Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
January 6, 2008 Epiphany Sunday
Matthew 2: 1-11
A colleague shares this story. "I was once preaching at a big Christmas service, where a well known historian, famous for his skepticism toward Christianity, had been persuaded to attend by his family. Following the service, he approached me, all smiles, and said, 'I've finally worked it out,' he declared, 'why people like Christmas.'
"'Really,' I said, ‘do tell me.'
'A baby threatens no one,' he said, 'so the whole thing is a happy event that means nothing at all!'"
Well, that's one way to view Christmas. A sweet, sentimental story of a baby's birth that threatens no one and demands nothing of us. Thank goodness that's over. We can put the stuff away and get life back to normal. A little verse by Kurt Vonnegut comes to mind:
I will dream of a baby,
A boy and a man,
Who taught simple kindness;
I'll learn it if I can.
I'm sorry they killed you,
I'm glad you were born.
I'll be a mild Christian
On a mild Christmas morn.
Christmas as a comfortable, mild celebration leaving us feeling warm and fuzzy inside as we get back to the real world and business as usual. Let's just put that non-threatening baby Jesus up in the closet again for another year.
Ah, but then there is this verse from Mary Coleridge:
I saw a stable, low and very bare,
A little child in a manger.
The oxen knew him, had him in their care.
To men he was a stranger.
The safety of the world was lying there,
And, the world's danger
Danger? Now how could a child in a manger be a danger? Didn't we just hear that a little baby threatens no one? I wonder if anyone here today was somehow threatened by Christmas? (Beyond the credit card bills, of course.)
As I said, today is Epiphany - the 12th day of Christmas. The day traditionally celebrated as the day the three wise men - actually, we say there are three but the Bible never says that - visited the Christ Child and left their famous gifts. But before they get to Bethlehem, they have this rather interesting encounter with King Herod in Jerusalem. And although Herod, the old fox, tries to put up a good front, the Wise Men can tell, all Jerusalem can tell, the king is upset, the king is worried, the king is frightened... frightened of this baby. But wait, how can a little baby possibly frighten anyone?
"Where is he who is born King of the Jews?"" It is a question that comes with a sharp political edge, because everyone knew who was king of the Jews... Herod was the king of the Jews. And he would kill anyone who challenged that idea. He actually murdered three of his sons and, eventually, his own beloved wife because he suspected them of scheming against him. It was said of Herod that it was better to be his sow than this son. The pig in the royal barnyard had a better chance of survival than his own family. Such was the level of his paranoia.
"Where is he who is born King of the Jews?" New Testament scholar, Tom Wright, says that Matthew's story of the Wise Men is far more than just a cozy little picture-book story we tell every Christmas. Rather it is a story filled with political dynamite. Says Wright, "Matthew is saying that Jesus is the true king of the Jews, and old Herod is the false one, a usurper, an imposter." To take it a step further, that would even apply to Cesar Augustus and Rome. Imposter! Interesting, when the Wise Men finally reach their destination, they're filled with joy. Quite a contrast to Herod's murderous fear. But again, what does anyone really have to fear from a baby?
I've always liked this story told by that grand old preacher, Halford Luccock. "The other day I bumped into Santa Claus. A good bump it was too! I ought to have been arrested, but there's no open season on Santa Claus. But sometimes a first class collision is an exciting thing. It will knock the wind out of you, and it may knock an idea into your head. True, this Santa Claus did not have white cotton whiskers or a red coat, but she was the real thing all right...and plenty of it! She looked like an animated Christmas tree with packages dangling from every limb, I bumped, she spilled. As I was trying to pick up the packages she gasped out, 'Oh, I hate Christmas! 'It turns everything upside down!' But I said, 'Isn't that just what Christmas was made for?' This lofty sentiment did not stop her dirty looks.'"
He continues, "But that is the big thing about Christmas. Christmas is a story about a baby, and that is a baby's chief business - turning things upside down. It is a gross slander on babies to say that their chief passion is food. No, it is rearrangement! Every orthodox baby rearranges everything he or she sees, or can get his or her little hooks into, from the order of who is important in the family to the dishes on the table. A baby in a family divides time into two eras, just as Christmas does. There is B.C., which means 'before child' and A.D., which means, 'after deluge.'" A baby is born and there is disruption, change, a new kingdom, a new ruler, a different sort of Lord and King, for the world, for Herod, and for us.
Another story comes to mind told by a colleague. "I got a phone call the other day from a person who I knew, but only casually. He was a distinguished business person in our community, now retired. I had first met him at a school board meeting years ago. At that meeting he had argued passionately against special efforts to achieve racial diversity in our city schools. I experienced him as a rather insensitive, rough-edged person. But here he was calling me, seeking my help in organizing our town's pastors for a neighborhood center he had adopted. The center works with drug-related, jobless and largely hopeless youth.
"Perhaps the surprise showed in my voice. Perhaps he remembered our last time together so many years ago. Perhaps he picked up on my shock that someone like him should be so deeply concerned about these unfortunate youth. So he volunteered that he had had, what he called, "a rather remarkable experience" a couple of years ago. I asked him more about this remarkable experience. He replied simply, 'I met Jesus. He made me take a hard, honest look at my life. I didn't like what I saw. I had to make a move. I'm not the same person I was just a few years ago. I'm not living in the same world. Through the love of Jesus, I have made a move.'"
King Herod was afraid and all Jerusalem with him. Herod was many things but he was not a fool. He could tell a threat to his power when he saw one. And how about us? For just as that baby challenged Herod, so this little child is also a challenge to us, really to everything we believe in, to everything we consider normal. Folks, when we go with the Wise Men into Bethlehem, when we welcome that child into our world, there's a sense that we can never go back to what was normal. He makes all of us "refugees" from our old accustomed ways of doing things. "The safety of the world... and the world's danger."
And some of you here today already know this. Like the man whose story I've told, you've experienced it. There you were, proceeding through your everyday life, all the accustomed and familiar ruts, everything normal, the way it always was... a mild Christian celebrating a series of mild Christmases. Then someway, somehow, that babe of Bethlehem was born into your life. And you, like the Wise Men, found yourself star struck. And everything got disrupted, everything changed. And you knew you could never go back to the world you once knew. A new kingdom, a new rule, a different sort of sovereignty: out there and in here.
Presbyterian pastor, and Christian Century Editor, John Buchanan shares these post-Christmas Epiphany thoughts: "Almost anybody can be touched emotionally by a baby. But the church knows and remembers that the baby grew up and became a man who taught a revolutionary ethic of unconditional love and practical forgiveness, and who overturned cultural convention by welcoming the marginalized and excluded. The church remembers that the baby grew up and got into trouble with authorities for living out this notion of what God's kingdom looks like - a new social arrangement in which all are loved and welcomed at the banquet table. The church remembers that the baby grew up and challenged social convention by forgiving enemies, turning the other cheek, and responding to violence, not with violence but with love. The birth is a sign, for people of faith, that God is alive and at work in the world. Christ comes again, is born again, when lives are transformed by his love, when forgiven and restored women and men begin to live new lives in a world that itself is suddenly new because he was born into it. I know, after Christmas, our culture drops Christmas like a hot potato, but for people of faith it isn't the end. It's just the beginning.”
As pleasant as it was, the Wise Men could not stay in Bethlehem. Eventually they had to return to their own country. And so must we. For that is where he calls us, that is where he finds us, that is where he transforms us...this little child who couldn't possibly threaten anyone.