For a video of this sermon, click on this sentence.
Who is this Jesus we worship? What is his purpose? What is his work? If he is our savior—something we often say that he is—then what, exactly, is he saving us from? Who is he?
His parents do not know, at least in the beginning of their part in his story. The evangelist Luke says that they are confused and frustrated about their son well into his youth, when he is a precocious twelve-year-old and lags behind their caravan, talking with the teachers in the temple. There is even a hint of disappointment behind their reactions to him. They thought he was going to be great. He … doesn’t seem great.
His closest followers do not fully know who he is. Jesus tells his disciples several times that he will be arrested, killed, and raised from the dead—but they do not know what he means, or they just refuse to believe him.
His followers seem to know a whole lot more about Jesus on the day of Pentecost, after the descent of the Holy Spirit. But within the earthly lifetime of Jesus, they are all following a long and difficult path of discovery. Like us, they just can’t be sure who Jesus really is. Even those who know a lot can’t really understand him completely. He will always be somewhat alien, an other, a stranger. And after the resurrection, he is stranger still. Even frighteningly so.
Matthew, the evangelist whose Gospel we will proclaim and study most often in this coming new year—Matthew introduces us to a few people who are ahead of the curve on discovering who Jesus is. They are strangers from a faraway land. Tradition tells us that there are three of them, but really we only know about three gifts that they present. Perhaps there were nine of them, or twelve, or twenty, or two. Tradition also calls them “wise men,” an enigmatic term. Sages from the east, we call them. Maybe they were Zoroastrians. Were they kings? Not exactly, no. But the Christmas carol sounds better that way. “Magi” (or in Greek, MAH-gōs) is Matthew’s word for them. Magos shares a root with the word magic, but these strangers are not Harry, Ron, and Hermione: magi were members of a priestly caste in ancient Persia. Perhaps they were as close to “scientists” as you could get at that time in human history. Were some of them female? Sure, why not? At the very least, perhaps they had important women with lots of resources funding their operation, just like the early Christian communities. And I suggest we might want to capitalize on the questionable English translation of magi as “wise men.” Homo sapiens means “wise people.” So… these strangers were human beings. They were, they are, you and me, and any human being we meet who seems odd to us. From the perspective of the Judean characters in our Great Story, they are odd, they are weird, they are perhaps even upsetting guests from Neverland, from somewhere over the rainbow. (Herod certainly finds them upsetting.) They study the night skies. They watch and listen. And they leave their known world in search of … someone. The star stops above a house in Judea, a backwater of the Roman Empire, the middle of nowhere. So these strangers enter the house, and present their gifts.
And these gifts! Let’s open these strange gifts they brought, and see what’s inside.
Gold. We hear that this gift means, “Jesus is the King.” Okay, that’s valid. But let’s open it up some more. Gold is precious; gold can represent those things or people or experiences that are beyond price. What is gold, for you? Perhaps a word of forgiveness is gold. Or an authentic, heartfelt apology from someone who harmed you. Or your own ability to forgive—that might be exceedingly rare. Maybe an “I love you” from someone is more valuable to you than fine gold. Or the experience of childbirth. Or the holy death of someone you love at the end of a long and delightful life. Or … gold is a righteous outcome in a conflict or struggle. Or it’s the ability to stand up and walk. Or it’s the ability to ask for help walking, and be okay with it. Or maybe gold for you is a full year of sobriety (or a full month, or a full day). Whatever it is, or whoever they are, God is there. God is creating, God is blessing, God is moving. Jesus is our King: he is the supreme sovereign of that which is most valuable in our lives, in this world.
Frankincense. We hear that this gift means, “Jesus is God.” Okay, that’s valid. But let’s open it up some more. Incense is a biblical image for prayer. “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,” the psalmist prays, “and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice.” Jesus is not just a god, or the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus extends an invitation into a deep relationship of prayer. What are your prayers? What rises from your spirit like incense? Maybe you long for the healing of a friend. Or you are frightened about the safety of your children. Or you are alarmed by events around the world, and confused about what to do about it all in your own little life. Or you bear on your heart glad prayers of thanksgiving, for health, for companions, for a purpose in your life, for countless blessings. We pray to one God, not many. We don’t have a river god and a harvest god and a kitchen god and a transportation god. We pray to God, to Adonai, to the one holy and undivided Trinity. And so this gift of prayer, then, has ultimate meaning. God hears all of our prayers, not just the ones for rain, or victory, or safety. God is intimate, immanent. God is here, creating, blessing, moving. Jesus is our God: he is the Holy One who hears all of our prayers. And even at the cross, he prays for us.
Myrrh. We hear that this gift means, “Jesus will die.” Okay, that’s valid. But let’s open it up some more. Myrrh is a burial spice, a way to mark a person who died as important, significant. In Baptism, we are told, we join Christ in his death and resurrection. So the myrrh is for us, too. We will die. We will die not only at the end of our lives, but we will also die to things. We will die to solitude. We will die to despair. We will die to lives led only for our own benefit. We will die to bread that is not broken and shared, but hoarded. We will die to ignorance and apathy about the plight of our neighbor. We will die to drawing lines between us and people we deem “other,” or “alien,” or “unworthy.” (After all, outsiders and strangers in our Great Story seem to know quite a lot about Jesus, don’t they?!) In Baptism we die to all of these things so that we can be raised with Christ, that stranger in the Easter garden who still bears the wounds of execution, and goes up once again to the top of the mountain to commission us all to go into the world and baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. We die to our old selves so that we can rise from here and live in the resurrection light of Christ. God in Jesus dies, and in our death and in our life, God is here, creating, blessing, moving. Jesus is the firstborn of the dead: he greets us in our graveyards of sin and death and puts on our lips that great song, Alleluia.
Gather, then, around this table, and like these strangers from Neverland, allow yourself to be overwhelmed with joy, for here is our King, and our God, and our death, and our resurrected life. The star has stopped here, directly above us. It casts its light upon you, and you shine with God’s glory.
***
Preached on the Second Sunday after Christmas Year A, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Burke, Virginia, January 5, 2020.
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Matthew 2:1-12