Has it dawned on you?
Commentary
Note: This installment was originally published in 2007.
Over the years, though I am from a low church tradition, I have come to appreciate Epiphany more and more. It gives us a second shot at revisiting the Christmas story to ponder whether the secular celebration has done too much damage to what God intended us to be about. In recent times there has been some evidence that our problems might not be too much darkness; rather the light God intends seems to have a hard time making its way through the bright lights of our world. If you live near or in a city, light pollution has a way of limiting your view of the heavenly hosts. Epiphany provides some possibility, with less glare from holiday lights and expectations, to understand just what God might have accomplished or what we may have missed in the recent round of holiday merrymaking.
It is a fearful thing to imagine that if the wise men showed up on our doorsteps we might find ourselves in the same position as Herod -- frightened, confused, and unable to be much help in locating where the child was born. It was no less disturbing to Herod to discover the sky was full of messages in bright lights that he could not figure out. A puppet of the Romans yes, but this is the kind of thing that he ought to be on top of. After all, it has spooked all of Jerusalem, which is bound to put the culture and the corporate powers that be on edge. It has not quite dawned on the Jerusalemites just what God is up to. This is not the kind of thing that the people of the capital ought to be mistaken about.
If you had been living in exile as the Hebrews had and found yourself returning from the far country you could begin to wonder what God was up to in bringing you back from Babylon. What will the role of the returnees be? What role is God counting on them to play in the scheme of things? As they surveyed the ruins of Jerusalem and the temple they must have asked themselves whether their task was to put it all together in the way things had been. If not that, then what was to be their part in God's plan? Was it all about them returning, setting up shop, and settling in so that they could live happily ever after in the land of milk and honey?
Only slowly, it seems, did it begin to dawn on at least some of the Israelites that this was not going to be about restoring past certainties but God was doing a new thing here. While it did not abolish the old, it certainly meant going beyond some of their usual thinking. Read the Isaiah passage assigned to this day and get beyond the familiar Christmas images that they evoke and it slowly dawns on you the breadth and depth of the new thing that God is doing here. With serious political, social, and theological ramifications, the Christian scripture claims that this new thing is most completely fulfilled in events that we have just celebrated.
The letter to the Ephesians points to the mystery that Paul lived out and embodied. The inclusion of the Gentiles in the promises of God changed everything for the early church. Inclusion always rearranges things. Many of us can remember the last vestiges of segregation. James Carroll, in his recent history of the Pentagon, recounts how the building is filled with restroom facilities because it was built in the days when segregation was the law in Virginia. A few years ago, the run of the Connecticut women's basketball team easily pushed the men's team right off the front of the sports pages. Reporters who never imagined themselves hanging around a women's locker room found that they had to accommodate to the dynamics of a different news beat.
I am told that that in the town where I reside, Manchester, New Hampshire, over seventy languages are spoken! Who would have ever thought it? It takes a while for it to dawn on you just what the dimensions are of what God is up to in the world and just what you deem is an epiphany.
Was all this what we celebrated through the holidays? It may take a while until it dawns on us. Of course, the gospels tell us that much of this will be cleared up with the dawn of Easter morning.
Isaiah 60:1-6
The closing episode of the television series, M*A*S*H, featured the return home of the characters from years at war in Korea. Of course, the characters can barely believe that they are going home. "Rise and shine for your light has come" is not all that easy. Things have happened while they were in exile that makes the homecoming difficult. Indeed, the lead character, Hawkeye, is in a mental hospital unable to resolve all the issues that have developed in his life from the exile. There must have been a similar set of difficulties in the return of the Israelites. Some had kept the faith; some had not done so well. Others had gone over the line in their compromises to Babylonian system. Perhaps some did not see this as light for their journey at all for they had done well in the new land and had hopes for their children. This proposition might not offer an easy way up a career ladder.
As I consider this text, it dawns on me that I might not be ready to return from the exile that the Christmas celebrations can often be. Where have things been left unsaid or undone? Did we compromise too badly with the culture? Did the family celebrations cover what should have been said and shared? Was my holiday mostly about feeling good or getting a feel for the kingdom of God? Did I allow people to live in exile in the kitchen or working long hours while I enjoyed the fruit of their labors?
