Matthew 2:1-12
1 In the time of King Herod,
after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to
Jerusalem, 2 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." 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all
Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of
the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told
him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6
"And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the
rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people
Israel.'" 7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from
them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to
Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you
have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage." 9
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the
star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where
the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were
overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary
his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their
treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12
And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their
own country by another road.
One of my favorite movies of all time came out
in 1996. The name of the movie is Sling
Blade; it was written and directed by Billy Bob Thornton, who also stars as
the lead in the movie, a man named Karl who has recently been released from a
state hospital to start his life over again in the midst of the all-too-real
drama that takes place in a small, rural town in Arkansas.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie takes place at the small engine
repair shop owned by a man named Bill Cox; Karl has been set up with a job and
a place to stay there. One day, this customer comes in with a lawnmower that
just won’t start. I mean he’s tried everything. He says he’s gone over it more
than once and it seems to be put together right; he just can’t figure out why
the stubborn thing won’t start (if you’ve ever owned a push mower in the middle
of the summer when the grass gets a little too high, then you can sympathize
with this guy and his frustration). Bill hollers for Karl to come over and look
at the mower, all the while lauding the way in which Karl can fix anything: he
says, “[Karl]’s a whiz when it comes to small engines.” Well, Bill and his
customer go on and on about how frustrating it can be to repair these little
lawnmowers, and how they wouldn’t be all that surprised if it just wouldn’t
start…that is until Karl walks over and, ever so subtly, kneels down next to
the mower, slowly unscrews the pot-metal cap on the engine’s gas tank, then
looks up at the two of them and says, “It ain’t got no gas in it.”
Isn’t it something the way we can look right over the solution to our
problem or the thing we’re most anxious to find when it’s right there in front
of us? I mean, how many times have you ever lost something, tore your house
apart looking for it, only to have someone come right in after you and find it
sitting right where you left it on the kitchen table? Or how many of you (like
me) have ever gone to the store with the determination to find one particular
item, but after walking up and down every single aisle you give up, only then
to discover on your way out the door that it was on the huge, can’t-miss
display right at the entrance? It’s frustrating when we miss something that was
right there in front of our noses the whole time. It can be even more
frustrating, not to mention embarrassing, when someone else—a stranger no
less—comes along to point out our ignorance, to discover what we’ve been
looking for all along.
The Jewish people of the first century had been looking for something for
a long time. For generations they had been waiting, looking for a מָשִׁיחַ (meshiach), a messiah, literally an
“anointed one.” From (at least) the time the Babylonians carted away the best,
brightest, and powerful from Judah in the sixth century B.C., the people had
been looking for God’s anointed one to rescue them from the domination and
oppression of a foreign people. They waited, and at times it seemed almost as
if God had delivered to them their messiah: the scribe Ezra and the prophet
Isaiah called the Persian king Cyrus “messiah” after he conquered the
Babylonians and decreed that the Jews could return to their homeland and
rebuild their temple and their lives. Of course, Cyrus was only a type of messiah, one who liberated the
Jews from Babylonian captivity while keeping them under his rule in the Persian
Empire. There would be other rulers, other emperors after Cyrus, and the Jewish
people—the people of God—would continue to search for signs, waiting for the
arrival of God’s anointed.
Then,
in the second century B.C., it seemed as if they had finally found their messiah
in a warrior named Judas. Judas Maccabeus (or Judas “the Hammer”) came into
history like a whirlwind; he led the charge in the seven-year-long Maccabean
Revolt and took Jerusalem back from the Seleucid Empire, rededicating the
Temple and reinstating Jewish rule in the land of Judea.[1]
Surely this was the long-awaited messiah, ruling Judea and driving out the
foreign oppressors. But, like so many hopeful messiahs through the generations,
Judas “the Hammer” was only a flash in the pan, for it wasn’t much longer
before the Romans conquered Jerusalem, adding it to their expanding empire, and
in the year 37 B.C. they installed their own king in Judea—a half-Jewish,
half-Idumean political mastermind who would come to be called Herod the Great.[2]
Under
Herod’s reign the people lived in fear of the king’s erratic temper, his
paranoia, and his willingness to do whatever it took to preserve his
position—even killing his own sons.[3]
Herod was a terrifying force, and few, if any, looked to him as God’s promised
one, their messiah. So the people were still looking, still searching, still waiting
for God’s anointed one, God’s messiah to show up. They prayed and made
sacrifices in the Temple; they questioned the scribes, priests, and rabbis, who
in turned scoured the Scriptures, hoping to find the slightest hints as to
where and when they might look for a messiah and just who would that person be.
They lived in an era of expectation, for it seemed the entire world was
watching, waiting for something or someone to break loose into history. But
again it seemed as if one of the great ironies of human existence had infected
those with eyes to see and ears to hear, for it wasn’t until a few foreigners—likely
from the former kingdoms of Babylon and Persia no less!—showed up in Herod’s court
that the talk of a messiah began to bear fruit in reality.
