Christ for the Gentiles
Commentary
Many years ago I was visiting with a parishioner; I don't remember how the conversation got to this point but the woman turned to me and said in a tone of astonishment: "Are you telling me that Jesus was a Jew?" Despite my instant thought "How could you have missed this central fact of the gospel?" I said, "Yes, we Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah the Jews had been waiting for. That's what 'Christ' means. It's the Greek term for Messiah and means the anointed one of God." For some reason she was very upset for the remainder of our visit.
We are almost all Gentile Christians, and this is all due to Paul, the apostle who never knew the earthly Jesus, and whose family were both Jewish and Roman citizens. The initial approach of the original eleven surviving apostles to spreading the word was to go to the temple, heal the sick, and preach Jesus' message to those who gathered around them. When Gentiles showed interest, they first had to become Jews, be circumcised, and follow all the requirements of the Jewish faith. If it had not been for Paul and others insisting on the inclusion of Gentiles in the early church, the movement that they originally called "The Way" would have been a new branch of Judaism and never would have become a worldwide faith.
Epiphany is the feast that reminds us of the origins of our faith and the struggle of the early church to accept people like us into the fellowship. We, who know little or nothing about keeping kosher, who have a hard time understanding the Old Testament law, who are dependent on scholars to decipher the ancient Hebrew, are nevertheless part of that multitude who the early Christian prophets said would be surrounding God's throne in the kingdom of heaven.
Epiphany is uniquely our festival, the day in which we non-Jews learn how gracious the nameless, invisible God of Israel has been to all humankind. It is also a divine reminder to reach out to those who have yet to hear the good news: that Christ comes to admit us all into the kingdom of God, as beloved children alongside Jesus and his Jewish followers.
Isaiah 60:1-6
The book of the prophet Isaiah is the largest book in the Bible, but it's really more of an anthology, covering the changing situation of the Jews as they fought against annexation to the Babylonian empire, were marched away to Babylon, and were at last enabled to return to their homeland two generations later. This scripture is the first chapter in what might be called "Isaiah 3," which might be thought of as a triumphant anticipation for their return to their devastated homeland. It may be a bit of cheerleading -- encouraging people who had, after all, built lives for themselves in their exile to join together and return to Jerusalem and rebuild. It parallels the books of Nehemiah and Ezra, the prophets who led a small band of returnees back to their homeland. This passage in Isaiah is without doubt a prophecy of encouragement.
Christianity has taken this prophecy as describing what Epiphany is all about: the revelation of God piercing the spiritual darkness shrouding the earth before the birth of Jesus. The idea of people from all over the world making this pilgrimage doesn't refer to the renewal of Israel; it refers to the revelation of Jesus when he returns again. The beginning of this revelation is symbolized in the New Testament by the arrival of the Magi from the East. [See the gospel commentary below.]
To the Jews in exile, however, this is a prophecy of God's ultimate intentions for Judea. They have been sitting in the darkness of alienation from all that they had and all that they valued long enough that they had become Babylonian Jews. Most of them did not have the desire to uproot their families again to make this thousand-mile journey on foot with Ezra and Nehemiah's group. In the eyes of those who made that trek, they have sold out, become too comfortable with Babylon and its ways. Isaiah speaks: All of the people, not just this small group, will return. Not just their own sons and daughters, but "nations" and "kings" other than their own will be drawn to their nation because of God's obvious blessings for them. In that day, instead of being afraid as foreigners come to their borders, they will rejoice in the future, because these other nations will be coming to Judea, drawn by the glory of God, bringing with them the wealth of the world. We should notice the last verse, as it ties Matthew to Isaiah: this wealth includes gold and frankincense!
Frankincense is a milky white resin extracted from species of the genus Boswellia, moderately-sized trees that thrive in arid, cool areas of the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, and India. It is a deciduous tree found most abundantly today on the rocky slopes of Somalia. Production of the incense must be done by hand, by peeling the bark and leaching the resin. The resulting lumps of resin are burnt as incense for worship and to overcome noxious odors. It is also used in ointments and oral potions to reduce inflammation. It has always been expensive, and a gift of frankincense is a sign of respect and honor. In Isaiah, that respect and honor go to Judea, which is to be a light to the world.
