Walking Humbly

Matthew 2:1-12

On Christmas Eve, an eight year old church member and I discussed the scandalous fact that even though all our nativity scenes place those wise men right up there in the hay near the manger, they likely did not arrive until Jesus was around two years old. His mind was blown. I didn’t even get to the part about there most likely women being in their group of undoubtedly more than three, because unlike a kids’ birthday party, three gifts doesn’t mean three people showed up.  

And when the Magi did find Jesus, it was in a house, on a street in the small, unremarkable town of Bethlehem, where Mary and Joseph had temporarily settled.  Maybe little Jesus was playing with blocks on the floor of his dad’s shop, or sitting in the kitchen in his diaper, gnawing on a hunk of bread while his mom made lunch.  Maybe Jesus was toddling around the yard with the kids of the shepherd’s families, who had become good friends, being the only other people besides Uncle Zechariah and Aunt Elizabeth to know who Jesus really was. In any case, however ordinarily the day in Bethlehem had begun –sometime after morning chores and greeting neighbors, tending to animals, and work in the carpenter shop—suddenly the quiet neighborhood streets were flooded with the spectacular sounds, smells and sights, of a camel-filled caravan winding toward and piling up in front of Joseph’s house, an entourage of exotically-dressed travelers, excitedly conversing in a foreign language as they approach the front door.  
And even though our nativity scenes don’t give us this glimpse, the Christmas story is not complete until we celebrate Epiphany, the visit of the Magi.
 
A friend recently gave me a book about walking. The book begins in frustration, that while so many other religions have maintained physical disciplines, like Hinduism’s yoga, Taoism’s tai chi, Buddhism’s kung fu, and so on, Christianity seems to be largely cerebral, without a physical component.  And yet, we have an incarnational faith, that is, we believe that God came embodied, into this life in a physical human form to share life with us, so to disconnect prayer from a bodily expression of it seems strange.  

Turns out that it seems perhaps we do, but it’s overlooked because it is the most basic, simple, ordinary human thing: walking.  Our faith story begins with God walking with Adam and Eve in the garden, and after they hide themselves from God in mistrust and shame, “walking with God” becomes synonymous throughout scripture with "holiness." Jesus' ministry began when he walked into the wilderness, and continued through walking, criss-crossing territory, meeting people on foot and face to face, and, when he wasn’t in a boat, Paul’s journeys walked him across the Mediterranean region. Historically, walking pilgrimages - first to Jerusalem and then to other holy sites - have been an integral part of the Christian faith. To walk in this way is to acknowledge that even more than the destination, it’s the walking towards that changes you. Finally, the early Church simply called Christianity “The Way.” Jesus says he is the way – he is the route and the journey.
 
So, meeting up with the Magi again this year, I had walking on my mind.  When the star appeared, these scholars of the sky, these practitioners of religion very unlike that of the Hebrew people, consulted their charts and spread the word, assembled their group, packed up their supplies and set out walking, for who knew how long, to go who knew where, and find who knew what. They walk for months on end, day after day, night after night, week after week, through all manner of weather and dangers, navigating through storms and hunger, wild animals and rugged terrain, the court of a despot and the skepticism of scholars, to seek the One promised for centuries to a people not their own. On they walk, trusting that what they are walking toward has somehow changed the trajectory of all humankind. And day after day, they are being changed by the walking itself, their lives being shaped for, and by, this impending encounter with the light of the world, the word made flesh, one slow step at a time.
 
When the visitors first and finally arrive at their perceived destination, it’s not like they think it will be. In the capital city at the seat of power, they are ready to publicly honor the majesty of this holy one. But they can’t find him. Of course, they assume, this great child who has come to change the world is already being honored by all the important people.  Of course, the leader of this land would even, perhaps, have him in the palace.  Instead, they found that nobody in Jerusalem had heard of him. And not only that, but the scholars and priests had to be summoned to look back at the prophesies and figure out what in the world these strangers were even talking about. 
And Herod, the insecure and unpredictable demagogue, is caught unaware, suddenly alerted that his authority may be usurped by some grand scheme that somehow caught the attention of people a world away but slipped by right under his nose. 
 
So, on they walk.  And when the Magi arrive in little Bethlehem, at the home of Joseph the carpenter, these impressive people from an extraordinary place kneel before the seemingly ordinary toddler on the lap of a peasant woman. And their shocking arrival and sincere worship must shake Mary and Joseph to the core, jostling them out of the daily routine and reminding them that this whole thing is so beyond them, and that they are controlling exactly none of it. 
 
