From the East

Matthew 2:1-12

December 6, 2020 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I know you’ve heard it; maybe you’ve said it or something like it. “Don’t go to that part of town. It’s too dangerous.” I remember being with a group driving through the south side of Chicago when someone said, “Roll up your windows. It’s dangerous here.” As if rolling up our windows would somehow protect us from harm! But I'm guessing you get it; from our earliest days we are conditioned to avoid strangers (cf. Robb, Making Room, pg. 29). “Stranger danger,” we tell our kids; strangers are scary. Pastor Ed Robb puts it this way: “What we don’t know about another person seems to threaten our own well-being” (29). Of course, not every child listens to or learns that lesson. I remember being at a McDonald’s play land and cautioning Christopher about some people he was talking to. “They’re strangers,” I told him. “You need to stay away.” Christopher, the extrovert that he is, looked back at me confused and said, “They’re not strangers, Dad. They’re just friends I haven’t met yet.” Even at a young age, Christopher understood more about the Gospel than his preacher dad did!

Because the story of Jesus ought to remind us that no one is really a stranger, and no one is outside the possibility of being transformed by the love of Jesus. Now sadly, we live in a world where caution is called for, especially with children. There are genuinely threatening (and I would say evil) people out there, but I sometimes wonder if our fear of others has become so deeply ingrained that even in adulthood we miss out on some wonderful opportunities to know really good people. And I also wonder what our persistent “stranger danger” mentality does to our discipleship and our ability to fully follow Jesus.

During this Advent season—this strange Advent season—we’re exploring the topic of community and how the Christmas story, the Nativity story, teaches us lessons of coming together and welcoming others. Last week, I hope you remember, we talked about ways to reach out in hospitality and ministry. By the way, we still have lots of Angel Tree gifts that need to be claimed, so if you can help with that yet, please contact Melissa Sawyer and get signed up. This morning, we’re going to go to the other end of the Christmas story, to the story of the Magi or the Wise Men, as we think about how our community needs to be much larger than we usually think it is. Let’s give a listen to our Scripture reading for this week.

Now, I know last week I blew up your manger scenes when I told you there was no donkey and no innkeeper in the story as told by Luke. This morning, I’m going to blow it up even more when I tell you that, according to Matthew, the Wise Men were not there on the night Jesus was born. Yes, I know the movies and many of our Nativity sets have the Wise Men showing up after the shepherds, but it’s more likely they came as much as two years after the birth. The text tells us Mary and Joseph have changed location from Luke’s story; they are no longer in the stable. They are in a house (2:11), maybe their own house or maybe they have moved into the main part of Joseph’s family house. I believe they had set up their home there in Bethlehem, perhaps with the intention of staying. There was work for Joseph the builder nearby in Jerusalem, and really, what was waiting for them back in Nazareth? We also know that when Herod (who we will get to in a moment) learns when the Magi first see the bright light, he proceeds to kill all the babies in Bethlehem who are two years old or under (2:16) which tells us Jesus  wasn’t just born the day before. He was born sometime in the last two years; Herod’s order is broad so as to make sure he doesn’t miss this threat to his throne.

The description of Herod also matches this time frame. As Herod grew older, he became, as one author describes him, “pathologically paranoid” (Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 32). When the Wise Men visit, it is probably in the last year of Herod’s reign. He has done everything he can to keep his hold on power, even though his claim to the throne was seen by most as illegitimate. He did not inherit his position; he was appointed by Rome to be a puppet king. And he was called Herod the Great not because he was a nice guy; he wasn’t. He had no problem killing anyone (including family) he saw as a threat. No, he was called “great” because he built so many things in and around Jerusalem. He built three major monuments to himself: a desert fortress on the top of Masada, a palace called Machaerus (where John the Baptist was beheaded) and a manmade mountain called Herodium. I’ve been to two of those (Masada and Herodium), and even today, two millennia later, they are still impressive building projects. Herod had incredible skills and incredible fear. By the time the Magi arrive, he is dying of gonorrhea and probably also of cancer. And so when these men arrive from Persia and announce they are looking for the newborn king of the Jews, all of Herod’s paranoia and fear is triggered (cf. Card 32).

Yes, the Magi came from Persia (modern-day Iraq), which is another part of why they could not have arrived the night Jesus was born. They followed a bright light for months as they traveled from the east to arrive in Israel. Now, let me blow up some more of your Nativity legends: I don’t believe they followed a “star.” At least not a star like we think of it. From our vantage point, stars don’t stay in one place. They don’t hang out over one location for, say, two years, and they aren’t low enough to be followed. Of course, their positions are stable enough that sailors can plot their courses by the position of the stars, but that’s as close as we get to stars leading people anywhere. So what was it the Magi saw? What did they follow? Well, you can call me crazy, and you can turn off the livestream right now, but I think it was an angel that led them. Angels are called “stars” at least six times in the Scriptures, and honestly, a bright shining angel leading the way would make a whole lot more sense. (C. S. Lewis also represented angelic beings as “stars” in his Chronicles of Narnia [The Voyage of the Dawn Treader].) I believe it was important enough for the Magi to make it to this toddler King that God sent an angel to lead them to the place where he was. It reminds us that there is nothing God won’t do to reach out to a heart that is open in even the slightest way (cf. Card, The Nazarene, pg. 20).

