Diligent
Matthew 2:1-12
December 26, 2010
By now most of us are suffering from post-Christmas fatigue syndrome. It has been wonderful with family and with church, but if there is no stress, well, is that Christmas as we have come to know it?
We are also Christmas-story-fatigued. We have heard variations of the Story too many times already, in shortened and lengthened and added to versions, summarized and paraphrased. The Nativity Story frankly sounds too familiar to be interesting.
It is hard to go back and read an old story as if for the first time, but sometimes it just takes a turn in a different direction, to understand that for the Gospel according to Matthew, this is the beginning of the story. Overwhelmed so much by angels and shepherds and mangers and cattle a-lowing, this almost seems like a Second Christmas. No, it’s the first and only, just a wee different.
In Matthew, however, there is no Christmas Eve, no census, Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem, and so no stable, no dramatic moment when all humanity and the animal world are hushed and holding their breath. Just an after-thought, “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the Great….” And by the way, three Eastern magi came to Jerusalem with a question on their lips: We’re looking for the king of Jews since we saw his star appear in the East and have come to worship him.
We’ve heard that line a thousand times before. It sounds logical given the circumstances - this is Christmas, after all. However, it must have sounded off-kilter because the King of the Jews was none other than Herod. Herod didn’t have too many stars appear for him, and while he would prefer people fear and respect him, worshiping him would be suspect. These guys were foreign Gentiles, a bit naive, asking about someone regarding his status as touchy as Herod the Great, unless ... they were talking about someone else. If that were the case, then everybody was in trouble - those naive Magi, the Other King of the Jews, Herod himself and the whole political situation in Judea. This wasn’t good news. Amazing what a single thought can do to unsettle a whole people and culture, especially an idea that takes the shape of a human being.
What do people do in a world-threatening crisis? Herod forms a committee of the best geographers in Judea to have them research where the Messiah is intended to be born, and the answer is clear - Bethlehem. The infamous Bethlehem Hospital in London, the world’s first facility for the mentally incompetent, is the source of coinage of the word “Bedlam.” Going to Bethlehem then was entering into the bedlam of Roman occupation.
A second committee is summoned, this time of these bungling Magi, expert astrologers as they are sometimes called, to find out when this star appeared. With all these facts pooled in one place, Herod with the piety of a politician looking for votes, sweetly urged the Magi on their way, “Search diligently for the child and when you find him, come and tell me where he is so I too may go and worship him.” That just warms the cockles of your heart.
Search diligently. Could Herod with all his treacherous greasiness be talking to us? Are the Magi who know very little about our way of life and faith supposed to be the ones who search for what we want to believe? It’s a living parable of the search for meaning in this multi-faith, multi-cultural, wired global village. Christ is not always found in the church, not always in good, pure company of other Christians. Jesus came into the midst of a dirty, violent world, not a spiritual golden age. Karl Barth wrote graphically about the ways in which God gets the message across to us. “God may speak to us through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog. We do well to listen to Him if He really does.”
You see, the Magi were wise people, three ships upon the sea, smart guys, intellectuals, they knew a lot of useful stuff. They did not, however, really know anything about the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David. Because of a star which they thought must be meaningful to the world, they came looking for someone who would be most meaningful to their world. No one has ever figured out how that star was supposed to signify the King of the Jews to people who were not Jews and lived far away, and why they cared to make the journey far. This may be slightly hyperbolic, but most wise people today know nothing about the church and faith and Bethlehem, and perhaps we don’t know nearly enough. Yet, we can be diligent, we are called to be diligent to search, and in the searching you and I are at last found.
The wise people of this world believe it is logical that if they work hard enough, study enough, they will discover, find the meaning of this life on their own. It seldom ever happens, and the truly wise end up admitting that what is important and meaningful found them. We can’t stop being diligent, searching as hard as we can until the moment comes when something, someone finds us.
The Magi were anxious to keep searching, the star showing the way, although no one has understood how a star stands still above an infinitesimally small house and how anyone would be able to see that angle. A metaphor probably that what was important to them drew them mysteriously to the right place at the right time.
Of course, they weren’t there right at the birth, no shepherds were blocking the door to the house where the holy family was residing, so they walked in and saw the child and the mother. After all this, traversing afar like Abraham not knowing really where they were going and what they would find, they fell down in exhaustion, relief, and in worship. Those famous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh – did they really know why they were bringing those gifts? Nothing else is reported except that some night soon after this they dreamed and were advised not to report back to Herod, so they headed home by road less traveled.
What the Magi found in that house was not just another adorable young family, but an event incomprehensible and indescribable, and another day they would have found what they found all too unextraordinary. We call it the Incarnation, when God and humanity become one, the destination of all our human searches, though it is almost always where we did not expect it.
T. S. Eliot has spoken of incarnation as “the still turning point, the intersection of time and timelessness.” It is nothing you and I can create, but it creates the best in us and among us. The incarnation of Christ into our human woes has infected humanity ever since, because at our best there is something of God that has invaded our time-bound lives and intoxicated us with timelessness and eternity. They went home, no longer professional intellectuals, no longer astrologers, but now they were wise.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan