You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
In
the film, “Love Actually”, which is one of my holiday favorites, there is a
scene where a young girl excitedly announces that her school class would be
performing the annual Nativity Play that Christmas – and she would be assuming
the role of a lobster.
“A
lobster?” her mother inquires. “Was
there a lobster in the stable when Jesus was born?”
The
daughter gives her mother a withering look as only a preteen girl can. “Well, yeah!
Duh!” she replies.
There
may be a lot of things that we do not know about the birth of Jesus – though I remain
unconvinced that the presence of a lobster is one of them. However, children do seem to have interesting
perspectives on the birth stories, which are told only in the Gospels of Matthew
and in Luke.
It
is like some kindergarteners in Great Britain who were asked about the visit of
the Magi in the Christmas story. One
young boy declared confidently that the three wise men brought Jesus “some gold
stuff, but Legos would have been better”!
Ah
yes – the magi. Sometimes we call them
kings or Wise Men (Wise Ones if we want to be politically correct). They were
the Gentiles from the East who make an appearance only in the Gospel of
Matthew. We presume that there were
three of them, but that is only because the Gospel writer lists three gifts –
gold, frankincense, myrrh, and no Legos.
Not necessarily the most useful of presents for a family with insufficient
funds to even bribe their way into decent accommodations in Bethlehem. Gold would have been an asset (though the
neighbors would wonder where an indigent carpenter and his pregnant fiancé came
up with a pot of it). Frankincense was a
reasonable air freshener for the bathroom, but myrrh?
In
our mind’s eye, we either see the Magi strutting off on foot across the desert
with their gifts uplifted toward the sky, or we imagine them perched on
camels. However, neither of those
scenarios is Biblically-based, and both have assumed a truthfulness only
because of the depictions of Renaissance painters and Hallmark greeting card
graphic artists.
The
Gospel writer does tell us that the Magi did not arrive in time for Jesus’
birth in the stable in Bethlehem, so they never rubbed shoulders with the
shepherds, never saw an angel or heard a heavenly proclamation, and never felt the
reverberations of the glorias that shook the nighttime sky.
The
Magi were from the East – which is the Gospel writer’s way of telling us that
they came from a great distance and so from a different culture. They must have left home, the most familiar
of places, and set off on their journey, not knowing how long it would take or
just where they would end up since the destination itself was a holy
mystery.
The
Magi were clearly not Jews but were more likely practitioners of some off beat
or pagan religion like Zoroastrianism.
Unlike the unwashed, uneducated, rough and tumble shepherds, the Magi
must have been quite wealthy to come up with the gifts they did. They were educated men, ancient scientists or
maybe philosophers who understood their spirituality far differently than Mary
and Joseph. The Magi were part of the
upper crust of their communities. They
were well-respected men about town.
We
also know that, before they found the baby Jesus, they strolled into Jerusalem
– perhaps bent on taking a breather and putting their feet up for a bit or
maybe figuring that the capital city would be where the movers and shakers
were, like-minded people who might be able to assure them that they were headed
in the right direction. However, it
seems that they were terribly naïve when they started openly inquiring about a
new king to supplant Herod, the current dictator.
Surely
they must have surmised that it would not take long for their presence and
peculiar questions to reach King Herod, and surely his reputation preceded
him. Surely the Magi must have known how
such a petty and paranoid king would react.
As
one blogger wrote, “King Herod was a smart man. He was shrewd as a snake and
brutal beyond belief. Herod knew how the world worked and he used it to his
full advantage. History shows that he overcame his enemies the good
old-fashioned ways: He either BOUGHT them or he BUTCHERED them. The Jewish
religious leadership opposed his kingship – so he built the Jewish leaders a
beautiful new temple. The aristocracy of Palestine opposed him, so he simply
killed off 45 of the leading noble families.
And when it came to his chief opponent,
Aristobulus, Herod invited him to a swimming party in the Jordan River, bribed
his bodyguards and had him drowned. And then turned around and threw him a
magnificent funeral! Herod was one sharp, one smart, one shrewd cookie.”
However,
the Magi were no dummies either. They
played along with Herod’s little game of wits and then hustled out of Jerusalem
– and out of reach - as soon as possible - without attracting unwanted
attention.
We
also know that the Magi eventually found the Christ Child. They followed the
glow in the nighttime sky. They followed
the glistening rays that shone more brightly than anything they had ever seen
before. They followed their hopes and
dreams and found their heart’s desire.
They followed the star and found the Light of the World.
I
find it interesting that, in our Christmas pageants – not just here but in most
churches – we choose the most precious and youngest child we can find to carry
the shining star attached to a pole. When you really think about it, this child
– in all his or her innocence – carries for everyone of us to see the one
symbol in this story of Jesus’ birth that has the potential to empower us – you
and me - to be all that God envisions us being as sons and daughters of the
Almighty. The most precious and youngest
child carries the fate of the world on the top of a pole.
