When God's Mind is Spoken
Sermon
FROM ANTICIPATION TO TRANSFIGURATION
Sermons For Advent, Christmas, & Epiphany
I went to see him at the hospital where he was recuperating from a scary illness. While I visited with him, his wife made arrangements to check him out of the hospital. It took much longer than both of us had expected, so he and I had an unanticipated, but very important, conversation. He worships every Sunday. He never misses Sunday school. He reads my sermons, and those of other ministers, that are mailed to his house. For a lay person, he is theologically well informed. In fact, from time to time, he asks me to give him some titles of books that he can read about Christian theology and Christian ethics. He is a man who seeks to understand the faith and who lives by its implications in this life.
During our visit he made an observation and raised a question. He said, "Pastor, I hear people say that God told them this and God told them that; but, I have never heard God talk. If God ever spoke his mind, what would God say? Anyway, how does one know what is on God's mind?"
I suppose that many people think pastors spend their time responding to questions like this - faith questions. But, I must say that it is rare for a lay person to ask his or her pastor a question that is so centered in faith's reflection. How, then, does one answer the open inquiry of this lay person and the silent questioning of many who say, "Does God speak? And, if so, how?
When we, as human beings, want to share what is on our minds we use words. Our words are expressions of our minds. Every mind must express itself because activity is the very nature of a mind. A mind which is vacant or inactive is not a mind. A mind by its very nature is active, creative, and expressive.
If God ever decided to speak his mind, what would he say and how would he go about saying it? Would God speak his mind with words inscribed on a stone? Or with music? Or with law? Or with a volume containing sixty-six books? If God had something that he really wanted to say to us, how would he choose to say it? And, how could God communicate in a way that we could really understand? Has God ever said what is on his mind? Will God ever say what is on his mind?
The prologue to the Gospel of John tells us about a time when God spoke his mind. These introductory verses tell us that God spoke his mind by becoming flesh and by dwelling among us full of grace and full of truth.
John says that when God wants to speak, God has his Word become flesh. Could there be any higher compliment paid to the human community than to say that God has joined humanity as a person? Dare John say that, in Jesus Christ, God has pitched his tent among us? John is bold in saying that the Word that was with God, and the Word that was God, has now, in the Incarnation, become a living Word. The Word which makes all things now becomes displayed in a human being. The Word which brought forth life and light is now wrapped in human flesh.
From the outset, John wants his reader to understand that when God spoke his mind, he did it not with words, not with another law, but with a person. When God spoke his mind, he did so with Jesus of Nazareth, God's creed for humanity. The teachings, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ best express the mind of God. Thus, Christianity dares to say that the infant Jesus was the expression of the living mind of the living God.
Those who worship here today and in Christian churches everywhere surely know that not all people believe that the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ. Every age has produced its opposition to the Word made flesh. Every age has had its agnostics and skeptics. Every age has had those who have not believed that the Word was made flesh in Jesus Christ. Every age has had those who believe that God does not speak in human form.
John acknowledges that not everyone would believe that the Word had become flesh. He says,
The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become the children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.
Acknowledging that the Word has become flesh is not based upon popular vote. It is not a democratic process. It is not something that is decided by public decree. Instead, there will always be people who cannot accept, or who refuse to accept, the belief that the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ.
However, not all people have disbelieved. The rejection of the Incarnation has never been universal. In every age, there have been a few who believed that God spoke his Word in Jesus Christ. There have always been those who would not disown their belief that the light has overcome the darkness. There have always been those who have seen a unique revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
The decision to believe that God spoke in Jesus Christ is one that each of us has to make. Either we believe that God made a statement in Jesus Christ, or we do not believe it. No one forces us to believe. Not even God stacks the cards against us so that we must believe. The decision to hear what God said through the Incarnation is ours and ours alone. It can never be made for us.
John believed that God had spoken a unique word in Jesus Christ when he wrote, "The Word became flesh." When he wrote this, he did not, of course, mean that the eternal Word became a piece of flesh. What he meant was that the eternal Word became manifest in one who was flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. A dramatic poet is speaking here - not a dogmatic theologian, nor a speculative philosopher, nor a careful scientist. John does not say that the Word coincided in a special manner with the Jesus of history. He uses hymnic language to say that the eternal, creating, redeeming, sustaining Word of God has now been displayed in a human being.
But, to say that the Word became flesh in Jesus is not to say that God's activity was exhausted by his self-manifestation in Jesus Christ. The presence of God in Jesus does not involve God's absence from the rest of the universe. The grace of God that filled Jesus was not, as a consequence, used up. Let the church understand that God did not cease to speak after he spoke in Jesus Christ.
Throughout history, there have been other people and events through which God disclosed himself to humanity. John says, "We beheld his glory" in Jesus Christ. "Glory" is the manifestation of essential being. "The heavens declare the glory of God," wrote the psalmist. And, whatever awakens us to the reality of the presence of God is a manifestation of divine glory. Tintern Abbey was this for Wordsworth. The Thames was this for Francis Thompson. The "Flower in the Crannied Wall" was this for Tennyson. If we could describe this glory so full of grace and truth, how fitting to say, as John said, that it was the glory of one who knew himself to be as the only son of his father. So uniquely the divine presence dwelled within Jesus! So trustful and so obedient was this fellowship - like that between a father and his only son - that although no one has ever seen God, we can read about Jesus' life, ponder his secret, and say, surely God's presence is here.
