who doesn't wanna be one of the wise guys? (Sermon from Sun, Jan 6, 2019)

Reading: Matthew 2:1-12

By the time the Gospel of Matthew is written, the Jesus movement has outgrown its beginnings as a Jewish reform movement, and has come to see that the new life revealed in Jesus is good news for all people regardless of their religious or ethnic identity.  In the Gospel, the universality of the message is reflected right off the bat in Matthew’s story of wise men from other places coming to pay Jesus homage at his birth.

The story is also a grim reminder, though, that God’s new life comes into the world in the midst of old kingdoms and old ways of doing things.  King Herod, like many rulers, is anxious about his power, fearful of any who might challenge him, and willing to do anything to stay in power.  We won’t read to the end of the story, but we know how brutal Herod is willing to be, and that many innocent people suffer because of his notions of what it means to be a leader.

We have no idea how many magi there were.  Three gifts are mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, so three magi each bearing one of the gifts seems a good idea.  

We also don’t know where they came from.  “The East” the Bible says.  That’s pretty vague, and some legends have them coming from a variety of places throughout the Middle East, Africa, India and the far East.

We certainly don’t know their names.  Yet somehow, via an Armenian tradition, we’ve christened them Balthasar of Arabia, Melchior of Persia, and Gaspar of India.

I think we like them.  They’re fun to play with.  And who doesn’t want to be one of the wise men in a Christmas pageant, all dressed up in fancy clothes, processing up the aisle, bringing precious, exotic gifts to the Christ child – the only ones who seem suitably attired and who thought to bring something?

So let’s spend a little time with them.  Maybe hear what they have to say.   

I think I see one of them back there.  In the back corner. 

Would you like to come up and share a few words?  And maybe your friends – or at least, your fellow travelers, could also say a few words.

Balthasar of Arabia

Well, I'm so glad I came in.  From the outside I kind of wondered if this was just another part of Herod’s fortress. 

I mean, his royal court and the Temple mount and all those official buildings in Jerusalem are impressive enough.  King Herod has done a masterful job restoring them and returning them to their former glory – even surpassing it in many ways.  It’s clear he spent a lot of money on it, raised a lot of taxes for it, and is committed to keeping it all up and in good shape.

But it really is quite forbidding to an outsider trying to find a way in and feel welcome.  Even when we were shown in and he seemed to count us as special guests, it was hard not to feel that really he was just sizing us up, deciding whether we were useful to his purpose or not, just feeling us out as to whether we’d be a help or a hindrance to his agenda and his control of everything.

And at first I was afraid this place might be kind of the same.  We actually came by last night, and the place was all dark.  So we went down to the Tim’s for a coffee and there we met someone who said the minister here had done a funeral for his family, and he later sent an email to the minister saying he might want to come to worship some Sunday, and he wanted to know if just anyone was welcome.  Maybe others wonder about that, too.

But I’m glad I came in.  The words you have on the wall – “Let the love of God enfold you” are so inviting.  And then the people – all of you, so warm and welcoming.  And this place – the wood, the shape, the feel of it.  It’s almost like a womb prepared to nurture new life.

And that’s what we’re looking for.  We’re just looking for the new kind of life all the world really is looking for, whether it knows it or not.  We’re looking for the real hope of the world – something and someone new, different, better than what we’ve known so far, promised from of old and really, actually built into the very structure of the cosmos as its perfect design and way of being.

I know I’m different – I know all three of us are different from you.  The three of us are even different from one another.  We come from different places and have different traditions, different ways of knowing what’s true, different ways of living it out, different ways of believing in God, different ways of following the ways of the gods. 

I mean, just look at how we got here.  We looked at the stars and read what they said.  That’s astrology and I know it’s expressly forbidden in your holy book.  But guess what?  It got us here.  It’s the way of wisdom that we are used to following. 

And haven’t you also found that as long as you live out your life as faithfully as you can, and let the best of your heart and mind direct your steps no matter where they may lead, eventually and at some point you end up where you need to be?  And that it’s usually somewhere different than you started out, and different from where you thought you were going?

So here we are.  And here you are.  I feel welcome here.  I feel like we’re all fellow travelers in search of what all the world is looking for.

Oh, and my name is Balthasar.  I’m from Arabia.

Melchior of Persia

Hello, and greetings from the royal court and the blessed people of Persia.  My name is Melchior. 