Ephesians 3:1-12
Ephesians probably was written by a disciple of Paul or someone who had such respect for Paul that he named him as the author. Why do we say this? The grammar and style of writing do not match the letters that we know are definitely Paul's, and the author talks as though there was not an established relationship between the church at Ephesus and the author. However, Paul lived in Ephesus for three years, working with Priscilla and Aquila, making tents and developing a congregation that could reach out to all of Asia Minor. The ideas expressed are definitely Pauline, though his attitude toward marriage in Ephesians is quite different from his ideas in 1 Corinthians 7:6. [For a more complete discussion of the authorship see the notes in The New Interpreter's Study Bible, pp. 2089-90.]
Ephesus was an ancient trade center located on the shore of the Aegean Sea (due to sediments that filled in the harbor over the centuries, it is now about five miles to the east of the shoreline). It was a very important city and featured a temple to Artemis, the goddess of girls and childbirth. Religious pilgrims came there from all over Asia Minor to visit this temple. It was in Ephesus that Paul provoked a riot among the men who made small copies of the "Great Lady of Ephesus" (identified with Artemis) for sale to the pilgrims, because Paul was telling the crowds not to worship Artemis and to turn to the God of the Jews and Christians.
Regardless of the actual authorship of this letter there are some interesting ideas in it, if we read carefully. The first is the idea that Paul is a prisoner, not of the Roman empire, but of Christ Jesus (v. 1). God has given Paul a commission: He is to be the apostle to the Gentiles, to bring us together with the Jews into the kingdom of heaven. His commission often got Paul into trouble with the local populace, and he spent a good deal of time first under house arrest and then in prison.
American Christians often assume that if we are good children of God we will be blessed. The corollary to that is that if we are not blessed with everything we need for a good (read "comfortable") life, we must have done something wrong in the eyes of God. And going to prison surely means that we have done something wrong. The idea that we might be imprisoned by God for God's own purposes is a foreign idea to most of us. Paul, however, saw this as an opportunity rather than a problem -- the opportunity to preach to his captors, all of whom were Gentiles.
What he preached, he says, is a mystery that was hidden by God and only made known to Paul by direct revelation. The mystery, or hidden reality, that Paul refers to in verse 3 has been set forth in chapter 2: There is a cosmic battle going on between "the ruler of the power of the air" (Satan) and his troops ("the disobedient") and God and his troops (those who "have been made alive with Christ"). The Ephesians (who are part of those called "the uncircumcised," that is, the Gentiles Paul has been sent to) have been brought together with "the circumcision" (the Jewish believers in Christ) to overcome those divisions that Satan uses to destroy peace in favor of discord. This is a new revelation (v. 5) made by God's Holy Spirit to the apostles and prophets of the early church: that Jews and Gentiles alike are united by Christ to form "the household of God" (2:19), with "Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone" (2:20).
This was a serious point of debate in the early church. Paul talked about it often in his letters [see 1 Corinthians 7:9 and Romans 2:27--3:1 for examples] as he tried to keep the Jews who followed Jesus from imposing all of the Jewish law, including circumcision, on Gentile converts. Jews and Gentiles are brought together as "sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (v. 6) so that we Gentiles are now inheritors of God's grace along with the Jews. This plan of God's -- that all humankind might be united as God's household -- has been brought to the light (v. 9) so that it is hidden no more.
Not only does God welcome us into his household, he does not impose one way of worshiping on the followers of Christ but enjoys "the rich variety" (v. 10) that our various cultures bring into the household of God. Apparently this is a new thing to those who dwell "in the heavenly places" as well. Even the angels seem to need this revelation.
The central point that the author is making here comes in the last two verses (vv. 11-12). It is by the agency of Christ Jesus that we at last have access to God in boldness and confidence. We do not need to grovel in God's presence. We do not need to cringe when God calls our name. We can have confidence that we really are like the children of a great and powerful man, who wants his children to know they are loved and cared for. As Jesus trusted God, even through the pain of his arrest, torture, and death, we can be absolutely certain that God loves us. It is Jesus' faith in God that makes us bold. Like Paul, we can maintain faith, in circumstances that the world would take as abandonment by God, that we are loved completely by God.
How often we miss out on the joy and love God has in mind for us for the simple reason that we are afraid of change. New things, new people, new foods, new ways of worship -- all are threats rather than blessings when we fear change. There is all this rich heritage of various ways of approaching God and the worship of God, but we would rather have our faith feel safe and free from new ideas. We judge that those who have musical bands with huge speakers pounding out music are going to crack the mortar from between the bricks of our sanctuaries. Or we consider that pipe organs are obsolete monstrosities that are only used for classical music, which must be boring -- after all, it's old! Those who dance and clap and shout during their Sunday service denigrate those who want peace and quiet for their worship time, while "all that noise" frightens those whose services have always been orderly. But here in Ephesians, we learn that God sees all this as "the wisdom of God in its rich variety," rather like a very large and far-flung family all coming home for the holidays, with all the chaos that implies.