God seems to be up to quite a feat here as the text describes the nations and the wealth of the world streaming toward Jerusalem. At first glance, I blush at the prospect of this moment. This seems to be a whole different kind of globalization than we read about in the newspapers. Of course, that just might be the point. It dawns on me that the text bears more relevance than ever before, for we can now see how the world's wealth can come under one umbrella serving the aims of a free market and free trade. "They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord." It seems that in our world, tied in with the praise of the Lord, is the proclamation that neither free market nor free trade are in and of themselves gods to be worshiped. They may be good things but when they become objects of our worship, we are getting in the way of the plan and purpose of God. Yes, the world often beats a path to our door to see our wealth, yet does it leave praising the Lord?
It often dawns on me that the coming of sons and daughters from far away can be quite challenging. Sometimes it can be quite difficult when Zion's children start showing up. It seems that there are some challenges ahead for the worldwide church as the center of the Christian population moves toward what is called in the first world, "the third world." Different understandings of human sexuality in the churches in other countries have left many liberals in economically advanced nations confused, offended, and challenged. Conservatives find themselves challenged by the understanding of the root causes of economic disorder in the world by those who do not share in the economic prosperity of so called first world nations. It dawns on me that the coming of Zion's children into their own from far away will pose more challenges than many had anticipated.
While it dawns that there are more challenges to be met if Zion's children are to praise the Lord, it is also clear that those who return from exile are to undertake this work. "Be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice." Actually, I find myself doing so because the light calls us from exile, calls us to put aside false gods, and calls us together. Darkness does cover the earth, a thick darkness, when we try to make it in the land of exile. We were not meant to live there, where we support temples to false gods. It will be quite a day when the day of the Lord dawns. When it dawns on us that the day has already come, then "we shall arise and shine ... for the glory of the Lord has risen upon us."
Ephesians 3:1-12
Gentiles included. The struggle of the early church to include and accept the Gentiles on an equal footing was worked out in many places. We are given in the Christian scripture, through the various narrations of the process, a fairly sophisticated version of what took place. We have the high-powered reflections of serious theological minds as in the book of Acts, Paul's letters, and in all the gospels. No doubt there is the reified, high level, intense serious aspect to that struggle. However, it dawns on me that something simpler, more humble was at work as the church faced the issue. The early church was overwhelmed by these new people so different in customs and their approach to life. Who was Paul, a latter-day persecutor of the church, to be taking up their cause? It appears obvious to us a few centuries later that engrafting the Gentiles was the way to go. Certainly, Judaism suffered in the midst of the first-century upheavals by turning inward rather than turning outward. It is clear that there were Jewish communities scattered around the world and many God fearers who might have been a source of vitality and growth. The early church decision to expand into new areas certainly seems, in retrospect, a no-brainer.
Yet it was a struggle, and for Paul this was a mystery that remained hidden for all ages in God who created all things. As we sit on this side of the divide, it remains a mystery why this was so puzzling. Yet closer to home, many of us have lived through times when we could not fathom how it would be possible for white people and black people to walk together in anything that looks like equality. I suspect that some of the fears that retarded the inclusion of all Americans in the fulfillment of the American creed also frustrated Paul: What if we must eat with them, what if one of them wants to marry my daughter, what if one of them is ordained, and on and on. These things tend to be the default position for some of us. An African-American friend tells of sitting through a speech in which every negative reference was to blackness in some form. The speaker was just reflecting the default position with which he had grown up.
Some of the mystery is how the early church made the choice to go against the cultural, social, and religious grain to invite Gentiles to be full participants in the life of the church as Gentiles. There was no clear model as to how to go about this. In the end, as Paul does, the corpus of scripture can only attribute this to divine activity.
