December 11, 2022 Arrival of the Wise Men Matthew 2

“We three kings of orient are bearing gifts, we traverse afar.”  So goes the words of the famous song, and the song we’re going to sing after the sermon today.  I think the gospel writer Matthew would take issue with it however.  Most obviously is that they are not kings.  They are of a foreign priestly class of diviners, astrologers.  The idea that they were kings comes from a later application of Psalm 72 and Isaiah 60 to the birth story of Jesus.  Second, Matthew never actually says how many of these wise men there were.  The idea that there were three comes from the idea that each one was bearing a different gift, and there were three gifts.

The third issue is where these guys actually came from.  Matthew just says from the East – not from the orient.  It’s safe to say that the “East” Matthew had in mind was the immediate east – the Parthian Empire.  We’ve talked about the importance of the Parthian Empire before and it is good to remember now.  At the time of Jesus’ birth Parthia was declining a bit but it still covered about 1.1 million square miles of territory.  In the first century it was about equal to Rome in power.  I put a map in your bulletins that shows the Parthian and Roman Empires are side by side.  Judea, where Jesus is born, is the eastern end of the Roman Empire.  It was a bit of a buffer zone right up against the western end of Parthia.  Neither empire could realistically conquer the other.  

The distances between their power centers was just too great to muster the massive armies necessary.  But Rome was an empire built around the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.  Controlling Judea was already a bit of a stretch, but it was strategically necessary.  Otherwise they’d lose the land route to the southern end of empire.  In other words, Rome needed Judea.  Parthia would have liked to have had it, but did not need it.

The Herod family, of dubious Jewish descent, was sort of in power when the Romans came in and took control decades before.  And the Romans found it beneficial to let the Herods stay and use them as puppet kings.  Defending the eastern end of the empire against the Parthians was costly.

So, put yourself in Herod’s place.  Some Parthian priestly officials come to you, you who have faked your family tree and are pretending to be the legitimate Jewish leader, and ask where was born the new king of the Jews?  They say they want to pay him homage.  But why pay him homage?  Because these Parthian officials, your arch enemy, are nice guys?  No!  Of course not!  For all appearances they have come to buy the favor of the newly born Jewish leader and swing Judea away from Roman allegiance and into the hands of the Parthians.

If you are Herod what are you going to do?  You’re going to call in your equivalent of the CIA!  You’re going to track these astrologers.  You’re going to let them lead you to the target.  And then you’re going to eliminate the target.  The Herods may have been cruel, but they didn’t get to power by being stupid!

The story in Matthew is highly troublesome.  The Parthian astrologers are warned by God in a dream.  They give Herod the slip.  Joseph is warned in a dream and he, Mary, and Jesus flee.  When Herod realizes the treachery he has all the children in and around Bethlehem under the age of two killed.

How can God let that happen?  Why should all those innocent families suffer like that?  Indeed, if you ask those questions of Matthew’s gospel you get some very disturbing answers!

But Matthew isn’t interested in answering those questions.  If it helps you feel better remember that Matthew is a theologian, not an historian.  While some parts of Matthew’s gospel can be independently historically verified, what we read today cannot.  There is no outside evidence of a star appearing, Herod killing the babies, or a trip by Parthian astrologers.

Matthew is, however, wanting to state some theological truths: Baby boy Jesus is bringing together two rival superpower empires.  Foreigners – definitely non-Jews, come to pay homage to this savior of the world.  Also, the Wise Men had good intentions.  Their act of devotion was genuine.  Even so, the powers that be weren’t happy.  All too often in life innocent people suffer.  Sometimes the saying, “Only the good die young,” is all too true.  Innocent people suffer every day.  We do well to keep that in mind.  When we pray, when we buy things, when we vote, etc., keep in mind the full impact of your decisions.  Power tends to protect itself.  Innocent people often suffer as a result.

But the suffering of the innocents is not the end of the story is it?  Will this baby boy Jesus grow up to become a hero whom all love as he rises to incredible power and stature, and live a long and happy and successful life?  No.  This baby boy Jesus will grow up.  He will cause controversy.  Though he doesn’t lift a finger to hurt, he himself will also be caught in the web of power and be an innocent sufferer.

That takes us to the three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Each one is symbolic.  As We Three Kings gets right, gold is a royal gift fit for a king.  While Jesus’ kingship will not be like any others, he will usher in the kingdom of God.  Frankincense is a gift for a priest.  Frankincense was used in temple worship as part of the sacrifices.  Priests were the go-betweens between God and the people.  Priests were the ones who pronounced forgiveness.  Though Jesus never performed official service in the Jerusalem temple, he will fulfill all those roles.

Myrrh is the mysterious disturbing gift.  The hymn says, “…its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in a stone-cold tomb.”  For myrrh was a burial spice.  Its gift here at Jesus’ birth already anticipates the crucifixion.