Although God is here in the person of Jesus, he is not exclusively here in the person of Jesus. But, for the Christian, God's Word uniquely became flesh at the Incarnation.
So I said to my friend in the hospital, "If you want to hear the Word of God, listen to it drummed out in the life of Jesus, because it is in the earthly life of Jesus that one can hear God's eternal Word."
I had an old history teacher in college who was somewhat agnostic. He certainly did not hold to orthodox theology. He did not believe in the historic creeds of Christianity. He said they were a bunch of words put together by high-flying thinkers. He was unsure about many doctrinal statements relating to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. He often spoke about his doubts. He would have sympathized with Tennyson's words - "There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds." This crusty old teacher would often share his doubts with us - doubts drawn from long years of trying to understand the meaning of life and its historical underpinnings.
At that time in my life, I was trying to decide whether I should be a historian or a pastor. I loved history. I enjoyed studying it, and I wanted to teach it. Late one afternoon I went to my professor's office and asked him to help me think through this question of my vocation. I shared with him my love for history and my calling to be a minister in the church. After listening very intently to me, he said, "I want you to leave my office considering the possibility that Jesus of Nazareth is the best human picture that we have of God. If Jesus is the best picture we have of God, then what implications does that have for your life."
In his own unorthodox way my history teacher invited me to listen anew to the Word made flesh. This listening is not a once-and-for-all kind of listening. It is the kind of listening that must take place over and over again, day in and day out, if we are to continue to hear the shaping Word of God in our midst.
A group of college students had a faith discussion. They said, among other things, "We think that we have Confirmation class too early in the United Methodist Church. We wish we had had our Confirmation when we were at least in Junior High School, if not in the ninth grade. We have forgotten a lot of what we'd learned about the faith. We are not sure what we believe or why we believe it."
To be sure, the church may have failed its youth. To be sure, we may not have taught the faith concisely and clearly. But there might just be another side to that coin; and that other side might be that those youth, like a lot of us, have quit listening to the Word that became flesh.
Listening to the Word made flesh must always be voluntary if it is to do any good. On the whole, people do not attain strong spirituality out of a sense of duty. We cannot compel others to listen to the Word made flesh; nor can we be compelled. Being shaped by the Word made flesh depends upon a pull more than a push. We cannot be pushed into hearing the word that God has spoken in Christ. Cheap scolding will not cause others to listen. Nor will cheap scolding cause us to listen. If we listen, it will be because we hunger to hear what God said when God spoke in Jesus Christ.
Said John, "No one has ever seen God. The Word made flesh has made him known." I say to you and to myself - Listen. Listen. Listen. A church that fails to listen to the Word made flesh becomes like a ship without a rudder. A life that refuses to listen to the Word made flesh becomes like a car without a steering wheel. A family that refuses to listen to the Word made flesh listens only to the voices of culture that pound and beat against it.
Listen. God has spoken clearly, and God has spoken in a way that all can understand. God spoke by coming as a person - Jesus of Nazareth.
Matthew 2:1-12
Epiphany
Responding to Christ's Birth
Telling the story of Christ's birth was not enough for Matthew! He also told about two reactions to the birth of the Messiah.
The first reaction, as Matthew told it, was from the Magi who came from the East to Jerusalem and asked the question, "Where is the newborn king of the Jews?" Contemporary customs - children dressed in faded bathrobes, tired Christmas pageants, and unsightly stable scenes in church parking lots, have taken away from the wisdom of the Wise Men's story.
It is difficult to understand what Matthew meant by Magi. They might have been Zoroastrian priests who had special power to interpret dreams. Or, they could have been men who practiced various forms of secret love and magic. In the Old Testament, they were referred to as enchanters, astronomers, and interpreters of dreams and of visionary messages. In early first-century Rome, they were known as astrologers, magicians, and readers of dreams. In Acts 8:9-24, Luke tells the story of Simon, a magus and false prophet on the island of Cyprus. Therefore, the term magi refers to a large number of people engaged in occult arts. It covers a wide range of astronomers, fortune-tellers, priestly augurs, and wandering magicians. Since Matthew depicted the Magi as having seen a star, it is highly possible that they were astrologers from beyond Palestine.
In the Old Testament the "people of the East" were also desert Arabs. These nomadic Arabs often had wise men as a natural part of their envoy. Proverbs 30:1, Proverbs 31:1, and 1 Kings 5:12 refer to the wisdom that was commonly associated with these wise men. Likewise, astrology was not unknown to the Arabs. Arabian tribes often took their names from the stars. In addition, gold, frankincense, and myrrh were gifts that eastern Arabs would use to express their feelings.
According to Matthew, these Arab astrologers reacted to the birth of Jesus by following a star to the city of Jerusalem, a scant five miles from the hill town of Bethlehem. After inquiring about the birthplace of Jesus, they followed the star to Bethlehem where they found the child and Mary, his mother. Having found the infant, they bowed down and paid him homage. Then they opened their treasure boxes and brought out gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
For centuries, people have speculated about the meaning of these gifts. In each special gift, there is rich symbolism and deep meaning, for in each, one sees the wisdom of the Magi. Thankfully, the Arab astrologers did not bring the child a toy, a silver spoon, or a teething ring. Nor did they bring a cute little outfit for his circumcision. Nor did they bring clothing or flowers for his mother. Instead, they brought gifts that expressed their hope for the Christ child.