It dawns on me that as I look at my holiday celebration, I wonder if they proclaimed the boundless riches of God that Paul announces to the Gentiles. Rather than a source of unity, the holiday celebration is a source of clumsiness with Jewish friends, and a source of division, as some Christians demand that store Santas must wish shoppers Merry Christmas rather than happy holidays. The Feast of Kwanzaa seems to be a recognition that the spirituality behind Christmas for many is the "White Christmas" that some folks are not dreaming about. If nothing else, the economic tie of Christmas means for many a disappointing realization that the wall between people grows higher at a time when it ought to come down. Needless to say, many find the season of good cheer and fellowship a burden hard to bear in the midst of their sorrow and depression. This does not sound to me like the boundless riches of Christ who embraces all.
I have no model for this. I wonder what it would be like if the season of joy became more a source of unity -- an opportunity to find out where we find joy and what it is like to live without it in our various traditions. It seems that, at its core, the story of Epiphany is the celebration of the gifts that the Gentile wise men brought. Our celebration might be the dawning of a new Epiphany of the boundless riches of God that we know in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 2:1-12
Here they come again. In most churches, the wise men have already made their appearance in the manger scene, and the Christmas pageant would not be complete without the royal retinue. Of the pageants I have seen, including major productions with camels and sheep, the object is to get them to the manger scene as fast as we can for the major dénouement, when in royal reverence they deposit their gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The rest of it all seems to fall to the cutting room floor as it were. It dawns on me that we just might have missed out on something here in our obsessing with this one scene in their story.
What was that moment like when they observed his star for the first time at its rising? For people in their position, this must have provoked a variety of reactions. No doubt the standard theatrical version of the tale would include wide-eyed amazement at this new addition to the heavens. Of course, these are the people who are supposed to know about such things. Clearly, early on, they understood these events as tied to what will be authoritative Judaism.
The scene that ought to be part of every Christmas pageant is the one when Herod got wind of what was going on. According to the word on the street, there were Gentile authorities asking questions that he did not have an answer for. Not only Herod, but all of Jerusalem, was afraid. If the Gentile wise men have it right, this cannot be good.
At the end of the first scene, what we know is that there is something that the Gentiles get in understanding what God is birthing into the world and there is something that all Jerusalem along with Herod misses completely. That ought to be reason for some fear and trembling on our part. Who knows when some Gentiles may show up, and we will have to pay attention to what insights they might bring to us as to what is going on in our world? They do not know the full extent of what is happening here, and what it will lead to, but they know something. The lesson here is that it is worth paying attention to the outsider. Indeed, the outsider may have something to offer that the insider misses and cannot fathom. It dawns on me that churches could learn from this: recognizing that insiders will often miss things that others see. It might be interesting to invite folks from other religious traditions or no tradition to come and worship and to offer their reactions as to what they experienced in our praise and singing. All Jerusalem might tremble but there might also be an epiphany of the first order. It might be interesting to ask some of those who came as a part of the somewhat larger than normal crowds who followed the star to Christmas Eve why they came. What is it that seems to inhibit their return: again, fear and trembling, but potential epiphany?
It seems that Herod comes up fairly short in the streetwise department. He makes arrangements with the wise men to find the exact location of the place. Does he really expect the wise men to buy his story that he, too, wishes to pay homage to the child? Get a grip here. These are people who have discerned in the heavens the plan of God and does Herod think that they will not see through him? This scene would definitely be in my Christmas pageant. There is no epiphany for Herod. There tends not to be an epiphany for those who spend their day putting people in their place as opposed to learning to put themselves in other people's places.
Then comes the great scene in which they kneel before the babe. They leave with no stars in the sky but they leave starry-eyed at the prospect of what God is up to in the world. Herod has had his eye out for trouble, opposition, and anything that might get in his way. He is not likely to have an epiphany that will leave him starry-eyed.
Application
As a child, I always had trouble with the account of "the wise men." We sang the Christmas carol, "We Three Kings Of Orient Are." There comes a time in a young person's life when you discover that some of the Christmas stories that surround the holiday just might not be true. A precocious encounter with the Christmas classic, Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus, suggested that there was a problem. Now I am told via a casual encounter with public radio that in all probability Clement Moore did not write 'Twas The Night Before Christmas. Does this never end? It begins to all feel like a scandal revealed on a 60 Minutes episode. Notations in history books that Jesus was probably born in 4 B.C. only make matters worse.