And then, because of a dream, the Magi walk home by another road to bypass the raging Herod. And, because of a dream, Joseph will take Mary and Jesus and walk to Egypt, to live as refugees in a foreign land to protect this child from being killed, like so many others subsequently are, by Herod’s violent insecurity.
 
Life is hard. But we complicate it even more. We think we should know things and don’t, we think things that should be easy and aren’t. For better and worse, nobody really gets what they deserve, and so much of it is arbitrary and out of our control. Living is filled with guesswork, and we make terrible mistakes. Evil people often get power, and good people often suffer, and figuring out which way to go is frequently fraught, and our actions have unintended consequences, and we lose people, and we hurt people, and we try to do the right thing but struggle often to know what that is, and why, why can’t God be more obvious? So we think we have to crack the code, figure out how to do it right, learn the moves, like those who went before us did, right?
 
Turns out the central characters throughout our whole faith story were also just feeling their way along, responding to the circumstances, doing the best they could, adapting as they went, just like we are, every day.  They didn’t have anything figured out.  They were trying to live attuned to the deeper story, learning to pay attention, filled with longing and sorrow, and wonder, just like we are. And God directed them, sometimes in extraordinary ways, but mostly in the most basic, ordinary, everyday way, one regular, basic step at a time. None of them ever knew much further ahead than the next step because few of us ever do. Human beings live in time. We move one step at a time, trapped inside of time. But eternity has entered into time, so nevertheless, here on this journey, we are never alone.  And “the road is made by walking,” as they say.  
 
God came into this life, to walk with us, like we walk. In the confusion and the frustration, in the danger and the worry, in the unknown and the figuring it out as you go. This whole thing is beyond us; we are controlling exactly none of it. But every part of all of it is claimed for love, and filled with the presence of God-with-us. Jesus is the way, the route and the journey.   So to practice this faith and follow this Christ, we are to slow our pace to the speed of our soul, our basic humanity, to walk along, like the Magi did, one foot in front of the other, day after day, sometimes excited and feeling it – other times so not, but still, led onward and practicing trust. We learn from them to keep our feet on the ground, and our eyes on the sky. And little by little, we are changed by the walking. Made brave to face adversity, made humble to bow before majesty, made quick to reach across human barriers to see us all in the story of God, made open to dreams and wise to know when to switch routes.  

Whatever we navigate, however it comes, the work of God happens in and through us, one step at a time. This is holy work, walking humbly with God. And in inhabiting our lives, and bodies, and neighborhoods, and communities, we join our forbears in seeking the light of the world that the darkness cannot put out. And we become people ready to pay homage every time we find Christ where he is unexpectedly residing.

Amen.

Ordinary Miracles and Ongoing Epiphany

 

Adoration of the Magi, Andrea Mantegna, c. 1495-1505.

When Epiphany dawns, the swaddling clothes have long been packed away in the attic of the peaceful little home, with room for a workshop that Joseph had rented them in Bethlehem, not too far from THE stable, actually, but near enough to town that he got a little business, enough to keep food on the table. 

And to be honest, since the night when the shepherds and angels and everyone showed up in a wild blur of glory and honor, life has been kind of quiet. Mary and Joseph are far from the people and place they’d call home, no grandparents pitching in or aunties around offering advice through Jesus’ first fever, first tooth, first words, first steps. Leaning on their new community for connection and support.  This was not how they imagined their family life would start- not even once they rearranged their imaginings to include God-incarnate crawling across the living room floor.  Other than that one time Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zechariah came to visit, commiserating over sleepless nights and nursing woes while the babies gurgled together on a blanket on the floor, it has mostly been just the three of them, mama, dada and Jesus, getting to know each other, gently becoming a family.  Week to week, season to season, it’s an ordinary life. 

 

Until the pagans show up and call their kid the king of the Jews.  

 

Just when the story begins to lose its hard edges, when the nostalgia starts to descend and the lens begins to soften, when this baby has begun to feel like he is theirs, a reminder that he is not arrives in the form of sages from a far-off land, astrologers, scientist mystic-scholars who had been watching the skies for signs of God.  

Surprising, perhaps, that those with no personal stake in the story generational anticipation of a Messiah, or claim to Yahweh’s promises to the people claimed by Yahweh, are the ones Yahweh involves next. Their arrival bursts the domestic bubble and exposes the light to all the world.  

 

Epiphany, we call this day. Enlightenment. Aha!  When the scene is illuminated what was familiar and known one second look completely other and utterly amazing the next, often because you suddenly see things with a broader perspective, or through the eyes of another. 

The Christmas moment speaks God WITH US, Epiphany says GOD with us.  