Paul had had an excellent education -- he was a student of Gamaliel, the best-known rabbi of the day -- so he knew the scriptures very well. Then he became a convert and was able to use his education to explain how the Jewish scriptures pointed to Jesus. This means that those who followed Paul would have understood that if we are to be a part of that multitude in Isaiah's vision of the kingdom of heaven, we must learn to accept that there will be ideas different from our own expressed in that crowd.
Matthew 2:1-12
Matthew's gospel is aimed primarily for the Jewish people of Jesus' day. That's why it opens with the narrative of his ancestry. The Messiah was, according to the prophet, to come out of the house (clan) of David, and so Matthew begins by attesting that Jesus' ancestry could be traced back to King David. He needed to do this, because Jesus grew up in Galilee, which was not foretold by the prophets, and because Jesus was not born into one of the prominent families in Judea. Tied up with the expectation of his Davidic heritage was also the idea that he would be known to the temple authorities.
The genealogy, however, is interesting in that it also includes four women, which is not usual in ancient genealogy. The three from the Old Testament (Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba) were all foreigners. Rahab was a prostitute and a resident of Jericho who aided Joshua's conquest of Canaan, hiding his scouts on her roof. Ruth was a Moabite, which meant that her descendants should not have been admitted to the temple for ten generations (!) [see Deuteronomy 23:3], yet her grandson became King David. Bathsheba was married to Uzziah, a Hittite, and so she is also a foreigner. Rebekah and her son Esau's relationship was made difficult in part because he had taken Hittite wives, so there was great prejudice toward Hittites. The inclusion of these women was important to Matthew because they show God's new intentions toward the Gentiles. They are an introduction to the story in chapter 2, where Gentiles come from the east to pay respect to the new king of the Jews: Jesus.
Over to the east of Jerusalem and the Roman empire lay the nation of Parthia, the one enemy that Rome feared in the first century. The Parthian empire ranged from the Euphrates River to the Caspian Sea and from modern Albania to the Arabian Sea. It was from there that Matthew says the Magi came. So depending on where specifically they had lived, the wise men's journey could have taken more than a year.
Who were these men? Their designation as Magi is the source of the word magician. But they were not tricksters or illusionists. They were the scholars of their day, the astronomers/astrologers of their day. They studied the stars and charted what the heavens looked like, including the movement of those stars they designated planetes or wanderers. They did this as an accumulation of knowledge but also to discover what God had in mind for them and the nations of the world. They were probably followers of Zoroaster, so worshiped only one God. Their studies were world-famous, and nations had learned to quake if the Magi's predictions went against them. It is because of these sort of men that we have the 360 degree circle, which can be used as a clock face; the understanding of the equinoxes and solstices, and the zodiac.
In their sky charts, they evidently saw a configuration telling them that a new king of Judea had been born. Why they should travel all the way to Jerusalem to follow up on their discovery is uncertain. It was a huge undertaking and certainly had not happened when Herod was born. But they did undertake the journey and came to Jerusalem bearing gifts fit for a king: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. [See the discussion of Isaiah above for a description of frankincense.]
The gifts, according to the ancient church, represent all of the aspects of Jesus' hoped-for reign: gold, which represents the tribute one king might pay to another; and two resins -- frankincense, such as was used in the temple; and myrrh, which was used in Egyptian mummification and was extremely expensive. (It has been said that Nero burned a year's supply at the funeral of his wife, as a sign of her value to him.) So the three gifts apply to the power, honor, and sacrifice of Jesus. They do not tell us that there were three wise men, however -- just three gifts. In fact, they probably came in a fairly large caravan, especially since they carried such expensive cargo. They would need guards and outriders for protection from bandits, who were quite common along well-traveled trade routes and even worse on the back roads.
They arrived in Jerusalem "after Jesus was born" (v. 1), but Matthew does not say how long after. They went directly to the palace of Herod, who bore the title of King of the Jews, though he was a vassal under the control of Rome. They asked the most dangerous question of all: "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?" Because of the reputation of the Parthian Magi, the court's reaction was one of fear. They must have been wondering, "Does this mean that Herod is about to be deposed?"