That the names of the wise men came from Ben Hur, a novel written by a Civil War general, Lew Wallace, adds to the confusion. Finding out that even the notion of the three comes from the number of gifts not the number of people, did not make things better. Who were these people -- kings, astrologers, or the proverbial wise ones?
Then it dawns on me that one might take the liberty to say that they were all three. Like government types, they had power that came as much from defining the future as anything else. The story invites us to consider the minority report that is rendered through their through dream life. There is another tale being told here other than the official government version of things. The conventional notion of the heavens is challenged by a star that requires them to redo their charts.
Their role in the story of how God is entering into the world may tell us that we need to redo our charts, rethink our sense of what the future holds, and revisit our understanding of what is for the sake of what might be; that we, too, might come and worship him.
Alternative Application
Ephesians 3:1-12. Epiphany celebrates in part the entry of the Gentiles into the fellowship of Christian believers. They come not as ones who bring a great background in the scriptural saga. You know you are moving into modern-day Gentile territory when the local athletic association schedules a soccer tournament to start at 10 a.m. Sunday morning, or when the local radio stations announce that there will be a congressional meeting of your congregation, or the music selection the wedding couple has chosen will take the assembled gathering to places you may not want them to go.
No doubt about it -- we are in Gentile territory now. How do we plan to share the boundless riches of Christ with this new crop of Gentiles? I suspect that we might do it in some measure by sharing how we live with the mystery of life that we and others are. How do we cherish the mystery that we cannot fully explain? Paul himself did write, "Behold I show you a mystery." It seems that the level playing ground in facing the mystery of life is where we and the Gentiles can find common ground.
In many ways, we are at the same place as Paul. We have been overtaken and captured by events. No longer operating from the center of the culture, we are one among many spiritual options for the Gentiles of our time that have little or no church experience. How do we walk in the way Paul walked in Gentile territory that we might further the kingdom of God?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
This psalm takes aim, not only at a once and long ago world, but also places the contemporary scene squarely in its sites. Though we have, in spite of appearances, given up kings and hereditary rights, the words come addressed to us. "Give the king your justice, O God...." The opening plea of this psalm makes it clear that there is a difference between God's justice, and that which passes for the same in the courts of royalty. And just in case we were wondering, the psalmist steps into the rarified air of clarity.
The people are to be judged with righteousness. As it is in today's justice system, "righteousness" comes usually to those who can afford a good attorney. Huge corporations with limitless resources are granted the legal rights of individual persons, thereby depriving individual persons of their rights. Equity and fairness are but a fleeting memory.
And the poor? They are left today to lives wrecked on the rhetorical shoals of "personal responsibility," and "globalization." Honorable employment that enables a person to support a family has evaporated into the midst of ever greater profits for corporations. More than 20 percent of the American population goes without health care, and the once legendary middle class has shrunk as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.
Yes, yes. The complaints come quickly. Don't bring your politics to church. Don't blame me. Let me worship God without all this social stuff, okay? Well, if we pay attention to scripture, it's not okay. This psalm is really just the tip of the biblical iceberg when it comes to a Christian voice for justice. People rooted in the Judeo-Christian heritage cannot escape it. We worship a God who demands a modicum of justice among the people. If this psalm isn't quite enough to tip the scales of the heart, check out Isaiah or Amos or Micah. Read chapters 5 through 7 in the gospel of Matthew, and don't forget the fourth chapter of Luke where Jesus stands up in the temple and announces himself.
Let's be clear. This isn't a call to take the ideology du'jour and pretend that it's God's will. Too often, Pharisees of all stripes try to stretch holy scripture over ideological agendas, pretending in a show of self-righteous zeal, that they are the arbiters of God's holy way. It's time, though, to stop playing around with God. It's time to stop manipulating the Holy Word to our own ends.
The call comes to enter into scripture, having dropped all of our agendas and pretenses. The shove of God's grace is at our back, pushing us to truly hear the Word. "Give the king your justice, O God."