Attention! Sweet and cuddly though he is, folks, this isn’t your own private Messiah.  He belongs to the whole earth! And all who live upon it belong to this little one who has settled himself contentedly here in your lap.  You are recipients of this miracle as much as the next person, of course, but with just as little sense of what it all means as the rest of us, maybe even less, actually, than these astonishing strangers who have arrived on your doorstep seem to grasp.

 

After this great entourage of exotic travelers that have flooded this quiet, provincial town exchange greetings with his parents and bestow their gifts on the child (and there were certainly many of them, of course; what a silly modern assumption that there were just three, because one gift a piece), after the camels have been tended to and bedded down, the tents erected and the strangers washed up and unpacked, I love the crazy, cozy image of lamps lit, table set, Mary and Joseph and their surprise visitors all crowded around an unexpected potluck of fragrant dishes. Wall to wall humans, who look different and smell different and wear different clothing and speak different languages, and whose paths never, ever should have crossed on this planet in any conceivable way, breaking bread together, drinking wine together, sharing together what used to be mostly their own private secret that nobody else could relate to. Perhaps tomorrow they’ll invite the shepherds back over for breakfast.

 

These travelers, who have journeyed over desert and mountains, through seasons and struggles, countless freezing nights and endless scortching day, driven by a quest through unknown to arrive at the very source. And then, from the moment they lay eyes on the child, and Mary and Joseph lay eyes on them, the cosmic cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

 

The ego-maniacal King Herod is now chomping at the bit to stamp out this newly discovered threat to his power, and the news is out, things are not business as usual; God has really come, the world is topsy-turvy and strangers from a strange land are visiting that nice couple down the street, normal as you please.  And it’s as though that one lone star now shatters into a trillion pieces, filling the sky with bright mess, scattering shards of radiance from one end of the globe to the other.

 

Of course they stayed a while, these unexpected guests.  After all, it took many months, maybe years, to get there, they’re not just spending one night and leaving.  So what was it like, adjusting to being next to the miracle for a while?  Was it all the more miraculous for its ordinariness? 

How did it feel to go from a distant star and a lifelong, theoretical quest for truth to a flesh and blood child who threw bawling toddler tantrums when he needed a nap, smeared hummus on the dog, and belly-laughed when daddy tickled him with his beard?  

Because here’s a truth, miracles are almost never as sexy in person as they’re built up to be.  

 

What was it like for Mary and the strangers from the East to fall into some daily patterns together, to have almost nothing humanly in common and yet get one another at a cellular level, sharing in a reality nobody else on earth yet sees, representing to each other by their presence that this really is real. God has really come; the world is being redeemed.  This wonky little collection of folk are now church, if church means, and I think it does, the people gathered around Jesus wondering together who God is, and watching together what ,God is up to. But also, maybe, getting annoyed because they load the dishwasher wrong and forget to take their shoes off in the house?

 

And then after the long visit, and the dreamt warning not to go back to Herod, and the Magi bypassing Jerusalem to return home by another road - (Oh, wasn’t Herod steaming mad when then never swung back by the palace! Didn’t he pace on his balcony with his eyes on the horizon day after day, the realization slowing dawning after one week, two, three, that they were NOT coming back, and there wasn’t a darn thing he could do about it!) - Just after the hugs and blessings and goodbyes, the little family turns back inside, sighing, and expecting, perhaps, that life might return to normal: normal is redefined again. 

Epiphany keeps going, you see.  It doesn’t actually let you turn back. 

By its very nature Epiphany’s path is almost always that of another road.

 

The new road is revealed when, three years after the one who told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, an angel messenger invades Joseph’s dreams, saying, Take the child and his mother and flea, right now, go to Egypt. Get up! NOW.  And it’s your turn, Joseph, to be the strangers from a foreign land.

God-with-us, who was born in a stable is now transient and homeless, and you along with him, foreigners in a foreign land.  

 

Some traditions hold that the little family settled in Egypt with the Ishmaelites, that they were received warmly by the way other side of the family tree, way back before Egypt became the land of captivity, the place from which Yahweh delivered the Israelites from slavery, back from the time when it was all the same trunk, the roots, the beginning. Father Abraham - father of us all, descendants as numerous as the stars.

 

It’s like baby God is on a sightseeing tour of the greatest hits. 

I have been at this project for quite some time, you see…

 

So to the land of Egypt they went, (part of the Roman Empire at the time), seeking safety and welcome in the hospitality, hearts and homes of strangers, who are all part of the whole great story anyway, while back home among the children of Israel, the so-called “King of the Jews” Herod’s terrible wrath and fear ordered the deaths of all male children under two in an effort to stamp out the light of the world before the flame caught and spread.

