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January 6, 2008
Looking in All the Wrong Places
Matthew 2:1-12
All over the city of Rome this time of year, every church has on display at least one beautiful nativity scene…each unique in detail and setting. Some are country scenes with hills and mountains, others are definitely set in urban surroundings, often showing aspects of everyday life, laundry being done, men spilling out of a pub, or people shopping in a market – all this activity continuing on the periphery of the central scene featuring Mary, Joseph, the manger and the baby Jesus. In the beautiful old Piazza Navona, which used to be an oval race course for chariots in the days of Cesar Augustus and is now adorned with baroque fountains sculpted by Bernini, these is a special Christmas fair setup which includes stalls that sell various parts of the Crèche….some are even animated by battery operated mechanisms. As a former builder of model train boards, I was salivating as I looked at all the little detailed scale model characters and structures one could incorporated in your own personal manger scene.
One of the wonderful aspects about the Christmas Story is that, as is true with other extraordinary saga's and even myths which are a part of cultural heritage, is that over the centuries it has been embellished and interpreted and shaped by the needs and the experiences of the people who hear it. When St. Francis of Assisi set up the first crèche, he did so to remind people of the fact that Jesus was born into poverty – as an outcast. He was not particularly interested in Biblical authenticity – were there goats and cows in Bethlehem, probably not, but there happen to be lots of both as well as sheep in the countryside of Umbria where he lived. Did the shepherds and the Magi visit the manger together? The Bible certainly makes no reference to such a visit – yet for the purposes of telling the story the facts over the years have been conflated. Did you happen to note to yourself as I read Matthew 2 this morning that the Gospel makes no mention of Kings nor does it mention a number, yet most of us would testify to the fact that it was Three Kings who went to Herod.
It may bother some of us to realize that many of the details of not only the Christmas story but the entire biblical narrative have been tweaked and altered over the centuries since first they were scratched out on a piece of parchment. It is precisely the fluidity in scripture which is what makes it a living document of our faith. It is not a book of rules to be kept on the shelf and consulted when there is an argument to be settled. It is a human record of God's interaction of people just like us – consequently, it is dynamic and breathing the breath of the spirit as it is told and retold.
Much of what we know to be true about Jesus is based on tradition...on the experience of those who came to faith because of the traditions and the narratives and the stories about Jesus which impacted their lives. Jesus is the revelation of God...that is, God with us...as he is called by Matthew, Emmanuel. The book is the teacher who points us in the direction of Jesus...his words and his activities...and most importantly the ways in which they impacted the people who experience them. From all this, we come to know the Christ...and through Christ, we come to know God.
So, here we have a favorite story about the birth of Jesus which includes these mysterious characters who have been drawn to Judea by a star – the culmination of life-long quest to find God.
Psalm 72 written many centuries before the birth of Jesus talks about a time when the Kings of Sheba and Tarshish among others will come to Jerusalem to make homage to God's anointed. (Psa 72:10-11) May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts. {11} May all kings fall down before him, all nations give him service . That is probably where the notion of three kings comes from, also the idea that the three came from different places...and represented different races or cultures. The names which we associate with the Kings came from some lost tradition in the early church, in which three names were associated with each of the three gifts; which seemed to make some sense. The gifts themselves are representative not only of items which were held to be very precious at the time, but also represented articles from the murky and mysterious world of the east...from which they were sought by caravans.
Still one more legend says that the wise men were of three different ages. Gaspar was a very young man. Balthazar was in his middle age, and Melchior was an old man. When they arrived at Bethlehem, the three of them individually ventured into the stable which may have been in reality a small cave, they went in one at a time.
• When Melchior, the old man, went into the cave, there was no one there but a very old man his own age with whom he was quickly at home. And they spoke together of memory and of gratitude and the peace which comes from doing things in predictable ways.
• The middle-aged Balthazar encountered a middle-aged teacher when he went into the cave and they talked passionately of leadership, responsibility and stewardship and how tough it is to keep things going.
• And when young Gaspar entered, he met a young prophet, and they spoke words of reform and promise.
• And then, when they gathered together outside after going in one by one, the three of them took up their gifts and went in together finding nobody there but a twelve day-old infant.