Over the years, though I am from a low church tradition, I have come to appreciate Epiphany more and more. It gives us a second shot at revisiting the Christmas story to ponder whether the secular celebration has done too much damage to what God intended us to be about. In recent times there has been some evidence that our problems might not be too much darkness; rather the light God intends seems to have a hard time making its way through the bright lights of our world. If you live near or in a city, light pollution has a way of limiting your view of the heavenly hosts. Epiphany provides some possibility, with less glare from holiday lights and expectations, to understand just what God might have accomplished or what we may have missed in the recent round of holiday merrymaking.
It is a fearful thing to imagine that if the wise men showed up on our doorsteps we might find ourselves in the same position as Herod -- frightened, confused, and unable to be much help in locating where the child was born. It was no less disturbing to Herod to discover the sky was full of messages in bright lights that he could not figure out. A puppet of the Romans yes, but this is the kind of thing that he ought to be on top of. After all, it has spooked all of Jerusalem, which is bound to put the culture and the corporate powers that be on edge. It has not quite dawned on the Jerusalemites just what God is up to. This is not the kind of thing that the people of the capital ought to be mistaken about.
If you had been living in exile as the Hebrews had and found yourself returning from the far country you could begin to wonder what God was up to in bringing you back from Babylon. What will the role of the returnees be? What role is God counting on them to play in the scheme of things? As they surveyed the ruins of Jerusalem and the temple they must have asked themselves whether their task was to put it all together in the way things had been. If not that, then what was to be their part in God's plan? Was it all about them returning, setting up shop, and settling in so that they could live happily ever after in the land of milk and honey?
Only slowly, it seems, did it begin to dawn on at least some of the Israelites that this was not going to be about restoring past certainties but God was doing a new thing here. While it did not abolish the old, it certainly meant going beyond some of their usual thinking. Read the Isaiah passage assigned to this day and get beyond the familiar Christmas images that they evoke and it slowly dawns on you the breadth and depth of the new thing that God is doing here. With serious political, social, and theological ramifications, the Christian scripture claims that this new thing is most completely fulfilled in events that we have just celebrated.
The letter to the Ephesians points to the mystery that Paul lived out and embodied. The inclusion of the Gentiles in the promises of God changed everything for the early church. Inclusion always rearranges things. Many of us can remember the last vestiges of segregation. James Carroll, in his recent history of the Pentagon, recounts how the building is filled with restroom facilities because it was built in the days when segregation was the law in Virginia. A few years ago, the run of the Connecticut women's basketball team easily pushed the men's team right off the front of the sports pages. Reporters who never imagined themselves hanging around a women's locker room found that they had to accommodate to the dynamics of a different news beat.
I am told that that in the town where I reside, Manchester, New Hampshire, over seventy languages are spoken! Who would have ever thought it? It takes a while for it to dawn on you just what the dimensions are of what God is up to in the world and just what you deem is an epiphany.
Was all this what we celebrated through the holidays? It may take a while until it dawns on us. Of course, the gospels tell us that much of this will be cleared up with the dawn of Easter morning.
Isaiah 60:1-6
The closing episode of the television series, M*A*S*H, featured the return home of the characters from years at war in Korea. Of course, the characters can barely believe that they are going home. "Rise and shine for your light has come" is not all that easy. Things have happened while they were in exile that makes the homecoming difficult. Indeed, the lead character, Hawkeye, is in a mental hospital unable to resolve all the issues that have developed in his life from the exile. There must have been a similar set of difficulties in the return of the Israelites. Some had kept the faith; some had not done so well. Others had gone over the line in their compromises to Babylonian system. Perhaps some did not see this as light for their journey at all for they had done well in the new land and had hopes for their children. This proposition might not offer an easy way up a career ladder.
As I consider this text, it dawns on me that I might not be ready to return from the exile that the Christmas celebrations can often be. Where have things been left unsaid or undone? Did we compromise too badly with the culture? Did the family celebrations cover what should have been said and shared? Was my holiday mostly about feeling good or getting a feel for the kingdom of God? Did I allow people to live in exile in the kitchen or working long hours while I enjoyed the fruit of their labors?