 

Then it was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

 

And I hate that part of the story and will never understand it, and don’t have a whole lot to say about it, except to notice both that God’s love doesn’t keep madness from happening but suffers it with us, coming as a homeless, transient peasant child, whose identity is revealed to nameless sheep-herders and pagan foreigners and NOT to the powers that be, no matter how loudly they rattle their sabers and fiercely they demand to be in on the secret, and also that as sweeping and awful as Herod’s act of terrible evil was, it seemed not to make a dent whatsoever in the God-with-us project. And while Herod himself is long dead and gone, love endures forever, profoundly and mightily, and every single day God-with-us is with us, transforming our shared life, bringing belonging and hope, redemptive kindness and healing care, and continuing to break through the darkness with light, every moment of every day.

After Herod’s death the little family finally journeys to Galilee, where they settle down at home amid grandparents and lifelong neighbors, to raise their first-grader in Nazareth, where he will run through the same streets, swim in the same streams, sit in the same school and participate in the same synagogue they did, in the tiny familiar world that had cradled and shaped them before their lives were ripped open by the light of the world.  

 

How was little Jesus shaped by those early wanderings, I wonder? 

What did he absorb from the Magi and the Egyptians, from the journeys and the dreams, and then from those who shaped his sense of home?  How did Epiphany bend his path?

 

And what about those Magi? The journeyers, soul friends and miracle sharers who brought epiphany onto the scene as much as they received it themselves?  What became of their lives after their encounter with the light of the world? How were they drawn into a lifetime of attunement to epiphany?

 

Epiphany keeps going, friends. The light of the world shimmers in our very own lives. And nobody gets to own this story – this story holds us all. It can’t be domesticated. What God is doing is always bigger, always more, always beyond us, and also right here next to us, in the minutia of our very ordinary lives. It pierces the darkness, the horrors, the loneliness, the wandering. It shares the awkward and unknown, the familiar and the comforting, the strange and the new, the death and the life, drawing us out into worlds we can’t imagine, bringing us home by roads we can’t foresee. 

 

Today we get star words. They are not magic. But they are a chance to lift our heads and look beyond ourselves with hearts open to however Christ might encounter us, attentive to wherever God might lead us this year. God is with us, transforming the world. 

So, arise, shine, beloved, your light has come. 

Happy Epiphany.

 

 

No longer settling for stories

Matthew 2:1-12

In our house, on Christmas Eve we leave cookies and a note for Santa, and Santa has always written back.  The notes vary, but have always carried similar, strong themes.  But much to Andy’s and my surprise, it’s largely gone unnoticed, until this year, when age, maturity, and a reluctantly rethought story have shined a different light on the notes’ consistent contents over the years. 

This year, Santa’s response read, “Dear Maisy, Thank you for the cookies.  First, Sorry is in order. A reindeer deer pooped by the tree. I had Khaleesi clean it. What a nice dog. So sweet, and talking about sweet, what a dad!  One of a kind!  I love that guy.  He really helped me with some Mrs. Claus issues! Wise. So glad to call him a friend. All the best!  Santa”

Nobody likes to have their stories taken away.  We hang onto our stories for all sorts of reasons.  Even if they don’t make sense or don’t correspond to our experience of the world, we often keep telling the same stories. They could be magical ones that make the world feel brighter.  They could be hurtful ones, like “I’m not good enough” or “Those people are the enemy.” Or they might be helpful stories that tell us who we are and help us frame the world, like “This is who I am.”  

Stories provide perimeters, but even the positive ones can keep us stuck, can keep us from being curious or courageous.  Sometimes, looking at our really familiar and well-worn stories, and considering that there may be something more, or even just different, can open us up to God’s Spirit in unexpected ways.

The Christmas story is this way.  We’ve extrapolated all kinds of details over time that are not there but have been injected back in as essential, and while it makes for a good pageant, much of it is likely not true. So let’s take today, the day of Epiphany, insight, Aha!, the day we celebrate with the Magi God’s self-revelation to the whole world, for the whole world.  Epiphany is a good day to open ourselves to God’s self-revelation anew, by looking again at the old stories.

First of all, we’ve spun a whole wide and detailed narrative set in some kind of New England barn scene, where Mary and Joseph have their baby alone in piles of hay, surrounded by animals, just minutes after they stumble into town, Mary gasping with contractions atop a donkey, and Joseph frantically pounding on doors, being rejected by the whole city, and finally being pointed to a stable out back by an either grumpy or apologetic innkeeper.

More likely they’d been in Bethlehem for some time, weeks maybe. And the whole scene I just described is just what imaginations gone before have made of these two sentences, “While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn."

