The Big Reveal

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 2:1-12, Rev. Billie Watts

Happy New Year! We mark the end of a tumultuous year – full of highs and lows – and the beginning of another.  It is the end of Advent waiting, where we lit candles of peace, change, hope, and joy. We sang “Come oh Come Emmanuel,” and on Christmas Day, “Joy to the World, the Lord is come.” We proclaimed, “The light shines in the darkness – and the darkness shall not overcome it.”

 

Today, on this Epiphany Sunday, we begin to understand the implications of the birth of Jesus – the Life that was the light to all people. For the next two months, as we study the life and teachings of Jesus, we will light an additional candle to visualize that light overcoming darkness.

Epiphany means appearance, a coming, a revelation or manifestation. It is when what is hidden is made known. It may come suddenly, but more often than not, it is a process of inquiry, questioning, study, pondering, and seeking. We say we want more revelation – but be warned – epiphanies can be dangerous disruptions and highly unstable experiences. They can rock your world. The light of revelation can temporarily blind you – disorienting you. Just ask Saul of Tarsus. You may need reorientation. It can cause a crisis of faith – but that is not a failure. Revelation can open up new spaces in us for loving God and neighbor to grow.

 

Richard Rohr, one of my teachers and many of yours – Franciscan priest, speaker, writer, and theologian believes that humans do not naturally see. We have to be taught to see and religion is supposed to teach us how to see and be present to reality. According to him, we are all sleepwalkers, and need to stay awake.

 

For that reason, I will invite my friend, Renee Morris, to sing for us a prayer of illumination:

            “Open my eyes, that I may see. Visions of truth, thou hast for me. Open my eyes,                          illumine me, Spirit divine.”

 

May God so illumine us today.

 

Let’s shine some light on our gospel text today.

Scholars believe it was written between 80 and 90 CE – so 50-60 years after the death of Jesus. By then, the temple had been destroyed and relations between Jewish Christians and Jewish religious authorities, as well as the Roman Empire, were strained to say the least. In the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus fills out the prophecies of old, written for a particular time addressing a particular situation. The author of this gospel is intentional about connecting those dots. He is less concerned with historical claims but greatly concerned with theological claims, so we will always be looking for what the texts say reveal about God.

 

As our text begins, it reads, “During the time of Herod.” This sends shivers down the spines of many. It is like saying the name, “Hitler,” which brings to mind his orchestrated atrocities. Herod had his own well-deserved reputation. He was a Jew, first of all,  – called the “King of the Jews,” albeit a puppet king. He was powerful, having served in the Roman senate over 30 years and as king of the Jews for over 30. He was a shrewd businessman, richer than Bill Gates, and a master builder (having built 7 great palaces), yet his main goal was always himself. He had a ferocious temper and great insecurity, as many powerful people do. He was reactionary, known for his rampages and cruelty. He had his favorite wife and her teenage son killed, as well as his own three sons. It was said that it was better to be a pig than a son of Herod. You did not want to be on his radar.

 

Enter into this tinderbox the magi, wise men/priests from the exotic East, probably the region of Iran/Iraq and from a different religious tradition. They see what no one else does, not Herod nor his chief priests and scholars – the star at its rising. This is the language of antiquity used to note the birth or death of someone significant which will have cosmic implications. (it was said of Caesar Augustus and Nero, to name two). Contrasted with the belief that Roman Emperors were sons of gods, dispensers of the will and blessings of gods, instigators of the Pax Romana (achieved not by absence of conflict but by domination and violence), you begin to see a clash coming between the theological claims in Matthew with the Roman way of living.

 

These magi see the star at its rising, and then seem to default to their own preconceptions of where a king would be born – exposing what we will call “their Jerusalem bias.” Where would you seek a king – in a place of power and prestige, of course. They end up in the city of David, where God’s presence and blessings were sure to reside. That was a trap for them, and is a trap for us. In that scenario, they ask where the king of the Jews was born? That certainly got a rise out of Herod, for he was stirred up, agitated and all Jerusalem with him. I’ll bet, for if Herod ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy! So, “who you gonna call?” The chief priests and scholars, of course.  They quoted the prophet Micah, stating that it was from Bethlehem that the ruler who is to shepherd God’s people would come. Herod was no shepherd!