One of the treasure boxes contained gold, the king of metals, because the Wise Men wanted Jesus to be the "King of Kings." An ancient writer Seneca said that one should never approach a king without the gift of gold. So the gift of gold was presented because the astrologers wanted Bethlehem's babe to become the Lord of life.
Jesus' life, as we know, did not unfold like many had expected. In fact, Jesus was a complete reversal of what the world had expected from its kings. He ruled not with power, but with love. Self-surrender and service were his methods. He became the friend of hated tax collectors, flagrant sinners, the forgotten poor, and the misunderstood outcast. The gift of gold should serve as a constant reminder to us that we have been identified by God whose power is rooted in love and self-surrender.
Frankincense, an aromatic gum resin used for incense by priests, was brought as the second gift. There is the possibility that these traveling Wise Men wanted the baby to become a priest. The chief role of a priest is to build bridges between God and people. The Wise Men wanted the Son of God to be the bridge which would connect God to all people and all people to each other.
The New Testament speaks about Jesus as one who spent his life building bridges, not barriers. Those who are marked as his followers are also called to be priests and to build bridges for each other. The church, by its very essence, is called to build bridges, between black and white, the rich and poor, the Western centers of power and the Third World, the "haves" and the "have nots" - wherever separations appear in the life of humanity. The church that does not bring people together in community is simply not a church of Jesus Christ. The will of God is done when people are fashioned into communities of mutual love and respect.
The third gift box contained myrrh, used in the ancient world to embalm the dead. It is a symbol of suffering. These Gentile astrologers wanted their Messiah to be the kind of Lord who would suffer for his people. They did not want a Christ who would dodge a cross, would be protected from the hurts of humanity, or would fail to identify with the lonely and alienated. They wanted a Saviour who would suffer for and would take upon himself the sufferings of humanity.
According to the Gospels, Jesus lived up to the suffering symbolized by myrrh through the glory of his passion, death, and resurrection. The real church, the genuine community of believers, exists wherever and whenever people of faith enter into the sufferings of humanity as Jesus did.
These gifts could also be symbols relating to the different aspects of the Christian response to the Messiah's birth: gold symbolizes virtue, frankincense symbolizes prayer, and myrrh symbolizes suffering.
Believers do not respond to the birth of the Christ child in a vacuum, nor do they respond with an overdose of ceremony, with empty words, or with false deeds. Most Christians react to Christ's birth by displaying a life full of good deeds. "By this my Father is glorified," said Jesus, "that you bear much fruit." (John 15:8) Not to bear good fruit is to be distant from the spirit of the living Christ. Good deeds are indeed the gold of Christian life.
Nor can Christians be fed for their journey without prayer. Prayer is that resource which helps us to practice the presence of Christ in every relationship of our lives. Rufus M. Jones, in The Double Search, puts it this way:
It is a primary truth of Christianity that God reaches us directly. No person is insulated. As oceans flood the inlets, as sunlight environs the plant, so God enfolds and enwreathes the finite spirit. There is this difference, however, inlet and plant are penetrated whether they will or not. Sea and sunshine crowd themselves in a tergo. Not so with God. He can be received only through doors that are purposely opened for him. A person may live as near God as the bubble is to the ocean and yet not find him. He may be "closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet," and still be missed. Historically Christianity is dry and formal when it lacks the immediate and inward response to our Great Companion; but our spirits are trained to know him, to appreciate him, by the mediation of historical revelation. A person's spiritual life is always dwarfed when cut away from history. Mysticism is empty unless it is enriched by outward and historical revelation. The supreme education of the soul comes through an intimate acquaintance with the Jesus Christ of history.
Likewise, the symbol of myrrh continues to call Christians to live a life of passion. Today it appears that passion for life itself is disappearing. Many fear that the world will end in atomic death. Others expect ecological death. It seems that we will come to ruin long before that by means of our own apathy. Too many of us have gotten used to life. As we have become accustomed to crime in our large cities, so we have become accustomed to the threat of death through nuclear weapons and through the destruction of our environment. We have become accustomed to death even before it comes. Why? Because when the passionate devotion to life is missing, the powers to resist evil are paralyzed. Therefore, it we want to live today, we must consciously will life. We must learn to love life with such a passion that we no longer become accustomed to the powers of destruction. We must overcome our own apathy and be seized by the passion for life.
To follow as a disciple means to share in both the joy and the suffering of humanity. Christ's people are concerned about the joy and the hurt of life, but neither one to the exclusion of the other. Good news and passion are linked together in this faith. There can be no Gospel without passion. As we travel in "The Way", we gradually understand that the Gospel, as symbolized by myrrh, must have passion as well as success.
Matthew wanted to convey that some reacted to the birth of Jesus with acceptance and devotion. He did this by showing that the first to pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews were Gentiles from the East. In these Magi, Matthew anticipated all of those who would respond to Christ's birth by paying homage.
Woven into this touching story of the Magi's devotion is the parable of Herod's reaction to the birth of the King of the Jews. Herod responded to the birth not by paying homage, but by plotting to kill the child. Therein lies a paradox: Herod, the chief priests, and the scribes - people who have read the Scriptures and could plainly see what the prophets have said - were not willing to worship the newborn king. Thus, we have a two-fold reaction to the birth of Christ. The Wise Men of the Gentiles accepted and paid homage, but the ruler of Jerusalem and all the chief priests and scribes of the people do not believe. Rather, they conspired against the King of the Jews and sought his death.