If we put ourselves in Matthew’s story I wonder how Joseph and Mary felt about that gift?  How would you feel you had a new baby and someone stopped by offering you a gift of embalming fluid for your newborn!?!  Creepy!

And yet, this is perhaps a little joke in the Bible.  These Parthian astrologers appear to be quite knowledgeable about what is going on.  They have spotted what the Jewish leaders have not.  They have recognized the birth of a new king.  They have come to pay him homage.  They have brought highly significant gifts.  But this one they got wrong!

Jesus will die, yes.  But do you need embalming spices for someone who will be dead only three days?  Certainly not!  The gospel of John makes a bit of a joke about that when the man Nicodemus brings a whopping 100 pounds of myrrh for Jesus’ burial!  Jesus probably didn’t weigh a whole lot more than 100 pounds himself!

No, the resurrection is not anticipated in the three gifts.  That will be the twist in the story that no one but Jesus himself predicts.

And for our lives today, some 20 centuries later, what does this text mean for our day to day lives?

Two things stand out to me.  First is a challenge.  The Parthians wise men were not citizens.  They belonged to a rival enemy power.  The Parthian wise men were also not Jewish.  They were leaders of a pagan religion.  Yet God chooses to connect with them in order to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

We cannot automatically dismiss those who are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or any other religion.  They are not unworthy of God’s notice.  They are not unworthy of God’s love.  While I will never teach something so foolish as, “all religions are just different branches of the same tree,” for that is utter nonsense, other religions are worthy of our respect, our notice, and our Christian love.  We do not help ourselves, and we do not help the work of the gospel, if we fear them or attack them.  Though we disagree about God in ways that are insurmountable, in Matthew’s gospel we see that God is quite capable of working remarkable things through them.  All things are God’s.  God will take care.

The second thing is to not underestimate the power of what God is doing.  We hear this lesson over and over again, but we easily forget it.  God comes to human form in Jesus.  It will be God’s greatest and most significant act in the history of salvation.  Yet Jesus is born in basically a military buffer zone to parents of no account.  He will not be raised in a fine household.  He will not have a fine expensive education.  He will work with his hands, have dust on his feet from walking, and collect a group of followers; all of whom will betray him when he’s in trouble.

Yet no historian or religious skeptic can doubt that Jesus creates the largest and most significant organization in history – the Church.  The movement Jesus founds will outlast the Parthian Empire.  It will not only outlast, but help to bring down, the Roman Empire.  It will go on to spread to every nation on earth.

Never ever underestimate how important or powerful a seemingly insignificant action can be.  God works in unexpected ways.  God has absolutely no respect for things that look powerful or important.  Even the church itself cannot become cocky thinking itself grand and an end unto itself.

God works in powerful ways that the world misses utterly.  Never dismiss an opportunity to share the love of Christ no matter how insignificant it looks.  Never think anyone or any issue is too trivial to be important.  None are.

God is working.  God is working in hard and powerful ways all the time.  Keep your eyes open.  Be ready for the unexpected.  And rejoice in the surety of God’s success.

December 4, 2022 2nd Sunday of Advent Matthew 1:18-25

 Let’s call this sermon, “What to do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do.”  That is probably an odd name for a sermon, especially one that is based on the birth story of Jesus, but I think our gospel text takes us there.

Let’s start by noting that Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus is very different from what we’re used to, which is the version from Luke.  The words of that story flow to us like a well-known legend, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus…”  We’ll hear that story on Christmas Eve.  But in Matthew’s account there is no census, no inn that’s too full, no angel chorus, no shepherds, and no manger.  Also there’s no Mary, “pondering these things in her heart.”

In fact, the birth story in Matthew doesn’t even have Jesus in it!  All we’re told is that Joseph has a dream of an angel visitor.  And then he, “did as the Lord commanded him.”  The very next scene, which we will read next week, is about Jesus already being born.

As Matthew tells the story about Jesus’ birth, it is not about Jesus.  It is not about Mary, who gets a pretty big role in Luke’s gospel.  No, in Matthew the story is all about Joseph.  That may seem odd; especially if you remember from last week that Matthew took Jesus’ genealogy to Joseph, even though Joseph really has no biological connection to Jesus at all!

But it is what happens with Joseph that gets us into our theme of, “What to do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do,” this way.

In what we read Joseph has a dream telling him what to do.  Then he acts on it.  Next week we’re going to read about three more dreams Joseph has.  In each case it is pretty specific about what to do.  And Joseph dutifully acts on it.

My guess is that none of us have had literal dreams giving us, with some detail, instructions on what to do.  Does that mean that God is using us less?  Are we somehow less important to God’s overall plan for the world than Joseph was?

In contrast to Joseph who received a number of instructional dreams, my guess would be that most of us fall closer into the category of, “What to do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do.”