We dim the sanctuary lights on Christmas
Eve as the child walks slowly down the center aisle in darkness, the lighted
star swaying slightly on its pole. And
maybe in that darkness, we remember that, as Presbyterian pastor Alan Brehm
wrote, “The world into which
Jesus was born was full of all kinds of this darkness. Many lived out
their lives as slaves of one kind or another, …dependent for their daily bread
on the arbitrary generosity of those who owned the majority of the land.
And the shadow of the Roman Empire was cast over the whole Mediterranean
world--a shadow cast by ruthless conquerors that had no conscience about
enforcing their will with the edge of a sword and the point of a spear.
For many in Jesus’ day, there was no hope of anything better.”
And
if we do not think about the darkness of first century Palestine as we watch
the child pick his or her way down the aisle toward the manger, maybe we think about
the darkness of our own world. Maybe we
conjure up images of broken dreams, shattered hopes, failures, shame, and fear
– in this New Year of 2017, above all, images of fear.
Last
week in worship, many of you wrote down your greatest fear for this upcoming
year and gently laid those slips of paper in the manger. By the end of the service, the baby Jesus was
nestled in neatly folded or rolled bulletin inserts containing your heartfelt fears
and your promises. The former spanned
the spectrum from school exams to health concerns, from caring for elderly
parents to recurring cancer, from dementia to Donald Trump, from the
possibility of war to the inevitability of climate change, from your lack of
energy at a time when energy is so needed to our national inability to
communicate effectively with one another.
And the list goes on.
However, as Lutheran pastor, David Lose
asks us, “ What does fear do to us? Do we
install more security systems in our homes and cars? Do we build more gates or
buy more guns? Do we save even more for retirement, pulling back from
charitable contributions to make sure we have enough? Do we close our hearts –
and minds – to those who are different?”
Or, I would
ask: Do we boldly acknowledge those
fears and, in their midst and in spite of them, re-imagine the Magi in our own
lives? Think about it.
The Magi did
not have a whole lot to go on – just a great expanse of desert and miles of unknown
territory that would take them so far from home and so out of their comfort
zone. All they really had was a star,
just a queer hunch and nagging feeling that if they followed the path that the
star illuminated, that if they trusted the light to take them to where they
wanted to go, that if they did not let their fear of the darkness overwhelm
them, they would find what they were looking for.
Do we, like the
Magi, need to go beyond the boundaries we set for ourselves and follow the star
God has set before us? Surely that is
one big question. As scholar and teacher
John Phillip Newell wrote, “Tragically we have often been given the impression
that we have all the light we need, within our nation,
within our religious tradition, within our cultural
inheritance. But our Gospel story points to something radically different,
that there is Light beyond our inherited boundaries, and that we need this
Light, that it is given to complete the Light we have received, not to compete
with the Light we have received. We need one another as nations and religions
as much as the species of the Earth need one another to be whole.”
Do
we, like the Magi, need to believe that there is a star – a light – something bright and so beautiful that
illumines a path forward for us – a path that will take us past our fears and
closer to transforming ourselves into all that God wants us to be? That, of course, is the other big question –
and only you can answer it for yourself and for your own life. Is there a star? And, if so, where will it lead you – and are
you willing to follow it?
To that, as your pastor, I remind you of
the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Arise!
Shine! For your light has come.”
It is imperative, right now, in 2017,
that we trust the light and not the darkness: that we trust the power of God
and what we can do for other people and not the power of fear and what it might
do to us.
How might that imperative play out for
you in this New Year? Where – across unknown territory and out of your comfort
zone - might the star – the light – lead you?
Well, let me share in closing ten New Year’s resolutions of Shane
Clairborne, a Christian activist. And I
will bet that at least some of them are on your path of light:
1. Do for one
person what you wish that you could do for everyone, but can’t.
2. Practice resurrection. Make ugly things beautiful and
bring dead things back to life. Look for God in the unlikely places.
3. Interrupt death. Do something regularly to interrupt the
patterns of violence, bullying, war, capital punishment and other mean and ugly
things.
4. Give more money away than you keep. And do it in a way
that takes away the power of money and celebrates the power of love.
5. Write letters and notes to people, letting them know you
are thankful for them. Write a note asking for forgiveness from someone you
need to ask to forgive you.
6. Do something really nice – that no one sees or knows
about.
7. Compliment someone you have a hard time complimenting… and
mean it.
8. Pause before every potential crisis and ask: “Will this
matter in 5 years?”
9. Learn a skill –
like welding – and use it for something redemptive, like turning a machine gun
into a farm tool.
10. Rather than emphasizing the best of yourself - and
finding the worst in others –work on the worst in yourself and look for the
best in others.
“Arise!
Shine! For your light has
come.” Approach this coming year with
the sure and steadying knowledge that God has hung
out a star for each one of us, and, if we trust that star as the Magi trusted
theirs eons ago, it will light the path for us to the Christ Child and, more
importantly, light the path to all he stood for even as it moves us toward life in its fullest
and joy beyond imagining.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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