It is not difficult to understand why Herod responded as he did. His kingdom was threatened by the possibility of a new king. The possibility of being displaced did not bring him great joy. Instead, it brought fear. If this child was truly the Messiah, it would alter all that Herod believed to be important.
In The Gospel in Solentiname, Ernesto Cardenal reports that after reading Matthew 2, a Nicaraguan farm worker responded by saying: "I think these wise men [fouled] things up when they went to Herod asking about a liberator. It would be like someone going to Somoza now to ask him where's the man who is going to liberate Nicaragua."
Whenever and wherever the message of Christ is taken into the world, there is the possibility that it will be met with rejection.
I was a pastor in Memphis, Tennessee, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot while he stood on the balcony of a downtown motel. I learned of the shooting when our black custodian interrupted the Finance Committee meeting by shouting, "Dr. King has been shot! Dr. King has been shot!" The next morning's issue of The Commerical Appeal, our local newspaper, urgently called the clergy of the city to a meeting.
Pastors representing every racial, cultural, and educational group in the city gathered for the mass meeting which had been called for by the bold headlines of the city newspaper. The Reverend James Lawson, a friend of Dr. King's and an effective pastor in South Memphis, read the Old Testament lesson. The local Greek Orthodox priest read from the New Testament and symbolically kissed the feet of Mr. Lawson. The Reverend Frank McRae, a courageous leader in the United Methodist Church, spoke about hope in the midst of despair.
After a time of Bible study, prayer, and speaking, the clergy decided to march en masse to the office of Mayor Henry Loeb, as a symbol of love and reconciliation. We wanted the Mayor to reconsider his opposition to the striking sanitation workers as a symbol of repentance and love.
After leaving the sanctuary, we formed ourselves in lines, two abreast, and started walking toward the City Hall. Just before we had completed one block of our march, a young deacon from St. Mary's ran back into the church and brought out the processional cross commonly used on Sunday morning for the worship service. With humility and yet boldness, he put himself at the head of the processional, now aimed at the city's seat of power. As we walked, television cameras descended upon us. Reporters from New York to California started pumping us with questions about our motives and about how we felt about what had happened the night before.
When our journey was about half completed, an older woman started yelling from a second floor apartment window. Because of the traffic, the cameras, and the reporters, her speech was at first inaudible. As I drew closer to her flower-box window, I could hear the anger of her shrill voice: "The cross belongs in the church! The cross belongs in the church! I am a member of St. Mary's. Take the cross back to the church where it belongs." Her secure kingdom, like Herod's, had been threatened; and, she responded not with homage, but with rejection.
The message of Jesus often brings peace, but it also brings trouble. Even in our contemporary society, Christ's message of love, justice, and peace invades our kingdoms of selfishness, pride, power, injustice, and provincialism. The Herods continue to stalk the world and try to discover ways to silence the message. In our modern world, there are evil forces which tirelessly attempt to silence the message of Christ.
Those who have responded to the revelation of God in Christ instinctively know that rejection is possible. As H. Richard Niebuhr notes in The Meaning of Revelation:
When we speak of revelation ... we mean rather that something has happened which compels our faith and which requires us to seek rationality and unity in the whole of our history. Revelation is like the Kingdom of God not only by its immediate worth but also by its instrumental value in leading to secondary goods, and revelation proves itself to be revelation of reality not only by its intrinsic verity, but also by its ability to guide people to many other truths.
Disciples of Jesus, having been led to "many other truths," can expect both affirmation and rejection.
Therefore, there are two reactions to the appearance of the Messiah: homage and rejection. It is too easy and clean to say that some respond by giving, as did the Magi, while others react by opposing the meaning of Christ's birth, as did Herod. Not one person reading these words is entirely like the Magi. Nor is he or she exactly like Herod. We are, at best, a mixture of devotion and denial. We are neither one nor the other, but an uneasy mixture of both.
Many country music artists understand the dual nature that exists within humankind. While on stage, the country musician can sing about sex, lust, cheating, gambling, and unfaithfulness and, then, close the program by singing "Amazing Grace". The contradiction is shockingly apparent, but so typical of how we really are.
What happens on the country music stage is a microcosm of what much of our lives are like. For six days every week, we live sinful, broken lives and then sing the hymns of faith with great feeling on the following Sunday morning. In spite of the hell we have created or have been through, we flock to Christmas Eve services with faith welling up within us. In spite of the alienation and despair we either cause or experience, we insist upon attaching ourselves to the community of believers.
Frederick Buechner says in Telling The Truth:
Joy happens, to use Tolkien's word, and the fairy tale where it happens is not a world where everything is sweetness and light. It is not Disney Land where everything is kept spotless ... On the contrary, the world where this joy happens is as full of darkness as our own world, and that is why when it happens it is as poignant as grief and can bring tears to our eyes. It can bring tears to our eyes because it might so easily not have happened.
Today marks the first Sunday after Christmas, often the most undervalued celebration of the Christian year. It is this day that proclaims the purpose of the Incarnation: the manifestation of God through Christ to the world. As Chrysotorn preached in A.D. 386, "Up to this day he [Jesus] was unknown to the multitudes." In this season of manifestation, we are drawn to understand God as revealed to both the Herods and the Gentile Arab astrologers. The revelation of God is up to God, not us. But, one of the things that makes this such a day of unbridled celebration is precisely the nature of God. It is God's nature to come to us, to search us out, to meet us on the journey, and to make himself known to us. It is God's nature not to be known by a few people, but by the multitudes. God yearns to be known. God is an encountering God, and that is the reason the Wise Men found Jesus. They responded, and they were led where they were beckoned. They were willing to look for the king in unlikely places. What they found was a surprise. Expecting to find the future king, they encountered a living God.