It may seem like the lives of biblical characters are somehow clearer, cleaner, more straightforward than our lives.  They receive visions or dreams or angel visitors or something telling them what to do beyond doubt.  Now, they don’t always act on them.  Plenty of people in the Bible ignore God or reject what God calls them to do.  Nevertheless, they are still told clearly.  I think we want the same.

I should acknowledge that there are plenty of people in the world who appear to be going through life with no purpose or direction whatsoever.  They seem to be perfectly okay with that; at least for now.  I wonder if they’ve ever really given any thought as to what their purpose is?  What will their legacy be?  Will they leave any positive mark on the world at all?

A person of faith, and by that I mean any number of the world’s religions – not just Christianity, is going to want to live in a way in which their faith gives their life purpose and meaning. 

This is an aside, but I think a necessary one.  I disagree with those atheists who say that having faith is a crutch for the weak minded.  Or that faith is nothing more than a society’s morality made large and imagined onto a divine being; who then punishes or rewards after death with heaven or hell based on how well a person followed the morals.  Religion then is about keeping a population in line.  I respond that faith is not about pleasing a supernatural being with the way you live.  Faith is, as I said, about living in a way that gives purpose and meaning to what you do.  It means that you are connected to some value which extends beyond yourself; and even beyond your society.  But that can create a problem.

There is no problem when you feel like God is telling you what to do.  There can be a problem when you don’t feel like God is telling you what to do at all.  Simply going through life with the idea that you’re just supposed to be a good person – and have some fun when you can - doesn’t help much.  I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we want more than that.  We do want to feel like our lives have a purpose, that we’re a constructive part of something bigger than ourselves.  Sure, we may dream of becoming world famous and being a household name like Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin, but we don’t really think that could be.

I feel like some people work really hard to figure out what God wants them to do.  They pray.  They meditate.  They may read scripture.  Maybe they go on a discernment retreat, or take all sorts of skills inventories to see what they’re good at.  Of course there’s nothing wrong with any of that.  But it’s likely that something is still missing.

If we approach life with the idea that God has a purpose for us to fulfill, and it is up to us to figure out or discern that purpose, - and I believe many people think that’s exactly what life is – then it’s as if God is a scientist and we are all lab rats running through the maze of life searching for a piece of cheese.

If we take the way Matthew describes God giving directions to Joseph and apply it to the way we think God will interact with us, then we are unknowingly making a basic mistake.  But it is an easy mistake to make because we live in a society that values and encourages individualism. 

What was that old Army advertising slogan?  “Be all you can be!”  It surely is appealing.  But you can’t stop there.  The Army is not a collection of individuals.  No effective army is. The Army is a community of skilled people; skilled people with a purpose.

What do you do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do?  The Army is a good example.  And the same answer will unfold as we move forward in Matthew’s gospel.  Jesus does not create a faith of a bunch of individuals.  Jesus creates a community with a purpose.  The purpose is to make God’s reign of grace reality in the world.

I do not think God has pre-planned individual purposes for us to do in life.  I do know God wants His reign of grace to be reality in this world.  And he’s called us collectively to help do it.  Also, just as new threats emerge and old threats fall away and so the Army changes, so does what we collectively are called to do changes.

Even Jesus didn’t work as an individual.  You know he had the twelve disciples, and there were many more.  Consider the Lord’s Prayer.  Does it start off with, “My Father who aren’t in heaven”?  Is this the prayer of an individual?  Does the Lord’s Prayer even work if you are the only one praying it?

Yes, indeed it can work.  But this simple foundational prayer assumes that it will be spoken by a community.  “Our Father who aren’t in heaven…”  Everything in that prayer about us is plural.

It is the Church’s weakness when it thinks it’s a bunch of individuals trying to discern God’s will.  It is the Church’s strength when it realizes it is a diverse and dynamic community with a common purpose.

If you don’t know what God is calling you to do with your life – and remember that calling will change with your age, your life circumstances, and changes in the world around you – then don’t feel like you are lacking, or missing something, or weak in faith, or any of that.

It is the role of the Church to be our common expression of God’s grace in the world.  It is the role of the Church to be the community that gives our lives solid meaning and value.  It is the Church that is to be the community that offers us meaningful forgiveness from shame.

That is a very high bar for the Church to achieve.  We certainly don’t do it perfectly here – far from it.  But when we are at our strongest and our healthiest, that is what we do.  When we do that well we should not have to ask as individuals alone in this life what is it that God wants us to do.  We know that we are part of a much greater whole.  It is the work of the community that God’s reign becomes real.

So, may we make our church the community of faith that it needs to be in order to give us purpose and value.  And may we see the efforts of our labors come to life in the world.  In Matthew’s gospel we’ll see a community of believers struggle to get it together.  And we join them in that struggle.