Second Sunday after Christmas – Bill Harkins
The Gospel: Matthew 2:1-12
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 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.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:`
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.'”
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 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.” 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. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 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. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Grace to you and peace, and welcome to Holy Family on this 2nd Sunday of Christmas. I wish each of you a warm Holy Family welcome on this chilly winter day, and I am so glad you are here with us this morning! The wise men have been journeying home by another road, about which more in a minute, and in his own way, the theologian Martin Luther was among our wise men and women. On October 1512 Luther received his doctorate in theology, and shortly afterward he was installed as a professor of biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg. His lectures on the Bible were popular, and within a few years he made the university a center for biblical humanism. As a result of his theological and biblical studies he called into question the practice of selling indulgences. On the eve of All Saints’ Day, October 31, 1517, he posted on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg the notice of an academic debate on indulgences, listing 95 theses for discussion. As the effects of the theses became evident, the Pope called upon the Augustinian order to discipline their member. After a series of meetings, political maneuvers, and attempts at reconciliation, Luther, at a meeting with the papal legate in 1518, refused to recant. Martin Luther was excommunicated on January 3, 1521. The Emperor Charles V summoned him to the meeting of the Imperial Diet at Worms. There Luther resisted all efforts to make him recant, insisting that he had to be proved in error based on Scripture. The Diet passed an edict calling for the arrest of Luther. Luther’s own prince, the Elector Frederick of Saxony, however, had him spirited away and placed for safekeeping in his castle, the Wartburg. Here Luther translated the New Testament into German and began the translation of the Old Testament. He then turned his attention to the organization of worship and education. He introduced congregational singing of hymns, composing many himself, and many of those are in our own hymnal. He also issued model orders of services and published his large and small catechisms for instruction in the faith. During the years from 1522 to his death, Luther wrote a prodigious quantity of books, letters, sermons and tracts. Luther died on February 18, 1546.
The story of the Wise Men, whose visit to Jesus we hear about this morning in Matthew’s Gospel, and will be at the center of a wonderful performance here tomorrow night, has fired the imaginations of countless persons, including Martin Luther, down through the centuries. Often the results have been filled more with enthusiasm than with historical accuracy. Writers and artists have taken these few verses from Matthew and expanded them beyond recognition. This may have had to do with the exotic title, “Wise Men from the east,” that caused people’s minds to work overtime. I confess that I, too, find these words bring a flood of images and questions to mind. Were they astronomers, astrologers, kings, or scholars? And where in the vast, inscrutable, mysterious east did their journey originate? The great artist Botticelli created one of his most well-known works, called “The Adoration of the Magi,” based on this theme. It is indeed a lovely work of art. Commissioned for the chapel in Santa Maria Novella, it was painted in 1475, and according to some art historians it honors the Medici family, generous patrons of Botticelli, by interpreting the three wise men as portraits of Cosimo, Giovanni, and Guiliano Medici. There is some dispute about this.
Of course, the Epiphany was a common subject in Florentine art, and Botticelli had already produced two versions of this mysterious sojourn. Somewhat more accurate, perhaps, was T.S. Eliots’ poem “The Journey of the Magi” quoted by the Anglican Bishop Richard Hooker many years ago… “Just the worst time of the year for a journey and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.” And Eliot indeed takes us on that journey with the Magi, pushing them to the edge so that we too, take that journey, “And the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters, and the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly and the village’s dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, sleeping in snatches, with the voices ringing in our ears, saying that this was all folly.” Matthew’s Gospel does not clear up all our questions for us. And we do not begrudge Eliot his questions either, do we? Was it all for nothing, this rough and long journey—and remember, the Holy Child was by now likely one year old—or was there something to all this talk of light, and a King?
Well, Martin Luther’s sermon on the coming of the Magi may have captured the true feeling that surrounded this event. The great reformer described how perplexed these “wise men” were upon arriving in Jerusalem. Not only were they road weary and saddle sore after having come from Persia; not only were they tired and weathered after week upon week of relentless travel, but they were ready for a celebration. They were all set for torches and feasting, merrymaking and dancing in the streets—yet when they arrived Jerusalem was as quiet as a library. Not a creature was stirring. Luther in his sermon went on to say, “The birth of a puppy would have caused more excitement” than the birth of Jesus in Jerusalem. The wise men must have been…as T.S. Eliot suggests—haunted by the uncertainty: had their stargazing been wrong? And, had this light from the heavens pointed to another reality…something entirely different from the birth of the “king of the Jews”? Had they journeyed all this way in vain? The only “king of the Jews” they encounter in Jerusalem is Herod. And he is no surprise whatsoever. Like many other “kings” he wields great power, with many under his command. He extravagantly renovated and enlarged the temple. And he is very concerned about someone out there still in diapers who is purported to be more powerful than him. Herod was no more than a vassal of the Roman Emperor, but he was a skilled politician who had secured control over half a dozen provinces. To his court the wise men came. Herod instructed them to report back when they had found their king. Of the gifts presented to Jesus the gold represented kingship, incense for priesthood, and myrrh, a spice used in burials, for availing sacrifice. Prompted by God, the Wise Men found a different way back to their homes. Herod never saw them again.
Perhaps the most searching question in this rich, wonderful, mysterious story is: who would have figured that pagans from Persia would come to the Holy Land to show the people of the Covenant what God is doing in their midst? Or that these witnesses would not only gaze up at a star, but actually step out in faith and follow it to a foreign land to discover what it meant? These characters could not be more removed from the Jewish Citizenry in Jerusalem—in heritage and outlook. And yet God uses them—neither Jew nor Christian—to show that the Light has come. And what do we know of this Light? The poet Isaiah wrote: The Light has come to dispel the darkness that had covered the earth and all its people. Indeed, the Epiphany we observe tomorrow reminds us that the life of faith is a life of seeking, accepting, and acknowledging the gift of light that God has freely bestowed upon us. And one of the focal points of Epiphany is our Baptism, through which each of us is given gifts by God. Like the wise men who came before us, we are those people who searched for signs of hope and reconciliation and find that search to have led us here, to this place and time.
The theologian Gabriel Marcel told the story of sitting in a village café in the German Alps, just at dusk. On a hillside road in the distance, in the growing darkness, the village lamplighter moved slowly up the hill, lighting each lamp as he walked. Marcel could not actually see the lamplighter, only the light he left as he walked up the hill above the village. In just this way, he later wrote, God’s gifts to us illumine the darkness and make a path for others to follow. Because a stranger he would never see lit the way, Marcel was moved to consider the light in a new way. Because strangers in a far off country once searched the heavens for a sign, we are here now and know something of the light that can drive away all darkness. Because of the stewardship of a man named Paul, once an avowed enemy of the Light, we have been made one body with the Light. Because Martin Luther had the courage to spread the light of the Gospel, we are transformed, and we discover a spark of transcendence beyond our former selves, or, as T.S. Eliot put it so well in The Journey of the Magi, “No longer at ease here, in the old dispensations, with an alien people clutching their gods.” We are called to be in discernment about who and what we worship, the idols we are tempted to create in the service of power, and control, and which risk further marginalizing those already on the margins. Indeed, we clutch our false gods when we are afraid, and when we forget to respect the dignity of every human being. The gift of the incarnation of Christ has been given to us, through this wondrous Light, by Grace, as Martin Luther reminded us, and as our passage from Romans says so clearly, so that we might give them to others, that all might be reconciled one to another. We are called to share the divine life of the one who humbled himself to share our humanity, so that the Light might dispel the darkness, and shine throughout all the earth. Amen.