Having experienced the living God, they returned home by a different route. If we have really experienced God during these days of Christmas, then we will return home as different people who travel by a different way.
During our visit he made an observation and raised a question. He said, "Pastor, I hear people say that God told them this and God told them that; but, I have never heard God talk. If God ever spoke his mind, what would God say? Anyway, how does one know what is on God's mind?"
I suppose that many people think pastors spend their time responding to questions like this - faith questions. But, I must say that it is rare for a lay person to ask his or her pastor a question that is so centered in faith's reflection. How, then, does one answer the open inquiry of this lay person and the silent questioning of many who say, "Does God speak? And, if so, how?
When we, as human beings, want to share what is on our minds we use words. Our words are expressions of our minds. Every mind must express itself because activity is the very nature of a mind. A mind which is vacant or inactive is not a mind. A mind by its very nature is active, creative, and expressive.
If God ever decided to speak his mind, what would he say and how would he go about saying it? Would God speak his mind with words inscribed on a stone? Or with music? Or with law? Or with a volume containing sixty-six books? If God had something that he really wanted to say to us, how would he choose to say it? And, how could God communicate in a way that we could really understand? Has God ever said what is on his mind? Will God ever say what is on his mind?
The prologue to the Gospel of John tells us about a time when God spoke his mind. These introductory verses tell us that God spoke his mind by becoming flesh and by dwelling among us full of grace and full of truth.
John says that when God wants to speak, God has his Word become flesh. Could there be any higher compliment paid to the human community than to say that God has joined humanity as a person? Dare John say that, in Jesus Christ, God has pitched his tent among us? John is bold in saying that the Word that was with God, and the Word that was God, has now, in the Incarnation, become a living Word. The Word which makes all things now becomes displayed in a human being. The Word which brought forth life and light is now wrapped in human flesh.
From the outset, John wants his reader to understand that when God spoke his mind, he did it not with words, not with another law, but with a person. When God spoke his mind, he did so with Jesus of Nazareth, God's creed for humanity. The teachings, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ best express the mind of God. Thus, Christianity dares to say that the infant Jesus was the expression of the living mind of the living God.
Those who worship here today and in Christian churches everywhere surely know that not all people believe that the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ. Every age has produced its opposition to the Word made flesh. Every age has had its agnostics and skeptics. Every age has had those who have not believed that the Word was made flesh in Jesus Christ. Every age has had those who believe that God does not speak in human form.
John acknowledges that not everyone would believe that the Word had become flesh. He says,
The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become the children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.
Acknowledging that the Word has become flesh is not based upon popular vote. It is not a democratic process. It is not something that is decided by public decree. Instead, there will always be people who cannot accept, or who refuse to accept, the belief that the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ.
However, not all people have disbelieved. The rejection of the Incarnation has never been universal. In every age, there have been a few who believed that God spoke his Word in Jesus Christ. There have always been those who would not disown their belief that the light has overcome the darkness. There have always been those who have seen a unique revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
The decision to believe that God spoke in Jesus Christ is one that each of us has to make. Either we believe that God made a statement in Jesus Christ, or we do not believe it. No one forces us to believe. Not even God stacks the cards against us so that we must believe. The decision to hear what God said through the Incarnation is ours and ours alone. It can never be made for us.
John believed that God had spoken a unique word in Jesus Christ when he wrote, "The Word became flesh." When he wrote this, he did not, of course, mean that the eternal Word became a piece of flesh. What he meant was that the eternal Word became manifest in one who was flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. A dramatic poet is speaking here - not a dogmatic theologian, nor a speculative philosopher, nor a careful scientist. John does not say that the Word coincided in a special manner with the Jesus of history. He uses hymnic language to say that the eternal, creating, redeeming, sustaining Word of God has now been displayed in a human being.
But, to say that the Word became flesh in Jesus is not to say that God's activity was exhausted by his self-manifestation in Jesus Christ. The presence of God in Jesus does not involve God's absence from the rest of the universe. The grace of God that filled Jesus was not, as a consequence, used up. Let the church understand that God did not cease to speak after he spoke in Jesus Christ.
Throughout history, there have been other people and events through which God disclosed himself to humanity. John says, "We beheld his glory" in Jesus Christ. "Glory" is the manifestation of essential being. "The heavens declare the glory of God," wrote the psalmist. And, whatever awakens us to the reality of the presence of God is a manifestation of divine glory. Tintern Abbey was this for Wordsworth. The Thames was this for Francis Thompson. The "Flower in the Crannied Wall" was this for Tennyson. If we could describe this glory so full of grace and truth, how fitting to say, as John said, that it was the glory of one who knew himself to be as the only son of his father. So uniquely the divine presence dwelled within Jesus! So trustful and so obedient was this fellowship - like that between a father and his only son - that although no one has ever seen God, we can read about Jesus' life, ponder his secret, and say, surely God's presence is here.
Although God is here in the person of Jesus, he is not exclusively here in the person of Jesus. But, for the Christian, God's Word uniquely became flesh at the Incarnation.
So I said to my friend in the hospital, "If you want to hear the Word of God, listen to it drummed out in the life of Jesus, because it is in the earthly life of Jesus that one can hear God's eternal Word."