What we Western, modern folks don’t know about that time and place could fill a stable,  unlike people in that region and time, who didn’t use stables, but instead housed their animals at night inside the family home, not in a separate outbuilding away from the house.  Imagine a simple home, sometimes with a bedroom, and a larger general living room. It often had a guest room attached to the end, or on the roof.  

The main room was a split-level, with a small lower area where, at night, the animals were brought in from the outdoors to sleep in the dwelling with the family.  The first job in the morning was to bring them back out.  The larger room, where the family cooked and ate their meals and generally lived their lives had carved into the floor of the higher level right near the lower level, an indentation, a built-in manger, so that the animals could reach their head up from the lower level and eat from it.  

Finally, the Greek word translated here as “inn” is not the word Luke uses for a commercial hotel in the story of the Good Samaritan, it’s actually the word he uses for “ guest room” when the disciples come seeking a spare room for the last supper. 

Mary and Joseph are returning to the land of Joseph’s people – in a culture of deep, pervasive hospitality. They were not visiting somewhere they’ve never been and stopping at a crowded Super8 along the freeway. Most likely they were staying in the simple peasant home of relatives, or even friends of friends– this would have been common. When the time came for Jesus to be born, there was no room for them in the guest room, so they delivered in the living room, and placed the baby in the manger in the floor next to them.  

And now, we can use our imaginations to explore the story some more.

Remember silent Zechariah and pregnant Mary and Elizabeth?  This first community of the promise –whose lives had been invaded by transcendence, now sharing together the secret of the universe’s redemption, along with the mundane and challenging ins and outs of pregnancy?  Mary stayed with Elizabeth until John was born, probably assisting with the birth and celebrating with them, before setting out for home, 3-4 months pregnant by that time. Remember, it’s a several day, nearly 100-mile journey. 

A few months later, when Mary and Joseph set out for Bethlehem, they followed the same path Mary took, and arrived at their destination, about four miles past Elizabeth and Zechariah’s town.  While they were there, Mary’s time to deliver arrived.  Elizabeth was probably there with Mary for the birth of Jesus. How could she miss it?  God had given them to each other to share this experience; why wouldn’t Elizabeth come and help?  Maybe there was no room for them in the guest room because little Baby John and Zechariah were sleeping there!  Who knows? But the not knowing opens up the chance to consider how else God might have been at work.  

Because I think of Joseph - now in on this story too, it’s become his destiny, his purpose. The angel came to him in a dream and he is now becoming Father of the Messiah.  But he didn’t have a community, like Mary did, to share this.  What if he is given Zechariah?  What if, after his own angel encounter, and the nine months on the sidelines while the Holy Spirit worked in these two women’s wombs and he adjusted to being part of the story of God’s inbreaking, in all that silence, Zechariah now gets to share the words of hard-won wisdom with Joseph?

After Jesus is born, Mary and Joseph settle in Bethlehem for a while. Joseph works as a carpenter and they figure out how to be a family and how to be parents, and what to do with all they know of God’s plan, which isn’t much at this point but that heaven has invaded earth and God has entered in, holding this reality alongside the reality of diapers and spit up and teething and the ordinary business of raising a baby.  

And surely these days they must have gazed at his tiny features, bleary with new parent fatigue, searching for signs of divinity in his perfectly human baby face.  And probably Mary still pondered all these things in her heart on a regular basis. I like to think they stayed friends with the shepherds and regularly shared potlucks or campfire sing-alongs. Maybe a couple of them especially took a liking to the child, and Uncle Omar and Uncle Seth carved toy sheep for the toddler Jesus.

Meanwhile, the moment Jesus is born, a strange star, or light, rises in the sky and astrologers from a far-off land – with completely different customs, religion, beliefs, practices, outside the perimeters of this story so far -  set out to discover the King they believe has come.  And God is getting ready to shake the stories again - Herod’s story of his own power and invincibility, and likely Mary and Joseph’s story of a Jewish Messiah, come to overthrow the oppressors and set Israel free.  
God is coming for a different reason, for a purpose beyond the stories they’ve told for generations.  God is coming for the whole world.

The Magi who come bring three gifts, but there were not likely just three of them.  It could’ve been a whole contingent; all we know from the language is that there was more than one.  It takes these travelers many months, likely up to two years, to reach the Holy Family. Jesus is quite certainly no longer in the manger, and probably not even still in diapers.

They come into town and meet with King Herod, getting their own jolt that the King they seek is not the king of this land, nor was he born in the palace to royalty of any kind.  Instead, when they finally find him, he is in a peasant’s home, with his mother. Perhaps he is just finishing lunch, or helping with the chickens, or playing with his carved sheep while she hangs the wash. 