Matthew says that "all Jerusalem" was frightened by this question. But most probably it was those in authority who were frightened. The small people, like Mary and Joseph, the innkeepers and the house servants had no reason to be frightened. The prophets like Isaiah had taught them that when Messiah came all things would be set right. Those who abused their positions, who misused their authority, would be repaid for their evil ways. So we can doubt that "all Jerusalem was afraid." But Herod was definitely afraid. Apparently he was also ignorant of the scriptures. At least he knew where to turn to alleviate his fear and ignorance. He called in his natural allies, the chief priests and scribes -- the people in power in the temple.
Their answer is quick and precise. The prophet Micah had said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). Bethlehem was a town of about 100, located about five miles south of Jerusalem, so it shouldn't take much to find this new king. Yet Herod took the wise men to one side and asked them to go find the child, and then bring him the information so that he could also go and pay his respects.
According to Matthew, they set out, following the star "that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was." This phrase has caused more books and articles to be written than we can go into here. There is an excellent new film from Ted TV available on YouTube, "The Star of Bethlehem," that talks about the array of celestial and astrological events that could be the explanation for this comment. But no actual star moves through the heavens in such a way as to be able to be followed for only five miles; the stars are much too far away to be able to triangulate in that way. Nor do they "stop" directly over a small house. The arguments over the years include the possibility of the "star" being a comet, but comets also are too far away to possibly "stand still" over as small a target as a city, let alone a house. Such discussions make for great fun but have little impact on our understanding of Matthew's story. It's enough for us to understand the joy of the Magi as they find the Christ Child.
It's a great story. These men have traveled -- probably by camel train -- for over a year to find the promised king of the Jews. They have managed to get away from King Herod and they have reached their goal. They come into the house where Mary and Joseph and the child are living (notice the differences between Luke's and Matthew's story -- here, Mary and Joseph are living in Bethlehem, not just staying there and certainly not in a stable or cave) and when they see him, they kneel down into a position of humility, and offer him the gifts they have brought so far at an astronomical price. Can we even begin to imagine how they must have felt? What brought them here? What had they hoped for, that they did this?
For that matter, what must Mary and Joseph have made of this? Here are these well-dressed foreigners kneeling down in the presence of the baby. They produce gifts of enormous value -- valuable enough to exceed Joseph's income as a man who works with his hands for more than a year or two -- and talk about seeing signs of a new king of the Jews, who is apparently their son. Not only that, they have evidently been saying this in places of power! Surely this must have made them uneasy -- uneasy enough that a dream telling Joseph to pack up and get out of town would be followed instantly.
We can be certain of one thing: Matthew's purpose with this story. He intends to tell his Jewish readers that God has widened the circle of those who will be welcomed into the kingdom that Jesus preached. He is reminding them of Isaiah's prophecy. The nations of earth, not just the Jews, will be rejoicing because of the birth of this child. The rich and powerful will not know how to get there, only the poor -- people like Joseph and Mary. The Herods, the scribes, the corrupt officials, the judges who are bribable, those who hold on to their power and wealth and beat off those who need what they are hoarding will be left out. Of all the kings of the earth, Herod should have known where to find the Christ at his birth. But he did not. He knew the power of Rome but not the power of God. Yet it is the power of God that prevails and protects Jesus and his family and that shelters them until King Herod is dead.
Our passage stops before Matthew tells us that Herod has a completely maniacal episode when the Magi don't return to him. Matthew says that Herod is so angry, so terrified of the consequences of missing this child, that he orders the death of every boy aged two or less in Bethlehem. There is no note in history on this event, only this story in the Bible. But then Bethlehem was a tiny town, and the probability of there being more than ten such children in the village is not great. What are ten dead children compared to the majesty of the king?
But that's not the point. The point is that Herod failed. He failed to find Jesus, alive or dead. He failed to care about finding the Messiah and doing what he claimed he wanted to do -- to humbly bow before this child, as the Magi did. He failed because he went against the purposes of God. He got no word from God, as the Magi did, or as Joseph did. So he did not know he had failed. But we may guess that he lived in fear for the little time of his life he had left. Fear that perhaps he had missed eliminating his competition. Waiting and wondering what this had all been about and not knowing because he did not know God.
None of the chief priests or scribes made the trek to Bethlehem either. They stayed in the palace or maybe the temple or even in their own homes and thought that the child born to be king of the Jews had been taken care of. They too may have had doubts about the survival of the child. They too may have wondered: Could it be true? Could Messiah have been born in their time in Bethlehem? But they did not go to find him. They hoped he was dead, and they were safe.
