Matthew 2: 1-12
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Dr. Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
Second Sunday after Christmas, January 3, 2010
Kenmore Presbyterian Church
Kenmore, New York
On Christmas Eve, I told many of you how I set up a Nativity scene like ours, every year at the church I served in Chicago. Well, what goes up must come down, so every year, sometime after Christmas, I would carefully wrap each piece, return it to the box, and store them away. I asked Kathy to let me take some of the Nativity scene away for today. I took out the shepherds, the donkey, the cow, the sheep, and Joseph. What remains seems like only half of the scene countless Christmas pageants arrange in our minds: the Three Wise men, their camels, Mary, and the Christ Child.
However, on Christmas Eve, I almost played a game with you. Have you ever seen a puzzle, called “What’s Wrong with this Picture?” You have to find so many things out of place or missing in a picture. Looking at the Nativity scene today, you would say, “Where are the shepherds, the donkey, the cow, the sheep, and Joseph?” When we read Luke’s telling of Jesus’ birth, he only includes the shepherds, the angels, and “Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger.” I have no problem with a donkey or two, some cows, maybe a few sheep, but Luke doesn’t mention the magi or the camels.
Nothing’s wrong with the Nativity scene as set today, as far as Matthew describes it. The first evangelist doesn’t mention shepherds, angels, and Joseph. He doesn’t say anything about camels, nor does he tell us how many magi were there, but since countless generations of the faithful imagine the scene just so, who am I to leave out these details?
Of course, we leave out other details when we imagine the scene. We leave out Herod, because his presence disturbs our seasonal sensibilities. We tend to forget how he receives the news these visitors from the East brought him, about a newborn king of the Jews. We fail to recall how this word frightens him for what king wants to hear his reign is ending. We tend to skip over the next passage. When we come face to face with the slaughter of innocents, it makes us almost cry, because we cannot stand to see a child suffer, let alone many children die at brutal hands.
At some level, we leave out Herod, because he reminds us too much of a side of ourselves we would rather not see. Someone called it our “shadow.” It’s the side of us that holds on to what we have with a death grip. While we may long to lay our gifts at the feet of the Christ Child, we know his claims over our lives are complete. Like Herod, we fear losing control. We worry what might happen if we really offered him our heart. What might we lose? How might we change? Like Herod, all of us resist his lordship, so we leave him out of the scene, because he reflects something within us.
Another detail, we leave out are the high priests and the scribes. In his brilliant commentary on Matthew, Frederick Dale Bruner translates verse four in a way that caught my attention, “So [Herod] gathered all the senior pastors and the bible teachers of the people of God, and pushed them with this question: ‘Where is the Christ supposed to be born?’” Yet, when confronted with news of his birth, they offered the wise men a road map, rather than going to see for themselves this great thing.
Sometimes, I wonder whether pastors and teachers, all of us confuse information about Jesus with the transformation he seeks to bring. While we never cease to be students of God’s word, eventually, we need to act upon what we’ve heard. More than learning moral principles, we seek after meaning and purpose for our lives. More than having religion, we enter a relationship with the living God, who revealed himself in Jesus. More than receiving spiritual solace, we enter the struggle between the coming light and this present darkness. More than answering our questions, God invites us on a quest.
W. H. Auden concludes For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, with this chorus that captures his aspect of our life in Christ:
He is the Way.
Follow him through the land of unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts and have unique adventures.
He is the Truth.
Seek him in the kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.
He is the Life.
Love him in the world of the flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.
This Epiphany, may we enter such a Way, such a Truth, such a Life. Matthew doesn’t say whether there were three wise men or whether they were kings. Yet, he speaks clearly of the Magi’s persistence in their search for the Child. They see his star and seek after him. Nothing will stop them, not even Herod. They seem to find what someone called “the joy in the journey.” They stay on the Way.
Yet, the Magi didn’t wander aimlessly, following one thing and then another. They follow the Truth. They allowed God to guide them, first, by the star, then by Scripture, both of which God gives them. They submitted to God’s guidance from the start. They remind us while we may not know what the future holds, as E. Stanley Jones said, we know the one who holds the future. We know the one whose arms long to embrace us at our journey’s end.
When the Magi find him, the Life, his eyes held the star they followed so long and they love him in the world of the flesh, offering him gifts as befit a king. So, where will we find the Child? He is here. As he made water into wine at the wedding of Cana, as he blessed the bread and the cup and made them body and blood, let us love him in the world of the flesh, this human lot he took on to tell us of God’s love for us. “And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.”
©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