It was later that they understood that Christ speaks to every stage of life; Jesus is present with us as we are, and where we are . While the old may hear the call to integrity and wisdom; the middle-aged are engaged by the spirit of Christ to creative leadership, parenthood and responsibility, while the young are challenged to dream and reach for new possibilities and relationships. Epiphany means revelation: the making known of God's word and God's self abroad.
Whether through a story, or in the creative assembly of a display or characters of a crèche scene, we have three general themes emerging. First of all, where is God born? God is born among us – in the midst of all the activities of our lives. Second, the only way to fully realize that fact is to stop what you are doing and look for the manger. And thirdly – inevitably there will be times when we end up looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place.
The plot of the story is a journey of discovery, Mary and Joseph leave home, the shepherds leave their fields, the Magi leave their far-off lands. In a sense, that is what we all experience as we search for a worshipful relationship with this person Jesus. The legends and the tales of Kings or Wise Men all hover around a truth with which we are very familiar. As pilgrims and seekers through the generations have come to know and have subsequently shared through the testimony of their own writing and recollections, however one may be delayed by life's duties, sidetracked and deceived by others on the way, take a wrong turn or miss a sign - for each one of us it is a matter of setting out and searching in faith, with the belief that our discovery will be its own reward.
The Magi represent perseverance...their presence in the story is representative of all of us who come to faith through our questions and our search and stay the course in spite of wrong turns.
In a time when we continue to be barraged by varieties of religious voices which claim to know exactly what God's will is and how it should be carried out, it is refreshing to take up the journey of the Magi and to resonate with their quest which, in spite of their wisdom, was obviously not perfect handled.
The Magi went to Herod. Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament scholar points out, they were off by nine miles. They went to Jerusalem when they should have gone to little, insignificant Bethlehem. Yet you can understand why it is they went to Jerusalem, it represented the current wisdom of the age and it was the seat of the secular power of not only Herod but of the Romans as well. Not to stretch the metaphor too much, but our own search often takes us awry in the same way. We look to popular culture to validate our quest, to give us answers, or we look to someone in the spot-light figuring he/she has got to know the truth by virtue of their position, and after all, it is easier to just accept someone's nicely polished program than have to work through the whole thing yourself.
The truth is that the louder the harangue and the more polished the presentation, the more chance that we may be chasing after the wrong king. Herod gets more votes than anyone would imagine just because he is there.
That is also why we need each other...the wise men, however many there really were, were traveling as a group. It was their collective wisdom and experience which finally led them to little, out of the way Bethlehem. You can hear them taking counsel with one another about their conversation with Herod...about the dream which warned them to take another route home. They were receptive to the word, but they had the patience and the presence of mind, to trust the experience of the group as well.
The terrain on which our own particular nativity scene is spread out is a matter of each of our own personal life experiences. Some of us feel closer to finding Jesus in the midst of bucolic splendor – for some the journey is accompanied by loud music and clapping hands for others it is more solemn; others of us are apt to look for him in other places: in the halls of the academy where scholarly works are studied, or in the maze of an urban street scene where the disenfranchised seek to embody the light of Christ in their struggles for justice, or perhaps around a table with neighbors who listen and share together as they reflect on God's goodness and share their hopes prayers for the world. To find a light for their way to the manger we all need to travel the paths of our own life with eyes open and hearts ready to find the good news.
We are a caravan. We are a church. The Magi's lesson to us is that we can't search, we can't travel, and we can't find alone. We need one another and that's why we're here today. This is why we come to church. Alone, we tend to become idiosyncratic, distorted, and lost in our own activities. We need the collective support and prayers of our fellow pilgrims. We listen together. We pray together. We cry out together. We are strengthened and comforted by each other. There's no other way to travel.
Each generation will describe the search in different metaphors, with different images and different kinds of expectations. The key to finding the manger is our shared commitment to continue the journey together; not always in total agreement about which way to turn and what will be over the next hill, but faithful to the quest, with the confidence that God becomes known through the commitment we make with one another in the name of the one we seek. God's love made visible - I am convinced that this is the way God continues to come to us through each other in the midst of this community. I look forward to the journey with you all into the new year ahead. Amen
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First Presbyterian
Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
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