I love imagining the Magi’s arrival and how things might have gone from there. How did they communicate back and forth? What languages or gestures did they use? How did the stories come out? Was there a big “reunion of those who are in on what God is up to” party with the shepherds and Elizabeth and Zechariah and little John?  After that long, undoubtedly grueling journey, how long did they stay? Weeks? Months? Just a few days?  Just a few hours?  Did they all crowd into Mary & Joseph’s guest room? Or was there no room, so they pitched tents nearby, or spread out into neighbor’s guest rooms? Did their arrival do anything to Mary’s pondering?  What was it like for Joseph’s faith and sense of the future to welcome these seekers from so far away?

And then a dream warns the visitors to go home by another road.  And then an angel tells Joseph to take the child and his mother and flee as refugees to Egypt, while the mad King Herod seeks to squash the potential threat to his throne.  And the one person in the story with a ton of power rages and kills and destroys and tries to cement his hold, and is dead from some really awful and painful illness less than two years later.  And the little family comes back from Egypt and returns, finally, to Nazareth.

Here is what all this is to say – we don’t really know how it happened.   We tell the story the way we’ve heard it, shaped by others’ stories, like, “mangers are in stables,” or “Messiahs belong to the Israelites,” but the realty was real– it was real people’s lives with real fear and real courage and real boredom and real confusion and real pain.  

God came into the real. God was born as an ordinary peasant child into a Middle Eastern, 1^stcentury village life.  These specific people- first some shepherds, and then some mystical foreigners from far away - got to meet him in the flesh – to hold him and hear him cry and see him drift off to sleep or wake up looking for his mommy.  They got to see him in with his dad, learning how to be human, with the walking and the talking, like every other one of us before and after him.  

God did this.  God came into this real world.  And God came for the whole world, beyond all our distinctions of nation and language and religion and difference and no powers that be could stop him.  God came for the entire universe, and even the heavenly bodies got in on it – broadcasting the message to any who would notice and follow that star.  

Beyond the material world, there is a reality of transcendence that we can’t begin to even contemplate.  And from outside our time and space and stories, God has come as far in as it is possible to enter, right into the thick of it alongside us, as vulnerable as we come.  This is real.  God is always coming in to the real.  And God is always beckoning us to lift our heads and let the light in, to open our hearts and receive the mystery.

But sometimes we get trapped in our stories. Our crowded stables and selfish innkeepers block the view of a star that shines where it shouldn’t be, brighter than it should be, calling us into the unknown to trust and seek and follow the God from outside who comes in.

Christmas has become a fairy tale.  But it really happened. And not necessarily like we think or have been told. God has become a fairy tale.  But God is really here.  And not necessarily like we think or have been told.

We’re in our year-long journey with grace, the abundance of God’s Yes to us. 

Here we begin "Grace in Presence."

Grace in the presence of God, both mysterious and unknowable, and also coming near, as ordinary as you and me.  

Grace in the presence of strangers, unexpectedly affirming the bigger picture, inviting us to reconsider our stories and open our hearts wider. 

Grace in the presence of those who are in on what God is up to, trusting alongside one another, feeling their way through together, and helping each other adjust to being part of the story of God’s in-breaking.  

God meets us with grace when we refuse to settle for stories and instead seek to be present to the real experience, in all its clarity and muddiness, all it’s ambivalence and fear, all its joy and sorrow.  That’s where God is.  Because that’s who God is now: Emmanual, God With Us.

(For more historical detail, see "The Manger and the Inn: A Middle Eastern View of the Birth Story, by Ken Bailey)

Epiphany's question

Ethiopian Magi, from a photo online by Patrick Comerford

Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany has come to be known as the celebration of the three kings’ encounter with Jesus, only in this text there are only two kings, and neither of them are the Magi. 

Our passage begins “in the time of King Herod”, and I translate, “In the time of a notorious authoritarian demagogue, enormously wealthy and notably insecure, a ruler obsessed with his reputation, who both taxed the people extensively and offered extensive job creation on vast construction projects throughout the kingdom designed to build up his name. Herod was a sovereign answerable to a foreign government, who spent lavish sums of money building up his own private empire and secure fortresses, whose rule was characterized by security measures aimed at suppressing the people’s contempt for him and keeping them from speaking out, and whom history remembers for both for his successes and his tyrannical despotism, in that  time…”

In the time of that “king”’s rule, comes another king.

A baby, born amidst a bit of scandal and a shotgun wedding to a carpenter and his young bride in Bethlehem of Judea, which, to translate again, means either born in a tiny, nowhere town on the outskirts and in the shadow of powerful Jerusalem, or means to be born in a place of deep significance – the city of David, where David was born, and later anointed by Samuel, and then later crowned King of Israel. The place where the matriarch Rachel, Jacob’s wife, was buried many generations before, (her tomb is at the entrance to town). The place where Ruth and Naomi returned and lived. To the seat of power Bethlehem of Judea was an unassuming little town.  To the people of Israel, it was a city of identity and symbolism, a city of prophets, and kings, and divine direction “from of old.” 