God seems to be up to quite a feat here as the text describes the nations and the wealth of the world streaming toward Jerusalem. At first glance, I blush at the prospect of this moment. This seems to be a whole different kind of globalization than we read about in the newspapers. Of course, that just might be the point. It dawns on me that the text bears more relevance than ever before, for we can now see how the world's wealth can come under one umbrella serving the aims of a free market and free trade. "They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord." It seems that in our world, tied in with the praise of the Lord, is the proclamation that neither free market nor free trade are in and of themselves gods to be worshiped. They may be good things but when they become objects of our worship, we are getting in the way of the plan and purpose of God. Yes, the world often beats a path to our door to see our wealth, yet does it leave praising the Lord?
It often dawns on me that the coming of sons and daughters from far away can be quite challenging. Sometimes it can be quite difficult when Zion's children start showing up. It seems that there are some challenges ahead for the worldwide church as the center of the Christian population moves toward what is called in the first world, "the third world." Different understandings of human sexuality in the churches in other countries have left many liberals in economically advanced nations confused, offended, and challenged. Conservatives find themselves challenged by the understanding of the root causes of economic disorder in the world by those who do not share in the economic prosperity of so called first world nations. It dawns on me that the coming of Zion's children into their own from far away will pose more challenges than many had anticipated.
While it dawns that there are more challenges to be met if Zion's children are to praise the Lord, it is also clear that those who return from exile are to undertake this work. "Be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice." Actually, I find myself doing so because the light calls us from exile, calls us to put aside false gods, and calls us together. Darkness does cover the earth, a thick darkness, when we try to make it in the land of exile. We were not meant to live there, where we support temples to false gods. It will be quite a day when the day of the Lord dawns. When it dawns on us that the day has already come, then "we shall arise and shine ... for the glory of the Lord has risen upon us."
Ephesians 3:1-12
Gentiles included. The struggle of the early church to include and accept the Gentiles on an equal footing was worked out in many places. We are given in the Christian scripture, through the various narrations of the process, a fairly sophisticated version of what took place. We have the high-powered reflections of serious theological minds as in the book of Acts, Paul's letters, and in all the gospels. No doubt there is the reified, high level, intense serious aspect to that struggle. However, it dawns on me that something simpler, more humble was at work as the church faced the issue. The early church was overwhelmed by these new people so different in customs and their approach to life. Who was Paul, a latter-day persecutor of the church, to be taking up their cause? It appears obvious to us a few centuries later that engrafting the Gentiles was the way to go. Certainly, Judaism suffered in the midst of the first-century upheavals by turning inward rather than turning outward. It is clear that there were Jewish communities scattered around the world and many God fearers who might have been a source of vitality and growth. The early church decision to expand into new areas certainly seems, in retrospect, a no-brainer.
Yet it was a struggle, and for Paul this was a mystery that remained hidden for all ages in God who created all things. As we sit on this side of the divide, it remains a mystery why this was so puzzling. Yet closer to home, many of us have lived through times when we could not fathom how it would be possible for white people and black people to walk together in anything that looks like equality. I suspect that some of the fears that retarded the inclusion of all Americans in the fulfillment of the American creed also frustrated Paul: What if we must eat with them, what if one of them wants to marry my daughter, what if one of them is ordained, and on and on. These things tend to be the default position for some of us. An African-American friend tells of sitting through a speech in which every negative reference was to blackness in some form. The speaker was just reflecting the default position with which he had grown up.
Some of the mystery is how the early church made the choice to go against the cultural, social, and religious grain to invite Gentiles to be full participants in the life of the church as Gentiles. There was no clear model as to how to go about this. In the end, as Paul does, the corpus of scripture can only attribute this to divine activity.