God himself cared for the child Jesus. God's angel spoke to the Magi in their dreams, warning them to go home another way. He spoke to Joseph as well, sending the family scrambling in the night to get out of town, out of the country, down to Egypt. For God's plan trumps the plans of humans every time.
We are almost all Gentile Christians, and this is all due to Paul, the apostle who never knew the earthly Jesus, and whose family were both Jewish and Roman citizens. The initial approach of the original eleven surviving apostles to spreading the word was to go to the temple, heal the sick, and preach Jesus' message to those who gathered around them. When Gentiles showed interest, they first had to become Jews, be circumcised, and follow all the requirements of the Jewish faith. If it had not been for Paul and others insisting on the inclusion of Gentiles in the early church, the movement that they originally called "The Way" would have been a new branch of Judaism and never would have become a worldwide faith.
Epiphany is the feast that reminds us of the origins of our faith and the struggle of the early church to accept people like us into the fellowship. We, who know little or nothing about keeping kosher, who have a hard time understanding the Old Testament law, who are dependent on scholars to decipher the ancient Hebrew, are nevertheless part of that multitude who the early Christian prophets said would be surrounding God's throne in the kingdom of heaven.
Epiphany is uniquely our festival, the day in which we non-Jews learn how gracious the nameless, invisible God of Israel has been to all humankind. It is also a divine reminder to reach out to those who have yet to hear the good news: that Christ comes to admit us all into the kingdom of God, as beloved children alongside Jesus and his Jewish followers.
Isaiah 60:1-6
The book of the prophet Isaiah is the largest book in the Bible, but it's really more of an anthology, covering the changing situation of the Jews as they fought against annexation to the Babylonian empire, were marched away to Babylon, and were at last enabled to return to their homeland two generations later. This scripture is the first chapter in what might be called "Isaiah 3," which might be thought of as a triumphant anticipation for their return to their devastated homeland. It may be a bit of cheerleading -- encouraging people who had, after all, built lives for themselves in their exile to join together and return to Jerusalem and rebuild. It parallels the books of Nehemiah and Ezra, the prophets who led a small band of returnees back to their homeland. This passage in Isaiah is without doubt a prophecy of encouragement.
Christianity has taken this prophecy as describing what Epiphany is all about: the revelation of God piercing the spiritual darkness shrouding the earth before the birth of Jesus. The idea of people from all over the world making this pilgrimage doesn't refer to the renewal of Israel; it refers to the revelation of Jesus when he returns again. The beginning of this revelation is symbolized in the New Testament by the arrival of the Magi from the East. [See the gospel commentary below.]
To the Jews in exile, however, this is a prophecy of God's ultimate intentions for Judea. They have been sitting in the darkness of alienation from all that they had and all that they valued long enough that they had become Babylonian Jews. Most of them did not have the desire to uproot their families again to make this thousand-mile journey on foot with Ezra and Nehemiah's group. In the eyes of those who made that trek, they have sold out, become too comfortable with Babylon and its ways. Isaiah speaks: All of the people, not just this small group, will return. Not just their own sons and daughters, but "nations" and "kings" other than their own will be drawn to their nation because of God's obvious blessings for them. In that day, instead of being afraid as foreigners come to their borders, they will rejoice in the future, because these other nations will be coming to Judea, drawn by the glory of God, bringing with them the wealth of the world. We should notice the last verse, as it ties Matthew to Isaiah: this wealth includes gold and frankincense!
Frankincense is a milky white resin extracted from species of the genus Boswellia, moderately-sized trees that thrive in arid, cool areas of the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa, and India. It is a deciduous tree found most abundantly today on the rocky slopes of Somalia. Production of the incense must be done by hand, by peeling the bark and leaching the resin. The resulting lumps of resin are burnt as incense for worship and to overcome noxious odors. It is also used in ointments and oral potions to reduce inflammation. It has always been expensive, and a gift of frankincense is a sign of respect and honor. In Isaiah, that respect and honor go to Judea, which is to be a light to the world.
Ephesians 3:1-12
Ephesians probably was written by a disciple of Paul or someone who had such respect for Paul that he named him as the author. Why do we say this? The grammar and style of writing do not match the letters that we know are definitely Paul's, and the author talks as though there was not an established relationship between the church at Ephesus and the author. However, Paul lived in Ephesus for three years, working with Priscilla and Aquila, making tents and developing a congregation that could reach out to all of Asia Minor. The ideas expressed are definitely Pauline, though his attitude toward marriage in Ephesians is quite different from his ideas in 1 Corinthians 7:6. [For a more complete discussion of the authorship see the notes in The New Interpreter's Study Bible, pp. 2089-90.]