Matthew
tells us in verse one of our passage
this morning, “In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was
born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men [or magi] from the East came to Jerusalem.”
These magi ask the king in verse two, "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." Now, as you might imagine, this sends tremors through
Herod, an appointed king, a political pawn, as he’s confronted with the notion
that there might be a natural-born king, and when Herod got anxious and
frightened so did all the people, for they often received the full force of his
fear-filled reactions. But it’s verses
four through six that are telling to me: “calling together all the chief
priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to
be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by
the prophet: "And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means
least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to
shepherd my people Israel.”'"
The king of Judea, the chief priests, and the scribes (teachers of
Scriptures) have come to the conclusion that the Messiah—the long-awaited,
hoped-for, anticipated Messiah—will be born in the little backwater Bethlehem,
the birthplace of that most popular king of Hebrew history, David. They come to
this conclusion, but notice there are no plans made to join the magi caravan,
no announcement proclaimed about his birth. The governing and religious powers
simply plot to find out more about this so-called “child who has been born king of
the Jews” in verses seven
through nine, because Herod wants to put an end to the child’s reign before
it can begin! The very people who should have been most joyful about the
suspected news of the messiah’s birth, the ones who even possessed the
knowledge of his birthplace, are more intent on squashing rumors than seeking
truth! But oh how little we have learned from Herod and his court!
The insiders miss the truth;
their fear and self-centeredness blinded their eyes and deafened their ears to
who these outsiders, the magi were
and what they had to say. Over nine hundred miles the magi (who knows how many
there really were) traveled, propelled by the mere astrological suspicion that
a new king might be born in Judea. Through the perilous terrain and
robber-riddled roads of the Ancient Near East these enigmatic strangers had
travelled, and Matthew tells us in verses ten and eleven: “When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with
joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they
knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they
offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”
The ones who had been looking for generations missed what was right in
front of their noses. While strangers, outsiders, foreigners came and
worshipped in the home of the toddler crowned king before the foundations of
the world. The priests and scribes quoted the scripture from the sixth chapter
of Micah pointing to the Messiah’s birthplace with such ease and fluency yet
had no interest in finding if the messiah had arrived. Those in places of
authority, positions of power and influence had missed the messiah. They were
too occupied with ritual, regulations, and ruling power to be bothered by the
Epiphany of Messiah—or Christ. But these strangers, these foreign magi, they
knew. They found the messiah, and they worshipped him; they were overcome with
joy, not fear, devotion, not jealousy. When everyone else seemed to miss the
Christ’s arrival, these magi didn’t. Isn’t it something the way we can look
right over the solution to our problem or the thing we’re most anxious to find
when it’s right there in front of us? Isn’t it something when it takes a
stranger, an outsider, to find what we’re looking for to remind us of what
we’re trying to find?
I was sitting in a little tin shed called “The Rusty Star” as I often did
with my seminary mentor Joe. “The Rusty Star” was a little hole-in-the-wall
barbecue joint that smoked a brisket that even someone raised on pulled pork in
South Alabama might like. Joe was telling me a story about a church in another
part of Texas that had hosted a mission group from Central America one summer.
A few members of this group decided to drop in on a local church that was
having vacation Bible school that week, so they walked in the front door of the
sanctuary and sat in one of the pews about halfway down the aisle. Now, I’m not
sure what you’re used to during VBS, but it’s pretty common in smaller churches
to begin every day with a procession where the kids all march into the
sanctuary preceded by a Bible, a Christian flag, and an American flag. They
then proceed to lead the congregation in the three different pledge of
allegiance (now, how one person can pledge sole allegiance to three different
things is beyond me, but anyhow…).
Well, as you may imagine, the mission team from Central America was a bit
confused about what was going on; they had never seen such a thing before. In
the midst of their confusion, they didn’t cover their hearts and they didn’t
say the pledges (likely because they did not know them). This was intolerable
to a certain church member who happened to notice this apparent irreverence on
the part of these darker-skinned visitors, so he took it upon himself to march
across the sanctuary and loudly ask the visitors to leave the church building
since they refused to pledge allegiance to…the American flag. I suppose it was
obvious where he found his allegiance. Caught up in the ritual of VBS, immersed
in the culture of patriotism, blinded perhaps by the sins of a previous
generation, that church member didn't see his brothers and sisters in Christ;
he simply saw a few outsiders who didn’t salute and pledge. Isn’t it something
when it takes a stranger, an outsider, to find what we’re looking for to remind
us of what we’re trying to find?
The
Magi show us that Christ reveals himself to those who are truly seeking him,
not to those who long to preserve themselves, not to those with all the right
answers, not to those with all the power. Christ reveals himself to those who
are overcome with joy, those who seek to lose themselves, those who humbly
admit to having few answers, those without the power. May you come to see
Christ today.
Let us pray…
This was much better than our Epiphany sermon.
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