It dawns on me that as I look at my holiday celebration, I wonder if they proclaimed the boundless riches of God that Paul announces to the Gentiles. Rather than a source of unity, the holiday celebration is a source of clumsiness with Jewish friends, and a source of division, as some Christians demand that store Santas must wish shoppers Merry Christmas rather than happy holidays. The Feast of Kwanzaa seems to be a recognition that the spirituality behind Christmas for many is the "White Christmas" that some folks are not dreaming about. If nothing else, the economic tie of Christmas means for many a disappointing realization that the wall between people grows higher at a time when it ought to come down. Needless to say, many find the season of good cheer and fellowship a burden hard to bear in the midst of their sorrow and depression. This does not sound to me like the boundless riches of Christ who embraces all.
I have no model for this. I wonder what it would be like if the season of joy became more a source of unity -- an opportunity to find out where we find joy and what it is like to live without it in our various traditions. It seems that, at its core, the story of Epiphany is the celebration of the gifts that the Gentile wise men brought. Our celebration might be the dawning of a new Epiphany of the boundless riches of God that we know in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 2:1-12
Here they come again. In most churches, the wise men have already made their appearance in the manger scene, and the Christmas pageant would not be complete without the royal retinue. Of the pageants I have seen, including major productions with camels and sheep, the object is to get them to the manger scene as fast as we can for the major dénouement, when in royal reverence they deposit their gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The rest of it all seems to fall to the cutting room floor as it were. It dawns on me that we just might have missed out on something here in our obsessing with this one scene in their story.
What was that moment like when they observed his star for the first time at its rising? For people in their position, this must have provoked a variety of reactions. No doubt the standard theatrical version of the tale would include wide-eyed amazement at this new addition to the heavens. Of course, these are the people who are supposed to know about such things. Clearly, early on, they understood these events as tied to what will be authoritative Judaism.
The scene that ought to be part of every Christmas pageant is the one when Herod got wind of what was going on. According to the word on the street, there were Gentile authorities asking questions that he did not have an answer for. Not only Herod, but all of Jerusalem, was afraid. If the Gentile wise men have it right, this cannot be good.
At the end of the first scene, what we know is that there is something that the Gentiles get in understanding what God is birthing into the world and there is something that all Jerusalem along with Herod misses completely. That ought to be reason for some fear and trembling on our part. Who knows when some Gentiles may show up, and we will have to pay attention to what insights they might bring to us as to what is going on in our world? They do not know the full extent of what is happening here, and what it will lead to, but they know something. The lesson here is that it is worth paying attention to the outsider. Indeed, the outsider may have something to offer that the insider misses and cannot fathom. It dawns on me that churches could learn from this: recognizing that insiders will often miss things that others see. It might be interesting to invite folks from other religious traditions or no tradition to come and worship and to offer their reactions as to what they experienced in our praise and singing. All Jerusalem might tremble but there might also be an epiphany of the first order. It might be interesting to ask some of those who came as a part of the somewhat larger than normal crowds who followed the star to Christmas Eve why they came. What is it that seems to inhibit their return: again, fear and trembling, but potential epiphany?
It seems that Herod comes up fairly short in the streetwise department. He makes arrangements with the wise men to find the exact location of the place. Does he really expect the wise men to buy his story that he, too, wishes to pay homage to the child? Get a grip here. These are people who have discerned in the heavens the plan of God and does Herod think that they will not see through him? This scene would definitely be in my Christmas pageant. There is no epiphany for Herod. There tends not to be an epiphany for those who spend their day putting people in their place as opposed to learning to put themselves in other people's places.
Then comes the great scene in which they kneel before the babe. They leave with no stars in the sky but they leave starry-eyed at the prospect of what God is up to in the world. Herod has had his eye out for trouble, opposition, and anything that might get in his way. He is not likely to have an epiphany that will leave him starry-eyed.
Application
As a child, I always had trouble with the account of "the wise men." We sang the Christmas carol, "We Three Kings Of Orient Are." There comes a time in a young person's life when you discover that some of the Christmas stories that surround the holiday just might not be true. A precocious encounter with the Christmas classic, Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus, suggested that there was a problem. Now I am told via a casual encounter with public radio that in all probability Clement Moore did not write 'Twas The Night Before Christmas. Does this never end? It begins to all feel like a scandal revealed on a 60 Minutes episode. Notations in history books that Jesus was probably born in 4 B.C. only make matters worse.