Ephesus was an ancient trade center located on the shore of the Aegean Sea (due to sediments that filled in the harbor over the centuries, it is now about five miles to the east of the shoreline). It was a very important city and featured a temple to Artemis, the goddess of girls and childbirth. Religious pilgrims came there from all over Asia Minor to visit this temple. It was in Ephesus that Paul provoked a riot among the men who made small copies of the "Great Lady of Ephesus" (identified with Artemis) for sale to the pilgrims, because Paul was telling the crowds not to worship Artemis and to turn to the God of the Jews and Christians.
Regardless of the actual authorship of this letter there are some interesting ideas in it, if we read carefully. The first is the idea that Paul is a prisoner, not of the Roman empire, but of Christ Jesus (v. 1). God has given Paul a commission: He is to be the apostle to the Gentiles, to bring us together with the Jews into the kingdom of heaven. His commission often got Paul into trouble with the local populace, and he spent a good deal of time first under house arrest and then in prison.
American Christians often assume that if we are good children of God we will be blessed. The corollary to that is that if we are not blessed with everything we need for a good (read "comfortable") life, we must have done something wrong in the eyes of God. And going to prison surely means that we have done something wrong. The idea that we might be imprisoned by God for God's own purposes is a foreign idea to most of us. Paul, however, saw this as an opportunity rather than a problem -- the opportunity to preach to his captors, all of whom were Gentiles.
What he preached, he says, is a mystery that was hidden by God and only made known to Paul by direct revelation. The mystery, or hidden reality, that Paul refers to in verse 3 has been set forth in chapter 2: There is a cosmic battle going on between "the ruler of the power of the air" (Satan) and his troops ("the disobedient") and God and his troops (those who "have been made alive with Christ"). The Ephesians (who are part of those called "the uncircumcised," that is, the Gentiles Paul has been sent to) have been brought together with "the circumcision" (the Jewish believers in Christ) to overcome those divisions that Satan uses to destroy peace in favor of discord. This is a new revelation (v. 5) made by God's Holy Spirit to the apostles and prophets of the early church: that Jews and Gentiles alike are united by Christ to form "the household of God" (2:19), with "Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone" (2:20).
This was a serious point of debate in the early church. Paul talked about it often in his letters [see 1 Corinthians 7:9 and Romans 2:27--3:1 for examples] as he tried to keep the Jews who followed Jesus from imposing all of the Jewish law, including circumcision, on Gentile converts. Jews and Gentiles are brought together as "sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (v. 6) so that we Gentiles are now inheritors of God's grace along with the Jews. This plan of God's -- that all humankind might be united as God's household -- has been brought to the light (v. 9) so that it is hidden no more.
Not only does God welcome us into his household, he does not impose one way of worshiping on the followers of Christ but enjoys "the rich variety" (v. 10) that our various cultures bring into the household of God. Apparently this is a new thing to those who dwell "in the heavenly places" as well. Even the angels seem to need this revelation.
The central point that the author is making here comes in the last two verses (vv. 11-12). It is by the agency of Christ Jesus that we at last have access to God in boldness and confidence. We do not need to grovel in God's presence. We do not need to cringe when God calls our name. We can have confidence that we really are like the children of a great and powerful man, who wants his children to know they are loved and cared for. As Jesus trusted God, even through the pain of his arrest, torture, and death, we can be absolutely certain that God loves us. It is Jesus' faith in God that makes us bold. Like Paul, we can maintain faith, in circumstances that the world would take as abandonment by God, that we are loved completely by God.
How often we miss out on the joy and love God has in mind for us for the simple reason that we are afraid of change. New things, new people, new foods, new ways of worship -- all are threats rather than blessings when we fear change. There is all this rich heritage of various ways of approaching God and the worship of God, but we would rather have our faith feel safe and free from new ideas. We judge that those who have musical bands with huge speakers pounding out music are going to crack the mortar from between the bricks of our sanctuaries. Or we consider that pipe organs are obsolete monstrosities that are only used for classical music, which must be boring -- after all, it's old! Those who dance and clap and shout during their Sunday service denigrate those who want peace and quiet for their worship time, while "all that noise" frightens those whose services have always been orderly. But here in Ephesians, we learn that God sees all this as "the wisdom of God in its rich variety," rather like a very large and far-flung family all coming home for the holidays, with all the chaos that implies.