I had an old history teacher in college who was somewhat agnostic. He certainly did not hold to orthodox theology. He did not believe in the historic creeds of Christianity. He said they were a bunch of words put together by high-flying thinkers. He was unsure about many doctrinal statements relating to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. He often spoke about his doubts. He would have sympathized with Tennyson's words - "There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds." This crusty old teacher would often share his doubts with us - doubts drawn from long years of trying to understand the meaning of life and its historical underpinnings.
At that time in my life, I was trying to decide whether I should be a historian or a pastor. I loved history. I enjoyed studying it, and I wanted to teach it. Late one afternoon I went to my professor's office and asked him to help me think through this question of my vocation. I shared with him my love for history and my calling to be a minister in the church. After listening very intently to me, he said, "I want you to leave my office considering the possibility that Jesus of Nazareth is the best human picture that we have of God. If Jesus is the best picture we have of God, then what implications does that have for your life."
In his own unorthodox way my history teacher invited me to listen anew to the Word made flesh. This listening is not a once-and-for-all kind of listening. It is the kind of listening that must take place over and over again, day in and day out, if we are to continue to hear the shaping Word of God in our midst.
A group of college students had a faith discussion. They said, among other things, "We think that we have Confirmation class too early in the United Methodist Church. We wish we had had our Confirmation when we were at least in Junior High School, if not in the ninth grade. We have forgotten a lot of what we'd learned about the faith. We are not sure what we believe or why we believe it."
To be sure, the church may have failed its youth. To be sure, we may not have taught the faith concisely and clearly. But there might just be another side to that coin; and that other side might be that those youth, like a lot of us, have quit listening to the Word that became flesh.
Listening to the Word made flesh must always be voluntary if it is to do any good. On the whole, people do not attain strong spirituality out of a sense of duty. We cannot compel others to listen to the Word made flesh; nor can we be compelled. Being shaped by the Word made flesh depends upon a pull more than a push. We cannot be pushed into hearing the word that God has spoken in Christ. Cheap scolding will not cause others to listen. Nor will cheap scolding cause us to listen. If we listen, it will be because we hunger to hear what God said when God spoke in Jesus Christ.
Said John, "No one has ever seen God. The Word made flesh has made him known." I say to you and to myself - Listen. Listen. Listen. A church that fails to listen to the Word made flesh becomes like a ship without a rudder. A life that refuses to listen to the Word made flesh becomes like a car without a steering wheel. A family that refuses to listen to the Word made flesh listens only to the voices of culture that pound and beat against it.
Listen. God has spoken clearly, and God has spoken in a way that all can understand. God spoke by coming as a person - Jesus of Nazareth.
Matthew 2:1-12
Epiphany
Responding to Christ's Birth
Telling the story of Christ's birth was not enough for Matthew! He also told about two reactions to the birth of the Messiah.
The first reaction, as Matthew told it, was from the Magi who came from the East to Jerusalem and asked the question, "Where is the newborn king of the Jews?" Contemporary customs - children dressed in faded bathrobes, tired Christmas pageants, and unsightly stable scenes in church parking lots, have taken away from the wisdom of the Wise Men's story.
It is difficult to understand what Matthew meant by Magi. They might have been Zoroastrian priests who had special power to interpret dreams. Or, they could have been men who practiced various forms of secret love and magic. In the Old Testament, they were referred to as enchanters, astronomers, and interpreters of dreams and of visionary messages. In early first-century Rome, they were known as astrologers, magicians, and readers of dreams. In Acts 8:9-24, Luke tells the story of Simon, a magus and false prophet on the island of Cyprus. Therefore, the term magi refers to a large number of people engaged in occult arts. It covers a wide range of astronomers, fortune-tellers, priestly augurs, and wandering magicians. Since Matthew depicted the Magi as having seen a star, it is highly possible that they were astrologers from beyond Palestine.
In the Old Testament the "people of the East" were also desert Arabs. These nomadic Arabs often had wise men as a natural part of their envoy. Proverbs 30:1, Proverbs 31:1, and 1 Kings 5:12 refer to the wisdom that was commonly associated with these wise men. Likewise, astrology was not unknown to the Arabs. Arabian tribes often took their names from the stars. In addition, gold, frankincense, and myrrh were gifts that eastern Arabs would use to express their feelings.
According to Matthew, these Arab astrologers reacted to the birth of Jesus by following a star to the city of Jerusalem, a scant five miles from the hill town of Bethlehem. After inquiring about the birthplace of Jesus, they followed the star to Bethlehem where they found the child and Mary, his mother. Having found the infant, they bowed down and paid him homage. Then they opened their treasure boxes and brought out gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
For centuries, people have speculated about the meaning of these gifts. In each special gift, there is rich symbolism and deep meaning, for in each, one sees the wisdom of the Magi. Thankfully, the Arab astrologers did not bring the child a toy, a silver spoon, or a teething ring. Nor did they bring a cute little outfit for his circumcision. Nor did they bring clothing or flowers for his mother. Instead, they brought gifts that expressed their hope for the Christ child.
One of the treasure boxes contained gold, the king of metals, because the Wise Men wanted Jesus to be the "King of Kings." An ancient writer Seneca said that one should never approach a king without the gift of gold. So the gift of gold was presented because the astrologers wanted Bethlehem's babe to become the Lord of life.