That the names of the wise men came from Ben Hur, a novel written by a Civil War general, Lew Wallace, adds to the confusion. Finding out that even the notion of the three comes from the number of gifts not the number of people, did not make things better. Who were these people -- kings, astrologers, or the proverbial wise ones?
Then it dawns on me that one might take the liberty to say that they were all three. Like government types, they had power that came as much from defining the future as anything else. The story invites us to consider the minority report that is rendered through their through dream life. There is another tale being told here other than the official government version of things. The conventional notion of the heavens is challenged by a star that requires them to redo their charts.
Their role in the story of how God is entering into the world may tell us that we need to redo our charts, rethink our sense of what the future holds, and revisit our understanding of what is for the sake of what might be; that we, too, might come and worship him.
Alternative Application
Ephesians 3:1-12. Epiphany celebrates in part the entry of the Gentiles into the fellowship of Christian believers. They come not as ones who bring a great background in the scriptural saga. You know you are moving into modern-day Gentile territory when the local athletic association schedules a soccer tournament to start at 10 a.m. Sunday morning, or when the local radio stations announce that there will be a congressional meeting of your congregation, or the music selection the wedding couple has chosen will take the assembled gathering to places you may not want them to go.
No doubt about it -- we are in Gentile territory now. How do we plan to share the boundless riches of Christ with this new crop of Gentiles? I suspect that we might do it in some measure by sharing how we live with the mystery of life that we and others are. How do we cherish the mystery that we cannot fully explain? Paul himself did write, "Behold I show you a mystery." It seems that the level playing ground in facing the mystery of life is where we and the Gentiles can find common ground.
In many ways, we are at the same place as Paul. We have been overtaken and captured by events. No longer operating from the center of the culture, we are one among many spiritual options for the Gentiles of our time that have little or no church experience. How do we walk in the way Paul walked in Gentile territory that we might further the kingdom of God?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
This psalm takes aim, not only at a once and long ago world, but also places the contemporary scene squarely in its sites. Though we have, in spite of appearances, given up kings and hereditary rights, the words come addressed to us. "Give the king your justice, O God...." The opening plea of this psalm makes it clear that there is a difference between God's justice, and that which passes for the same in the courts of royalty. And just in case we were wondering, the psalmist steps into the rarified air of clarity.
The people are to be judged with righteousness. As it is in today's justice system, "righteousness" comes usually to those who can afford a good attorney. Huge corporations with limitless resources are granted the legal rights of individual persons, thereby depriving individual persons of their rights. Equity and fairness are but a fleeting memory.
And the poor? They are left today to lives wrecked on the rhetorical shoals of "personal responsibility," and "globalization." Honorable employment that enables a person to support a family has evaporated into the midst of ever greater profits for corporations. More than 20 percent of the American population goes without health care, and the once legendary middle class has shrunk as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.
Yes, yes. The complaints come quickly. Don't bring your politics to church. Don't blame me. Let me worship God without all this social stuff, okay? Well, if we pay attention to scripture, it's not okay. This psalm is really just the tip of the biblical iceberg when it comes to a Christian voice for justice. People rooted in the Judeo-Christian heritage cannot escape it. We worship a God who demands a modicum of justice among the people. If this psalm isn't quite enough to tip the scales of the heart, check out Isaiah or Amos or Micah. Read chapters 5 through 7 in the gospel of Matthew, and don't forget the fourth chapter of Luke where Jesus stands up in the temple and announces himself.
Let's be clear. This isn't a call to take the ideology du'jour and pretend that it's God's will. Too often, Pharisees of all stripes try to stretch holy scripture over ideological agendas, pretending in a show of self-righteous zeal, that they are the arbiters of God's holy way. It's time, though, to stop playing around with God. It's time to stop manipulating the Holy Word to our own ends.
The call comes to enter into scripture, having dropped all of our agendas and pretenses. The shove of God's grace is at our back, pushing us to truly hear the Word. "Give the king your justice, O God."