And I want to tell you we did not come empty-handed.  We brought gifts to give the Promised One and the Messiah of the world, just as you have.  We saw the offering you took up, and how you gave.   We also see the evidence of many other things you give – time and talents and tireless efforts of all kinds, alongside the treasure.  This building and this enterprise would not be here if you didn’t give.

We also heard, and were blessed by the prayer you said along with the offering:

with this offering, we present also ourselves:

          all that we have been, all that we are, all that we shall become,

          and our resolve to walk in your way. 

          Accept us and our offering, we pray for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

It’s beautiful and it helps us understand a little more fully the gifts that we brought – the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh.  I know the way you interpret these things: gold as a way of saying the Christ child is king; frankincense, a temple incense, because we see him as the priest who shows us we are right with God; and myrrh, an embalming ointment because it’s in his willingness to die for others that he brings us life.

But the gifts also say something about us.  As we prepared for our journey, chose gifts to bring, carried them all that way, and then gave them to him the gold came to be for us a symbol of whatever bright and precious virtue we have – the good deeds we are able to do in the world, and our commitment to know and to do whatever is true, good and beautiful for others around us.  The frankincense became a symbol of our own worship and praise of the gods, and the prayers that we lift up to heaven.  And the myrrh, step after step and day after day it spoke to us of our own willingness to sacrifice and suffer and give our own lives for the sake of what’s good.

And isn’t that what we all do?  We do good and virtuous things in the world.  We worship and pray to God.  And we sacrifice and suffer, we give our lives for the sake of something bigger than ourselves. 

Isn’t that what a meaningful, purposeful life is about?

Gaspar of India

I have a question, though.  Sorry about this, but how do we know if the specific things we give, if the particular gifts we bring are what he really wants?  And are what’s really needed?

I’m Gaspar of India, and I wonder if sometimes we give at least some of what we do because it’s easy.  Because it’s familiar and it’s what we’ve always given.  Maybe because others think it’s good and it will make us look good in their eyes.  Do we sometimes give what we do because it serves our agenda?

And do we sometimes also compare what we give?  How many times along the way did we catch one another trying to steal a look at one another’s bags of gold, trying to calculate if the other’s gift was bigger than ours?  Or if we had the best of all?  Ah, it’s so tempting to want to give – and be known for giving, the better gift.  And so easy then as well just to stop if you feel you cannot compete, and whatever you give – of time, or talent or treasure, will not be as good as someone else’s.

It makes me realize that maybe the first, and best, and most important gift we gave was not any of the three we are famous for, but the gift of our homage – of free, full-hearted, publicly declared and irreversible commitment to submit our lives to him and to obey him in any way we are able. 

Do you remember that bit in the story about us?  How it says, “on entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.  Then [and only then], opening their chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”

When you do that – when you take the time and make the effort first to bow down, to kneel before him, to pay him homage and to open your chest – open your heart to him, after that you just know what you have to give.  It just flows, whatever it is – whether gold, frankincense, myrrh – something precious and exotic like that.  Or something like this (reaching into the manger and pulling out a bit of straw)– just straw, the ordinary, poor, weak stuff of life that a lot of people might overlook and not give much value to.  But how valuable was it really, when the Christ child needed a place to be welcomed and brought into the world to save it?

When you bow down to him, pay him homage and open your heart to him, whatever you then find yourself led to give him, is just right.  Perfect.  Just what he needs and wants.  And also exactly what will make your life meaningful, purposeful, good, blessed and worth living.

Because this is how he becomes king, and how the kingdom of God comes into the world.  Not with overwhelming power, terrible might, great glory.  But as a gentle dawning.  A slow brightening of one corner of the sky.  A gradual, quiet, peaceful stealing into the world of something new, something different, something better than we have known before.

One gift at a time.  One good deed and one act of virtue; one word of prayer and one song of worship; one bit of suffering and one self-sacrificial step; one little straw at a time making space in the world for the messiah to be.

Not like Herod’s way of doing things – all brutality and bluster.  But like that baby – born into one of the world’s little corners, and just growing there bit by bit and day by day.

And now that we’ve seen that and come to be part of it, it’s enough.  No need to go back to Herod.  He will do what he will do – as anxious and brutal as he is, with us or without us.  We just wanna go home and live out what we have seen, felt and come to know deep down in our hearts here today.  Wherever our life might take us, we just wanna be part of the dawning of the kingdom and the revealing of the real king – the real hope of the world.

Thanks for listening.