But here’s the bigger question, at least to me: how did their hearts get open? Why did they follow this bright light, this shining “star” (whatever it looked like)? Well, somehow, we know, they were at least vaguely familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures, what we know as the Old Testament. They were scholars of some sort, men who probably studied various religious traditions looking for wisdom. The Magi were an “elite political and spiritual” group who interpreted dreams, who studied the planets and stars, who were “possessors of secret knowledge” (cf. Card Matthew 32). Daniel, in the Old Testament, was counted among the Magi, and because of Daniel and others like him, the Magi had come into contact with the Jewish Scriptures. These writings had become part of their study, part of their accumulation of knowledge. They probably knew the Hebrew Scriptures better than the people back in Israel did! They studied all of these different religious texts, but there is still something in them that knows they have not found what their hearts’ desire yet. So somehow (we might say through the influence of the Holy Spirit), something stirred within them that put together the promises of the Scriptures with the appearance of the bright light in the sky. Somehow they knew—again, better than the people to whom the promise had originally been made—that the promise was finally being fulfilled. It was all coming true. And they wanted to be a part of it.s

And so they traveled—from Persia to Jerusalem, and then on to Bethlehem. And while we usually picture only three Magi (because Matthew mentions three gifts), we’re not really told how many Magi were part of the group. Such important people would probably travel with a large company of assistants and advisors. It wouldn’t have been unusual for them to arrive in Jerusalem with someone announcing ahead of them, “We’ve come looking for the newborn king.” I’m always struck by the fact that these Magi came from so far away, traveled for months and months to find the newborn king, yet the chief priests and teachers of the law, who know from Scripture where he is to be born, who live only 6 miles from the place where Jesus was—they weren’t interested, even after the Magi arrive, in going to see the toddler King. They stay in Jerusalem while the Magi journey on.

Now, I want to switch gears and look at this story from Joseph and Mary’s viewpoint, because even as a parent who hasn’t had a baby in the house in twenty years, I still remember how exhausting it was to be a new parent. I also remember how many unexpected visitors you get. Everyone wants to see the baby. Christopher was born in Muncie, and my folks live in Sedalia. He was born on a Tuesday, and they were there for the birth. On Sunday, they showed up at our house. “Oh,” they said, “We were going to Meijer in Kokomo and decided to swing by.” Friends, Muncie is an hour each way away from Kokomo. They drove two hours out of their way to see their first grandson. It’s sweet, and we enjoyed it, but as new parents, if you get a lot of visits, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. I’m trying to picture Mary and Joseph as newborn and even toddler parents. I mean, first there were those smelly shepherds who talked about the singing angels. Do you suppose Mary and Joseph might have seen the angels at some point, too? And of course there was Joseph’s family, who were always around and offering to “help.” And those of us who are parents know that you don’t get great sleep in the first several months anyway, especially the mother who is always half listening for her baby’s cry. After months and months of this, they have to be tired and weary of visitors. So then picture these Magi, these well-dressed strangers from the east, from a land that is basically unknown to them. Remember, we know (as the readers) that the Magi have come to worship the toddler King, but Mary and Joseph don’t know that. All they know is that there are (more) strangers outside their door who want to come in (cf. Robb 26).

What would you do? How would you react? And let's be honest; let's not give the “expected Christian answer.” There would be at least a part of us that would want to turn them away. They’re not known. They’re strangers. What do they want with us anyway? It’s the reason we have settings on our phones to “silence unknown callers” or have video doorbells so we can see who is at the door. Stranger danger—or stranger fatigue. And yet, Jesus grows up and is known for welcoming the stranger. Yes, I know he’s the Son of God, but he’s also fully human, and I have to think he learned that behavior, at least in part, from Joseph and Mary. Do you suppose, perhaps, Mary told this story every year on the anniversary of their visit, how the Magi showed up, unannounced, and how they were welcomed into the house. Maybe she told how they knelt down at the sight of Jesus, and how they presented him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh? In this case, showing hospitality and expanding their community brought blessings. But it doesn’t always. And yet, it’s still the thing to do if we want to live in the way Jesus taught.