Jesus' life, as we know, did not unfold like many had expected. In fact, Jesus was a complete reversal of what the world had expected from its kings. He ruled not with power, but with love. Self-surrender and service were his methods. He became the friend of hated tax collectors, flagrant sinners, the forgotten poor, and the misunderstood outcast. The gift of gold should serve as a constant reminder to us that we have been identified by God whose power is rooted in love and self-surrender.
Frankincense, an aromatic gum resin used for incense by priests, was brought as the second gift. There is the possibility that these traveling Wise Men wanted the baby to become a priest. The chief role of a priest is to build bridges between God and people. The Wise Men wanted the Son of God to be the bridge which would connect God to all people and all people to each other.
The New Testament speaks about Jesus as one who spent his life building bridges, not barriers. Those who are marked as his followers are also called to be priests and to build bridges for each other. The church, by its very essence, is called to build bridges, between black and white, the rich and poor, the Western centers of power and the Third World, the "haves" and the "have nots" - wherever separations appear in the life of humanity. The church that does not bring people together in community is simply not a church of Jesus Christ. The will of God is done when people are fashioned into communities of mutual love and respect.
The third gift box contained myrrh, used in the ancient world to embalm the dead. It is a symbol of suffering. These Gentile astrologers wanted their Messiah to be the kind of Lord who would suffer for his people. They did not want a Christ who would dodge a cross, would be protected from the hurts of humanity, or would fail to identify with the lonely and alienated. They wanted a Saviour who would suffer for and would take upon himself the sufferings of humanity.
According to the Gospels, Jesus lived up to the suffering symbolized by myrrh through the glory of his passion, death, and resurrection. The real church, the genuine community of believers, exists wherever and whenever people of faith enter into the sufferings of humanity as Jesus did.
These gifts could also be symbols relating to the different aspects of the Christian response to the Messiah's birth: gold symbolizes virtue, frankincense symbolizes prayer, and myrrh symbolizes suffering.
Believers do not respond to the birth of the Christ child in a vacuum, nor do they respond with an overdose of ceremony, with empty words, or with false deeds. Most Christians react to Christ's birth by displaying a life full of good deeds. "By this my Father is glorified," said Jesus, "that you bear much fruit." (John 15:8) Not to bear good fruit is to be distant from the spirit of the living Christ. Good deeds are indeed the gold of Christian life.
Nor can Christians be fed for their journey without prayer. Prayer is that resource which helps us to practice the presence of Christ in every relationship of our lives. Rufus M. Jones, in The Double Search, puts it this way:
It is a primary truth of Christianity that God reaches us directly. No person is insulated. As oceans flood the inlets, as sunlight environs the plant, so God enfolds and enwreathes the finite spirit. There is this difference, however, inlet and plant are penetrated whether they will or not. Sea and sunshine crowd themselves in a tergo. Not so with God. He can be received only through doors that are purposely opened for him. A person may live as near God as the bubble is to the ocean and yet not find him. He may be "closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet," and still be missed. Historically Christianity is dry and formal when it lacks the immediate and inward response to our Great Companion; but our spirits are trained to know him, to appreciate him, by the mediation of historical revelation. A person's spiritual life is always dwarfed when cut away from history. Mysticism is empty unless it is enriched by outward and historical revelation. The supreme education of the soul comes through an intimate acquaintance with the Jesus Christ of history.
Likewise, the symbol of myrrh continues to call Christians to live a life of passion. Today it appears that passion for life itself is disappearing. Many fear that the world will end in atomic death. Others expect ecological death. It seems that we will come to ruin long before that by means of our own apathy. Too many of us have gotten used to life. As we have become accustomed to crime in our large cities, so we have become accustomed to the threat of death through nuclear weapons and through the destruction of our environment. We have become accustomed to death even before it comes. Why? Because when the passionate devotion to life is missing, the powers to resist evil are paralyzed. Therefore, it we want to live today, we must consciously will life. We must learn to love life with such a passion that we no longer become accustomed to the powers of destruction. We must overcome our own apathy and be seized by the passion for life.
To follow as a disciple means to share in both the joy and the suffering of humanity. Christ's people are concerned about the joy and the hurt of life, but neither one to the exclusion of the other. Good news and passion are linked together in this faith. There can be no Gospel without passion. As we travel in "The Way", we gradually understand that the Gospel, as symbolized by myrrh, must have passion as well as success.
Matthew wanted to convey that some reacted to the birth of Jesus with acceptance and devotion. He did this by showing that the first to pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews were Gentiles from the East. In these Magi, Matthew anticipated all of those who would respond to Christ's birth by paying homage.
Woven into this touching story of the Magi's devotion is the parable of Herod's reaction to the birth of the King of the Jews. Herod responded to the birth not by paying homage, but by plotting to kill the child. Therein lies a paradox: Herod, the chief priests, and the scribes - people who have read the Scriptures and could plainly see what the prophets have said - were not willing to worship the newborn king. Thus, we have a two-fold reaction to the birth of Christ. The Wise Men of the Gentiles accepted and paid homage, but the ruler of Jerusalem and all the chief priests and scribes of the people do not believe. Rather, they conspired against the King of the Jews and sought his death.
It is not difficult to understand why Herod responded as he did. His kingdom was threatened by the possibility of a new king. The possibility of being displaced did not bring him great joy. Instead, it brought fear. If this child was truly the Messiah, it would alter all that Herod believed to be important.
In The Gospel in Solentiname, Ernesto Cardenal reports that after reading Matthew 2, a Nicaraguan farm worker responded by saying: "I think these wise men [fouled] things up when they went to Herod asking about a liberator. It would be like someone going to Somoza now to ask him where's the man who is going to liberate Nicaragua."