 

You would think that the chief priests and scholars would have been watching – seeking the Messiah. However, before we point our fingers at them, we ask them and ourselves if our eyes and ears have grown dull? Do we need to wake up? Have we become complacent? Apathetic? Too comfortable?  Are we in fear and awe of our “Herods” more than God? Does “Herod’s power TRUMP God’s? The nation of Israel is to be a light to all nations – but it appears that their light has grown dim. Do they prefer their national security and religious superiority over God’s vision to become more human to one another?

 

This raises many questions for us, but isn’t that what Scripture tends to do…causing us to seek answers as we wrestle with the texts, especially those in which our own hearts are revealed?

 

Herod tells the wisemen to go to Bethlehem, find the child, and report back to him the child’s whereabouts so he, too, can worship him. The magi seem to be back on track now, seeing again the star lighting their way – and this time not thrown off by their own preconceptions and biases. They find Mary and the baby, but it is not how they expected. In God’s topsy-turvy world, their Holy Encounter with God is found, not in power and strength, but in weakness, powerlessness, vulnerability, humility, and love. That is good news – for in those places, God is “with us,” and it will bend our knees in worship. They gave all they had, their treasures, innermost thoughts, sorrows, service. God is at work in the world, in ways and places and people they had never imagined.

 

Revelation came TO and THROUGH these foreigners, these aliens with a different faith tradition. We cannot miss the theological implications of that. It seems that no faith tradition has a monopoly on God. God is bigger than the boxes into which we place God. They magi see differently after their Holy encounter – they are reoriented. Wise as they surely were, they didn’t know everything. Perhaps such a realization is the first step to being open to revelation...foregoing our certainty to make room for God’s new revelations. Continuing to be seekers and remaining teachable will lead us to deeper knowledge of God, resulting in greater love for God and neighbor. That has been true in my life as I let go of what I had been taught and made room for new revelation. The result, my love of God and others were from here…to here.

 

It is important to note that the proof that the magi have been changed by their encounter is when they go home another way. The language is intentionally ambiguous, meaning both going home by another route and in a new way. There is no evidence that they were converted to Christianity, but they go home, to their own people, to continue to do whatever it is they do…but with the probability that their own faith was deepened by this encounter with the light of the world…with a deeper understanding of who God is and how God acts in the world. God’s heart was revealed in the incarnation of Jesus – and they touched God through Jesus, God’s gift to the world.

Perhaps this opens up space for us today to learn about God from other faith traditions. Desmond Tutu once said that God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian for God is not a Christian. [1]  All of God’s children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God. That is surely something I seek to know. For me, a visual of that is what happens to light as it passes through a prism – breaking into different colors, but all coming from the same source. God comes to us in our different cultural contexts in different ways, but from the same source.

 

Transformed people transform people, but there is no transformation without revelation. Herod was not receptive to revelation – and the devastation he unleashes in the next segment of Scripture reveals his cold, self-centered, egotistical heart and leaves us gasping for air. In the midst of such heartache, there is the realization that sometimes, darkness is so heavy that it hovers and threatens to smother out light.  In those times, we seek God – we ask that you, God, open our eyes and enable us to dig deeper, so that we might see that you are with us, never orchestrating events of darkness, for there is no darkness in God. God is light. The darkness shall not overcome the light. God’s ways are greater than the ways of darkness. It is in those times that we, as the body of Christ, must show up in the world and be light to our neighbors, the embodiment of the living presence of Christ. In so doing, we may become God’s revelation – revealing the heart of God to all we meet.

 

May the Divine Spirit illumine us, transform us, and shine through us.

Amen.

 

Benediction: Sometimes we seem to ask the wrong questions. We ask why God allows things like this to happen – why does God allow evil in the world? Maybe a better question is what is God doing to overcome it? I think God is sending us. So…open your eyes, go home another way, show up in your communities, and reveal the heart of God.