Paul had had an excellent education -- he was a student of Gamaliel, the best-known rabbi of the day -- so he knew the scriptures very well. Then he became a convert and was able to use his education to explain how the Jewish scriptures pointed to Jesus. This means that those who followed Paul would have understood that if we are to be a part of that multitude in Isaiah's vision of the kingdom of heaven, we must learn to accept that there will be ideas different from our own expressed in that crowd.
Matthew 2:1-12
Matthew's gospel is aimed primarily for the Jewish people of Jesus' day. That's why it opens with the narrative of his ancestry. The Messiah was, according to the prophet, to come out of the house (clan) of David, and so Matthew begins by attesting that Jesus' ancestry could be traced back to King David. He needed to do this, because Jesus grew up in Galilee, which was not foretold by the prophets, and because Jesus was not born into one of the prominent families in Judea. Tied up with the expectation of his Davidic heritage was also the idea that he would be known to the temple authorities.
The genealogy, however, is interesting in that it also includes four women, which is not usual in ancient genealogy. The three from the Old Testament (Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba) were all foreigners. Rahab was a prostitute and a resident of Jericho who aided Joshua's conquest of Canaan, hiding his scouts on her roof. Ruth was a Moabite, which meant that her descendants should not have been admitted to the temple for ten generations (!) [see Deuteronomy 23:3], yet her grandson became King David. Bathsheba was married to Uzziah, a Hittite, and so she is also a foreigner. Rebekah and her son Esau's relationship was made difficult in part because he had taken Hittite wives, so there was great prejudice toward Hittites. The inclusion of these women was important to Matthew because they show God's new intentions toward the Gentiles. They are an introduction to the story in chapter 2, where Gentiles come from the east to pay respect to the new king of the Jews: Jesus.
Over to the east of Jerusalem and the Roman empire lay the nation of Parthia, the one enemy that Rome feared in the first century. The Parthian empire ranged from the Euphrates River to the Caspian Sea and from modern Albania to the Arabian Sea. It was from there that Matthew says the Magi came. So depending on where specifically they had lived, the wise men's journey could have taken more than a year.
Who were these men? Their designation as Magi is the source of the word magician. But they were not tricksters or illusionists. They were the scholars of their day, the astronomers/astrologers of their day. They studied the stars and charted what the heavens looked like, including the movement of those stars they designated planetes or wanderers. They did this as an accumulation of knowledge but also to discover what God had in mind for them and the nations of the world. They were probably followers of Zoroaster, so worshiped only one God. Their studies were world-famous, and nations had learned to quake if the Magi's predictions went against them. It is because of these sort of men that we have the 360 degree circle, which can be used as a clock face; the understanding of the equinoxes and solstices, and the zodiac.
In their sky charts, they evidently saw a configuration telling them that a new king of Judea had been born. Why they should travel all the way to Jerusalem to follow up on their discovery is uncertain. It was a huge undertaking and certainly had not happened when Herod was born. But they did undertake the journey and came to Jerusalem bearing gifts fit for a king: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. [See the discussion of Isaiah above for a description of frankincense.]
The gifts, according to the ancient church, represent all of the aspects of Jesus' hoped-for reign: gold, which represents the tribute one king might pay to another; and two resins -- frankincense, such as was used in the temple; and myrrh, which was used in Egyptian mummification and was extremely expensive. (It has been said that Nero burned a year's supply at the funeral of his wife, as a sign of her value to him.) So the three gifts apply to the power, honor, and sacrifice of Jesus. They do not tell us that there were three wise men, however -- just three gifts. In fact, they probably came in a fairly large caravan, especially since they carried such expensive cargo. They would need guards and outriders for protection from bandits, who were quite common along well-traveled trade routes and even worse on the back roads.
They arrived in Jerusalem "after Jesus was born" (v. 1), but Matthew does not say how long after. They went directly to the palace of Herod, who bore the title of King of the Jews, though he was a vassal under the control of Rome. They asked the most dangerous question of all: "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?" Because of the reputation of the Parthian Magi, the court's reaction was one of fear. They must have been wondering, "Does this mean that Herod is about to be deposed?"
Matthew says that "all Jerusalem" was frightened by this question. But most probably it was those in authority who were frightened. The small people, like Mary and Joseph, the innkeepers and the house servants had no reason to be frightened. The prophets like Isaiah had taught them that when Messiah came all things would be set right. Those who abused their positions, who misused their authority, would be repaid for their evil ways. So we can doubt that "all Jerusalem was afraid." But Herod was definitely afraid. Apparently he was also ignorant of the scriptures. At least he knew where to turn to alleviate his fear and ignorance. He called in his natural allies, the chief priests and scribes -- the people in power in the temple.