We’re not even one whole line into this story and it’s already dangerous and provocative!

So what we’ve read so far could be stated, in other words, “In the time of a flashy, demagogue king of commercial success and paranoid dominance known throughout the region as “the king of the Jews”, after the King of the Cosmos was born, when the Messiah was a toddler hiding in plain sight in the modest, secret place of divine promise and deep and ancient authority…”

In THIS time…

some magi came from the East to the center of Herod’s power asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him…

Now, while there actually are some wise men in this story. Scholars, sages, scribes – they are not the magi, they are Herod’s advisors. The ones who are gathered to tell the one in power what he wants to hear. These chief priests and the rulers of the people confirm what the prophets foretold – that the messiah would come from Bethlehem. 

But the ones who followed a star from a distant land, the strangers, foreigners who didn’t belong in the picture, they were magicians, astrologers, mystics with a vastly different worldview and understanding of the universe than anyone else here.

And they were the ones who really knew what was going on. They came in obedience, following a celestial sign, and when they arrived they were overwhelmed with joy, and they humbled themselves before a child and a woman. And then, not one bit deferential to the whims and commands of the so-called rulers of this age, they defied orders and went home by another way. Their direction came from the Creator of the universe, who guided them with stars and dreams, and revealed himself to them in the vulnerability of a child whose life was under threat from those whom the world saw as powerful.

I love this story so much for so many reasons. I love imagining the Magi showing up, and what it does to the neighborhood. Their otherness: Other clothes, other language, other skin, and hair, and smells, and mannerisms, and customs. The little town is invaded by otherness, in the form of these people who recognized, and came to celebrate, that this whole world has been invaded by otherness: “The word became flesh and made his home among us.” God has come in! Their arrival declares, and now resides, incognito, next door.

And I love imagining Mary and Joseph’s tiny circle of co-conspirators and witnesses, those on the inside who get what is going on – which so far, if we’re counting, has only been the two of them, Zechariah and Elizabeth, a bunch of random shepherds – whom I like to imagine them staying in touch with – and old Simeon and Anna from the temple.  Can you imagine that crazy hodgepodge getting together for a support group?  You have all been part of this amazing thing, this story that is changing the world has changed you, and nobody else will get it, but as different as you all may be, you have each other, you all are in it together.

But then suddenly this tiny circle is blown wide open by these people from the other side of the world, who have nothing in common with any of you – they haven’t shared the same messiah hopes, or the same ways of being captive or oppressed. They haven’t learned the stories or believed the prophets; they haven’t longed for the salvation of Israel, and they know nothing of David, or Moses, or Abraham and Sarah, any of those whose lives had gone before, through whom God has shaped the way.

 

Here come the astrologers. The ones who aren’t even looking like you do to your God and faith of your people- instead they are looking beyond this planet altogether for direction. They are watching the stars and measuring the universe for order and revelation, and their story of longing for hope and deliverance couldn’t be more different than yours.  But also, at its essence, it is absolutely the same.  We all long for our source, the source of all life.  And when love comes in, they will load up their camels and cross deserts and mountains to welcome it, to kneel down before the one who brings in the real, who brings salvation. And in wonder you discover that you are in it together far beyond how you ever fathomed together could mean.

Two stories are playing out at the same time.

One is the story of a so-called king, locked away in his fortress, raging in fear, perceiving threats to his power and authority, using manipulation and flattery to coerce strangers- as though they are under his jurisdiction – to do his bidding, so that he can stamp out a potential usurper by any means necessary.

The other one unfolds in a simple home on a simple street, with an ordinary family opening the door to astonishing strangers from afar, who unexpectedly kneel before a mother with a child on her lap, and then give strange gifts and tell strange stories in a strange language, with charades and hand gestures, of a long journey led by a mysterious star, the very heavens pointing them to this precise place.

Oh, Herod. This story is so much bigger than you. It’s so much longer, deeper, stronger and more significant.  God is doing this thing.  God has come, God is here – and this thing is moving toward its eternal and everlasting conclusion.

No matter how it looks on the surface at any given moment, the heartbeat underneath is love, and the project of a whole world indivisibly connected to God and each other, of all nature in harmony, and all people in family, with God as the true sovereign, who rules in disconcerting vulnerability and incontestable strength – like it or not, that is happening. 