Whenever and wherever the message of Christ is taken into the world, there is the possibility that it will be met with rejection.
I was a pastor in Memphis, Tennessee, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot while he stood on the balcony of a downtown motel. I learned of the shooting when our black custodian interrupted the Finance Committee meeting by shouting, "Dr. King has been shot! Dr. King has been shot!" The next morning's issue of The Commerical Appeal, our local newspaper, urgently called the clergy of the city to a meeting.
Pastors representing every racial, cultural, and educational group in the city gathered for the mass meeting which had been called for by the bold headlines of the city newspaper. The Reverend James Lawson, a friend of Dr. King's and an effective pastor in South Memphis, read the Old Testament lesson. The local Greek Orthodox priest read from the New Testament and symbolically kissed the feet of Mr. Lawson. The Reverend Frank McRae, a courageous leader in the United Methodist Church, spoke about hope in the midst of despair.
After a time of Bible study, prayer, and speaking, the clergy decided to march en masse to the office of Mayor Henry Loeb, as a symbol of love and reconciliation. We wanted the Mayor to reconsider his opposition to the striking sanitation workers as a symbol of repentance and love.
After leaving the sanctuary, we formed ourselves in lines, two abreast, and started walking toward the City Hall. Just before we had completed one block of our march, a young deacon from St. Mary's ran back into the church and brought out the processional cross commonly used on Sunday morning for the worship service. With humility and yet boldness, he put himself at the head of the processional, now aimed at the city's seat of power. As we walked, television cameras descended upon us. Reporters from New York to California started pumping us with questions about our motives and about how we felt about what had happened the night before.
When our journey was about half completed, an older woman started yelling from a second floor apartment window. Because of the traffic, the cameras, and the reporters, her speech was at first inaudible. As I drew closer to her flower-box window, I could hear the anger of her shrill voice: "The cross belongs in the church! The cross belongs in the church! I am a member of St. Mary's. Take the cross back to the church where it belongs." Her secure kingdom, like Herod's, had been threatened; and, she responded not with homage, but with rejection.
The message of Jesus often brings peace, but it also brings trouble. Even in our contemporary society, Christ's message of love, justice, and peace invades our kingdoms of selfishness, pride, power, injustice, and provincialism. The Herods continue to stalk the world and try to discover ways to silence the message. In our modern world, there are evil forces which tirelessly attempt to silence the message of Christ.
Those who have responded to the revelation of God in Christ instinctively know that rejection is possible. As H. Richard Niebuhr notes in The Meaning of Revelation:
When we speak of revelation ... we mean rather that something has happened which compels our faith and which requires us to seek rationality and unity in the whole of our history. Revelation is like the Kingdom of God not only by its immediate worth but also by its instrumental value in leading to secondary goods, and revelation proves itself to be revelation of reality not only by its intrinsic verity, but also by its ability to guide people to many other truths.
Disciples of Jesus, having been led to "many other truths," can expect both affirmation and rejection.
Therefore, there are two reactions to the appearance of the Messiah: homage and rejection. It is too easy and clean to say that some respond by giving, as did the Magi, while others react by opposing the meaning of Christ's birth, as did Herod. Not one person reading these words is entirely like the Magi. Nor is he or she exactly like Herod. We are, at best, a mixture of devotion and denial. We are neither one nor the other, but an uneasy mixture of both.
Many country music artists understand the dual nature that exists within humankind. While on stage, the country musician can sing about sex, lust, cheating, gambling, and unfaithfulness and, then, close the program by singing "Amazing Grace". The contradiction is shockingly apparent, but so typical of how we really are.
What happens on the country music stage is a microcosm of what much of our lives are like. For six days every week, we live sinful, broken lives and then sing the hymns of faith with great feeling on the following Sunday morning. In spite of the hell we have created or have been through, we flock to Christmas Eve services with faith welling up within us. In spite of the alienation and despair we either cause or experience, we insist upon attaching ourselves to the community of believers.
Frederick Buechner says in Telling The Truth:
Joy happens, to use Tolkien's word, and the fairy tale where it happens is not a world where everything is sweetness and light. It is not Disney Land where everything is kept spotless ... On the contrary, the world where this joy happens is as full of darkness as our own world, and that is why when it happens it is as poignant as grief and can bring tears to our eyes. It can bring tears to our eyes because it might so easily not have happened.
Today marks the first Sunday after Christmas, often the most undervalued celebration of the Christian year. It is this day that proclaims the purpose of the Incarnation: the manifestation of God through Christ to the world. As Chrysotorn preached in A.D. 386, "Up to this day he [Jesus] was unknown to the multitudes." In this season of manifestation, we are drawn to understand God as revealed to both the Herods and the Gentile Arab astrologers. The revelation of God is up to God, not us. But, one of the things that makes this such a day of unbridled celebration is precisely the nature of God. It is God's nature to come to us, to search us out, to meet us on the journey, and to make himself known to us. It is God's nature not to be known by a few people, but by the multitudes. God yearns to be known. God is an encountering God, and that is the reason the Wise Men found Jesus. They responded, and they were led where they were beckoned. They were willing to look for the king in unlikely places. What they found was a surprise. Expecting to find the future king, they encountered a living God.
Having experienced the living God, they returned home by a different route. If we have really experienced God during these days of Christmas, then we will return home as different people who travel by a different way.