Their answer is quick and precise. The prophet Micah had said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). Bethlehem was a town of about 100, located about five miles south of Jerusalem, so it shouldn't take much to find this new king. Yet Herod took the wise men to one side and asked them to go find the child, and then bring him the information so that he could also go and pay his respects.
According to Matthew, they set out, following the star "that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was." This phrase has caused more books and articles to be written than we can go into here. There is an excellent new film from Ted TV available on YouTube, "The Star of Bethlehem," that talks about the array of celestial and astrological events that could be the explanation for this comment. But no actual star moves through the heavens in such a way as to be able to be followed for only five miles; the stars are much too far away to be able to triangulate in that way. Nor do they "stop" directly over a small house. The arguments over the years include the possibility of the "star" being a comet, but comets also are too far away to possibly "stand still" over as small a target as a city, let alone a house. Such discussions make for great fun but have little impact on our understanding of Matthew's story. It's enough for us to understand the joy of the Magi as they find the Christ Child.
It's a great story. These men have traveled -- probably by camel train -- for over a year to find the promised king of the Jews. They have managed to get away from King Herod and they have reached their goal. They come into the house where Mary and Joseph and the child are living (notice the differences between Luke's and Matthew's story -- here, Mary and Joseph are living in Bethlehem, not just staying there and certainly not in a stable or cave) and when they see him, they kneel down into a position of humility, and offer him the gifts they have brought so far at an astronomical price. Can we even begin to imagine how they must have felt? What brought them here? What had they hoped for, that they did this?
For that matter, what must Mary and Joseph have made of this? Here are these well-dressed foreigners kneeling down in the presence of the baby. They produce gifts of enormous value -- valuable enough to exceed Joseph's income as a man who works with his hands for more than a year or two -- and talk about seeing signs of a new king of the Jews, who is apparently their son. Not only that, they have evidently been saying this in places of power! Surely this must have made them uneasy -- uneasy enough that a dream telling Joseph to pack up and get out of town would be followed instantly.
We can be certain of one thing: Matthew's purpose with this story. He intends to tell his Jewish readers that God has widened the circle of those who will be welcomed into the kingdom that Jesus preached. He is reminding them of Isaiah's prophecy. The nations of earth, not just the Jews, will be rejoicing because of the birth of this child. The rich and powerful will not know how to get there, only the poor -- people like Joseph and Mary. The Herods, the scribes, the corrupt officials, the judges who are bribable, those who hold on to their power and wealth and beat off those who need what they are hoarding will be left out. Of all the kings of the earth, Herod should have known where to find the Christ at his birth. But he did not. He knew the power of Rome but not the power of God. Yet it is the power of God that prevails and protects Jesus and his family and that shelters them until King Herod is dead.
Our passage stops before Matthew tells us that Herod has a completely maniacal episode when the Magi don't return to him. Matthew says that Herod is so angry, so terrified of the consequences of missing this child, that he orders the death of every boy aged two or less in Bethlehem. There is no note in history on this event, only this story in the Bible. But then Bethlehem was a tiny town, and the probability of there being more than ten such children in the village is not great. What are ten dead children compared to the majesty of the king?
But that's not the point. The point is that Herod failed. He failed to find Jesus, alive or dead. He failed to care about finding the Messiah and doing what he claimed he wanted to do -- to humbly bow before this child, as the Magi did. He failed because he went against the purposes of God. He got no word from God, as the Magi did, or as Joseph did. So he did not know he had failed. But we may guess that he lived in fear for the little time of his life he had left. Fear that perhaps he had missed eliminating his competition. Waiting and wondering what this had all been about and not knowing because he did not know God.
None of the chief priests or scribes made the trek to Bethlehem either. They stayed in the palace or maybe the temple or even in their own homes and thought that the child born to be king of the Jews had been taken care of. They too may have had doubts about the survival of the child. They too may have wondered: Could it be true? Could Messiah have been born in their time in Bethlehem? But they did not go to find him. They hoped he was dead, and they were safe.
God himself cared for the child Jesus. God's angel spoke to the Magi in their dreams, warning them to go home another way. He spoke to Joseph as well, sending the family scrambling in the night to get out of town, out of the country, down to Egypt. For God's plan trumps the plans of humans every time.