And it can never be thwarted. Not by ego-maniacal leaders, not by the wisdom of the sages, not by coercion or might, or brutal violence or tragic suffering, not by anything human beings can forget or demand, or screw up or succeed at.  Nothing we can do, or not do, can stop what God is already doing. It is unstoppable.

And yes, we do a whole lot to muck it up –accidentally or on purpose.  We can act like we are divided, we can kill, and blame, and shut down, and overlook each other. We can contaminate the earth and wipe out whole species; we can ravage our own hearts and minds and go numb or afraid – and fear can make us do terrible, heartless things. But no matter what, God is doing this.

It can happen through us or it can happen in spite of us, but God’s project of redemption and wholeness is under way, and it will not stop until all that remains is love.

Today’s scripture is a story about some, one especially, who missed it. Who lived in the way of fear, obsessed with his own security and power – and ultimately lost it anyway because death is real, triumph is short-lived, and permanent success is an illusion. 

And it’s a story about some who got it. They set down everything and went on a long journey to lay themselves down at the feet of it, to welcome in the divine with ecstatic joy.  They let it shape them, each moment, taking it in, noticing, listening, sharing, and then getting up and going home by another way because ultimately security comes not from what we build up for ourselves or tear down in others, but from trusting our lives to the Great I Am, who directs the whole universe in true wisdom. 

And even when this King, who starts out his time here submitting completely into the arms and care of those made in his image, grows up to be killed by these he has come in to love and save, even that does not stop the project, it only cements it deeper and opens it wider.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Not ever.

We have a choice. We can look at what is right in front of us at any given moment, and we can live in fear. We can believe that the powers that rattle their sabers are the real powers, and that the terrible damage they can do – and they can do terrible damage – can break us, or make the world go off course.

But we are the others, brought into this story not through the genealogy and messianic longings of our people, but through the strangers who followed the stars. We are people called to lift our eyes to a further horizon.

The whole world is in on this conspiracy.  Every blade of grass, and creeping insect; every daily sunrise and blazing planet, light years away.  We are people of this infinite vista, this vast, cosmic perspective, not bound to look only to the situations in front of us like Herods, captive in fear to events and circumstances by which we stand or fall, driven to go after our enemies or hide in fortresses of false security.

We belong to another narrative; we are subjects of another king: the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, eternal and omnipotent. 

And this King has come; and now there is nothing, not anything, that can separate us from the love of God.  God’s redemption is under way already and forever. 

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. 
For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. 
Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.


Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms. 
Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice.

In the tides of history, there is, as Ecclesiastes says, nothing new under the sun.  Nations rise and fall. Great leaders come and go, fools rise up and disappear, fear dominates and wars rage, babies are born and gardens are tended and beloveds die and are buried, their graves are covered with new fallen snow, and the sun melts the snow and spring comes again, and love, love, love, happens, in between, in all the nooks and crannies, weaving us together and weaving us into the story that cannot be derailed.  God’s story.  There is never anything so bad that it can alter the origin or the outcome – it all comes from God and to God it all returns.

And in the in between time, God comes to share it. 

And I, for one, want to share it too. I want to be in it together with all the otherness and beauty that is in it with me.

And I want to know that I am in it while it’s happening, not just when it’s all over, looking back to see that I mostly missed it.

I for one want to be guided by the deeper, eternal force of love, instead of the shallow whims of panic, the rise and fall of drama and dread, addicted to the non-stop fluctuations of worry, frenzy and regret.

This is God’s world. We are just living in it.

And whenever I feel rage, despair, or frustration at how things seem to be going, I want to remember that I have a choice.

I could stop. At any moment.

And I could quiet myself.

And notice, and let myself plug back into the real – where nothing can stop love and forgiveness, nothing can hinder hope and healing – not the most terrible thing I can imagine can stop God from acting. 

And I could remember that God wants to act through me.

And that I want God to act through me.

THAT’S the story I want to be in.

The one where I kneel before the hidden, humble king, a baby savior, who saves us from all the darkness within and without. The One who brings together strangers to surrender in joy to the love and hope embodied in their midst.

I want to be in the story where I hang onto ancient and cosmic promise

and don’t cower at bullies or venerate false power,

where I pay attention to dreams,

and find solidarity with people I think of as other,

and bear gifts for the unsuspecting,

and gladly lay down my life, a gift of gratitude to the God who comes in,

and am made willing to be redirected and sent home another way.

Fear and love. 

Power and weakness.

Rulers and strangers.

In those days, in these days.

Two stories unfold; two stories are always unfolding.

One, as dominant as it sometimes seems, and as compelling as it often appears, will end. It is mostly illusion, anyway.

The other story is the story of God.

Eternal and unstoppable.

Which story will you live?

Amen.