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“The Other Road”
They are just twelve verses—and only in Matthew. But what an offering, like a flower presented to Jesus by his disciple, Matthew, as an expression of his faith.
The common wisdom is that Matthew was a tax-collector before he became a follower of Jesus (when his name changed to Levi) As a tax collector, he was despised by those he taxed. But, for a moment before we enter his story of the wise men, just think about Matthew for a moment.
As a tax-collector, he was employed
by Herod near or at
Luke says that Levi entertained Jesus and a large company of tax collectors at a banquet in his home . In other words, he was respected among his colleagues and wealthy enough to afford a big house suited for entertaining friends, colleagues, and clients.
And, lest we overlook the obvious, Matthew wrote a Gospel…the long one…with a clear structure…and very artistically. In short, he was a very well educated man…a graduate of Yale, I’m sure.
Considering this about him, maybe it’s not all that unusual that Matthew, of all the Gospel writers, would include a story about three wise men—or were they kings?—as a high conclusion to Christmas story. The story certainly seems to connect with Matthew’s station in life—professionally respected, materially affluent, world-aware, and intellectually educated…and with many of ours as well.
And what a masterpiece his pen offers! Think of the truths Matthew manages to express in just twelve verses:
The truth that people come from afar and by many ways to worship Christ
The truth that no place is too lowly to kneel in;
The truth that as knowledge grows so also must reverence and love grow, else
doubts will paralyze and too much learning dry the heart.
And what of the image of the star, God’s sign set high in the mystery of the night
sky
over
longing not for mother or father, or loved, or grocer or doctor, but for something more that can be answered only from beyond our earth—beyond all our stations and ambitions in it. Yet a sign is only a sign, and the choice remains ours to journey toward it or to stay stuck wherever we are.
That the choice of how to respond to a sign from God is always ours to make—that truth comes through powerfully in Matthew.
Don’t you find it interesting that, although they lived just six miles north of Bethlehem, that Herod and “all Jerusalem” (as Matthew refers to the witty, polished, urbane Jerusalemites who surrounded the king) never saw the star until the strangers from distant lands pointed it out to them. I suppose they were too preoccupied with their own earthly lights to see the heavenly light. I suppose—to paraphrase Thoreau—that for every truly discerning, foreseeing, wise person there are 999 people who are unable to see beyond their noses.
And when they heard the strangers’ announcement of the birth
of the new child, what was their reaction? Hostility, of course—“Herod the king
was troubled and all
And the religious leaders of the day?
You’d think they would have been terrifically excited at the fulfillment of the
prophecy they all knew so well; you’d think they would have leapt at the chance
to join the wise men on the last leg of their journey—all of six miles. But no,
rather than go to
These are two choices before us following Christmas. With Herod and the sophisticated Jerusalemites we can choose to be hostile to Christ. With the chief priests and scribes we can choose to be indifferent to him, to be devoted to religion (to passionate spirituality even) but not to Christ.
But there is a third choice…another road. There is the response the respected, affluent, and educated Matthew took--the response wise men—or, following a later tradition harking back to a prophecy in Isaiah—the kings—who responded to the announcement of Christ’s birth with worship.
We, too, like Matthew, need to worship, we who rush around like squirrels for
acorns.
We need to worship, we who subordinate our lives to work and thereby jeopardize
our families and lose our own souls.
We need to worship, we who are lonely to the point of hanging on by our
fingernails to what little faith we have.
We need to worship, we who go it alone following the siren song of the self-made
man or woman, even though we know all along that we have not been nor eve shall be.
We need to worship; for God is, we are, and in that relationship is the basis of all
life worth living…even, especially, for the wise and wealthy, the powerful and pedigreed..
And what symbolism there is in their royal gifts to the Christ-child—gold, frankincense, and myrrh!
Gold, of course, represents our worldly substance—our households and all the stuff in them, our investment portfolios and the like, which cry out these days as much as ever to be dedicated to Christ. Look carefully and prayerfully at the widening gap between rich and poor, the billions spent on war with others, on defense of ourselves. And imagine them offered to Christ!
Frankincense has come to represent our innermost thoughts, which along with our worldly goods these wise men-kings offer to Christ. Often we talk—I talk—of the pursuit of truth as if truth were something not just elusive but evasive, dodging and hiding from the personal exposure which truths brings. Certainly the truth we see in Christ is one that searches for us, seeking to deepen our innermost thoughts and redirect them from selfish interests toward God and our neighbors.
And finally, because it is used in embalming, myrrh has come to stand for our sorrow and suffering, the hardest things, perhaps, to dedicate to Christ. When we lose something near and dear to us—a marriage through divorce, our children through tragedy, our parents through age or Alzheimer’s, a long and happily held job through attrition or downsizing or through some principality or power we cannot control, we often turn away from God, forgetting that God’s heart is as broken as our own and God’s tears the first to fall.
And sometimes what these moments reveal is a hard truth: namely, that we have been using God to realize our ambitions—good ambitions, but ours nonetheless—rather than make ourselves available to God to fulfill divine ambitions through us. If God can use our money, if God can use our innermost thoughts, how much more can God do with our suffering and our sorrow; and in handing over our to God our suffering and sorrow, therein lies our best hope, in God’s gracious time, for healing broken hearts.
Dearly beloved, and especially you dearly beloved new Elders
and Deacons, on this Epiphany Sunday, let us join the wise men/kings and go to
.