Jesus went to a well in Samaria, where he waited until a woman approached. Most good Jews avoided the half-breed Samaritans, and no man was supposed to publicly talk to woman who wasn’t his wife. In fact, John says that’s what amazed the disciples—not that he was talking to a Samaritan, but that he was talking to a woman! Beyond that, everyone in town had rejected her. Yet Jesus engaged the conversation; she just wanted to get her water and head back to town without this stranger bothering her. But Jesus’ definition of community was much broader than hers was, broader than that of the disciples (cf. John 4:1-42). And there was another time that involved a Samaritan, when Jesus was challenged by an “expert in the law.” This expert knew God expected him to “love his neighbor,” but he wanted to know: “Who is my neighbor?” So Jesus told him a story, because stories have a way of slipping past our defenses. Jesus told him a story about a man who was beat up and left for dead along the side of the road. Two religious professionals came by and both ignored the man. There are a lot of reasons people give for why they did what they did, but that’s really not the point of the story. The point is they ignored him; they walked by. And the one who rescued him, who took him to a safe place, who paid for his care—that one was a Samaritan. Not a Jew. A despised Samaritan. A stranger. A foreigner and an outcast. That one had pity on him. That one saved his life. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus says (cf. Luke 10:25-37). Jesus’ community welcomed the stranger.

I suspect, too, that another event had an impact on Jesus’ broad definition of community, and it’s an event that happened right after the Magi’s visit (cf. Matthew 2:13-23). It’s an event that, in fact, saved his life. The Magi are warned in a dream that Herod is using them, and so they return home by a different route. They don’t go back to Herod like he expected them to, and when Herod realizes he’s been duped, he orders the murder of all the babies in Bethlehem. But before that order is carried out, an angel (could it have been the same angel who led the Magi to Bethlehem?) warns Joseph in a dream and tells him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt. So he does, in the middle of the night. Jesus spends part of his early life as a refugee. It's believed they spent quite a bit of time in Egypt, and when Rachel and I were in that nation, we visited several places that are set aside as traditional places where the Holy Family lived. Of course, we don’t know exactly where they went; we only know that they lived for a time in a land that was not their own and experienced the welcome and the care of the people of that land. Jesus was a refugee, a child without a home, and I believe that shaped his heart toward all of those, then and now, who are refugees and immigrants and strangers in a strange land. Because he was welcomed as a stranger, he calls us to welcome the stranger as well.

Today Lee Strobel is best known as the author of several books, including The Case for Christ, in which he investigated the truth of Christianity. Before he was a widely-known author he was a popular reporter for the Chicago Tribune, and in that capacity he once wrote a series of articles on Chicago's neediest people. One family he had highlighted were the Delgados: sixty-year-old Perfecta and her granddaughters, Lydia and Jenny. When Strobel visited them, he found them crammed into a small two-room apartment after being burned out of their roach-infested tenement. All they had to their names was a small kitchen table and a handful of rice. Nothing else. He found that the girls each owned a short-sleeved dress and shared a thin, gray sweater. When they walked to school in the windy, Chicago winter, Lydia would wear the sweater until halfway and then she would give it to her shivering sister for the rest of the walk. Still, Perfecta told Strobel, Jesus was with them. She had hope and peace because of her faith. A month later, on Christmas Eve, Strobel decided to pay another visit to the Delgados, to see how they were getting along. When he arrived at their home, he was amazed. Tribune readers had responded to Strobel's article by showering the Delgados with gifts: furniture, appliances, rugs, Christmas gifts, scarves, gloves, coats and thousands of dollars in cash. And before he could get over that shock, he learned what Perfecta and her granddaughters were doing for Christmas. They were giving most of it away. When he asked Perfecta why, she told him, “Our neighbors are still in need. We cannot have plenty while they have nothing. This is what Jesus would want us to do” (The Case for Christmas, pgs. 7-8, Kindle Edition). Strangers gave and an entire neighborhood was blessed. Generosity through the hands of people unknown, and lives were changed that they would never know. That’s a picture of welcoming the stranger, of blessing someone with grace.

Hospitality to the stranger is not just about providing financial support or tangible items, though that is of course often needed. But in light of all that has happened this year, one response we can make is simply getting to know a stranger. By that I mean someone who is different from us, maybe a different skin color or even a different faith. We often hold prejudices against such persons, not based on anything other than our assumptions or things we’ve “heard about them. It’s called “fear of the other.” It’s the same mindset Jesus’ followers had toward Samaritans or other nationalities. After the murder of George Floyd this year, I’ve been listening and learning and growing, trying to understand a life that is different from the one I have lived and a worldview that is so different from mine. I’m not going to say I have it all together, and I know I don’t have all the answers, but I will say I am on a journey. I’ve spent time with a group in our District this fall that was sometimes enlightening and sometimes frustrating. Sometimes I found myself getting angry as we studied racism and how to counteract it, and then I had to ask why I was angry. Was I justified or was I just responding out of my own prejudice, my own pre-judging? Here’s the question the visit of the Magi forces me to ask: am I wiling to welcome the stranger, whatever he or she looks like? Would the stranger have a spot at your table, at my table, at our table here in the church (cf. