Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
Epiphany: January 2, 2011
So, here we are: Epiphany Sunday. This is one of those days in the church calendar when the lectionary texts are the same every year. Every year on Epiphany Sunday we read the story of the three magi from the gospel of Matthew, along with Isaiah 60 from the Hebrew Bible. Ever since the 4th century, maybe even earlier, most of the Christian church has celebrated Epiphany 6 – 12 days after Christmas. And they used the story of the magi coming from a distant and foreign land, bringing their gold, frankincense, and myrrh to honor the new born Jesus – the future ruler of the Jews. How obvious, then, for those in the 20th century who designed our lectionary to connect Matthew 2 with Isaiah 60. Isaiah 60 tells of a day when people from other nations shall come to Jerusalem in response to the God of Israel’s greatness bringing with them their gold and frankincense. Those lectionary folks are pretty clever.
Or are they? The story in Matthew talks of gold and frankincense and people coming from all over to worship God, like Isaiah, but when the magi show up at King Herod’s palace looking for this new baby king, and Herod seeks counsel from the biblical scholars of his day as to where this special baby was born, it is not Isaiah that the scholars quote. Not even close. Isaiah is a grand vision, of a great Jerusalem and a great God. Wealth, pomp, and glory; it’s the majestic story of Zion! Instead, when Herod asked the scholars where this new “ruler of the Jews” was to be born, they answered by quoting an entirely different prophet – a prophet not included in our lectionary text today or any other year at Epiphany. They told him, this new king of the Jews was born “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6‘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.’” This is a quote from Micah (5:2), and when king Herod tells the magi of this, they realize that they are six miles off the mark.
Bethlehem is six miles south of Jerusalem. The magi had come to Jerusalem looking for this king, expecting the king to be there; maybe even in the palace itself, because Jerusalem was the center of hope and possibility and power: it was Zion and that was where any new king would rule. It was exactly the right place to go – the seat of power – to look for a new ruler; except it wasn’t – they were wrong. They were off by six miles; just six miles – but in theological terms, those six miles could not be more significant, not to mention difficult to traverse.
The story of Epiphany is the story of these two human communities: Jerusalem, with its great pretentions, and powerful rulers, and Bethlehem, with its modest promise of a ruler that would shepherd, not exercise power over, the people. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish power – Bethlehem was a place of hurting and humble people. After Christmas, Epiphany offers us a choice…a major life choice. We can choose a “return to normalcy” where we look to the seats of power and majesty for our salvation. Or we can choose an alternative that comes in innocence and a hope that confounds our usual expectations. We can receive life given in vulnerability.
What would it mean for us to travel that six miles like the magi so willing did? Where is our seat of power – our Jerusalem – and where can we find Bethlehem where God is intensely, personally active – and where God is calling us to go? Bethlehem may be thousands of miles from here – but like the six miles between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it may be right in our back yard and we just haven’t traveled the six blocks to find God at work there. There are multiple worlds right here in Grinnell, multiple realities, and they are as different from one another as Bethlehem was from Jerusalem. And though blocks apart, the psychic, theological distance between those worlds is both large and hard to travel.
One reason the six miles is hard to travel is that we may be getting bogus directions. We’re listening to Isaiah 60 with all its grand promises and a God who sets things right once the people remember their covenant and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We are often told that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough, make the right decisions, take responsibility for their lives. But that is a view from Jerusalem the world in which we move and the place we look to for our worldview most of the time.
We believe we know what the proper rules are – what is necessary to govern life in our country. When elections come around, every candidate is telling us how they can make life better for us and our family. The idea is that we decide which candidate really can make our lives better. And then we vote for them. We seek ways to restore Jerusalem to its former glory – economic prosperity and rising prices on Wall Street…because that’s what benefits us. But what about those living in Bethlehem; most of the time, when leaders in Jerusalem work to make life better, it’s for the elite and well connected.
Jews living under Herod’s rule had no say in who governed, yet they were subject to whatever Herod decided – and he really was not that magnanimous. Today in the United States there are no kings, but the poor lack lobbyists, and they generally don’t come out to vote because their lives are too chaotic and overwhelming. Yet decisions are made all the time that affect them – for some who live right on the line, one change in law in Washington can mean the difference between having enough for housing and food and not having what they need.
Think about it: We know it’s a full time job to keep track of what bills are before Congress and how they will affect our lives so that we can lobby for what we want. That’s why there are full time lobbyists. People are paid to do that on behalf of corporations and interest groups. And there’s nothing wrong with that. A democracy depends on everyone having a voice and offering their opinion about what is best for the country. Everyone…the rich, the corporations, the small businesses, the middle class, the poor. Ah, the poor..Who is watching out for the poor in the Bethlehem’s of this world? They are not a bloc of organized voters, they are not an interest group hiring lobbyists and staying on top of what happens in Washington, or their state or city for that matter. Their voice is absent. Yet they are subject to the whims of the rulers; who sometimes make life a little easier, and sometimes are like King Herod, living off the backs of the poor in order to better the lives of those who vote.
Our system – our worldview – is all based on looking to Jerusalem for our salvation. We believe we have power over our lives because we can vote and lobby and write and seek our own betterment. We believe – and perhaps rightly – that system can work for us and it’s ours to shape. But whether things are going well or horribly, our system will never protect the poor from the whims of government. For that, we need to turn to the God of Bethlehem. It’s easy for us to look to Jerusalem, to trust in the leaders who are, at least ostensibly, working in our interest. We’re comfortable there. What would it mean to make the six mile trek to Bethlehem to find God and learn a new system that protects those God most favors…the poor?
The magi come to this other world of Bethlehem where the poor and humble live, because this is where they are told the new ruler would be – the one who would replace the current leaders and systems of oppression. They come to give of themselves, and to pay homage. When they get there they see – they understand – God rules not like Herod, but rules through vulnerability and for the vulnerable. It is that God, that ruler, we are to look to for salvation, shalom – wholeness, restoration, justice and peace. They got it, and they are changed…no longer will they look to Herod for answers, only God-born-in-a-manger. They are changed.
We know this because when they go home the text is very careful to tell us they go home by a different road: They do not go through Jerusalem. They are done with Jerusalem. They are done with business as usual. They are ready to go to the margins of the world and be a part of God’s work. We have to go to Bethlehem to see for ourselves. We have to spend time in world unlike ours. We have to find those places that are not well served by Jerusalem and its rulers. We have to see what it means to be a child living in poverty, unable to change their situation; parents without work because the powerful were careless with ethics. We need to go spend time listening to families and seeing where they live. Then and there we will see God and understand how God responds to Jerusalem and its rulers. But we have to go – we have to go the six miles.
Some are called to relocate in Bethlehem, to relocate to those places where vulnerability reigns supreme and live and work there. But most, like the magi, are called to go to Bethlehem and then return home, but by a different route – changed by the trip to the whole new world six miles away. Many of us will continue to live right here in Grinnell. But from our current location, we can choose to be ruled by those in Jerusalem – who allow the poor to suffer and keep the vulnerable down, or by the God of Bethlehem who is with the poor and shepherding us to a new life.
What does this choice look like? If we are changed by our six mile journey and we choose the new way of life, how do we extricate ourselves from the world and power of Jerusalem in order to be a part of God’s work in the Bethlehem right in our own back yard? How do we, like the magi, move ourselves outside the reach of the King Herods of the day? I think the King Herods are more difficult to identify these days. Here in the United States it’s not some all powerful dictator who controls every aspect of our lives. But the kings are there – those things that not only control us, but those things and systems that keep the suffering suffering, and the powerful powerful. These kings are more subtle: like the king of needing to be accepted, or the king of money, or the king of perfectionism, or the king of violence. All of which can have the same daily power over us as King Herod had over the people of his time. But when we travel the six miles, when we see a God who works in ways so different from these other kings, when we see what allegiance to our kings is doing to other people, we see the choice and find the courage to reject our kings and accept the way of God born-in-Bethlehem.
I think if we travel the six miles, spend time with the poor…spend time in Bethlehem…it will compel us outside of ourselves – we will move out from under the things that rule us because we find life and hope in the God we meet at the manger. And once we have been there and decided to give over our lives and world riches to this new ruler, when we turn to come home, we will know a new way to live, a new way of being in this world. Amen.
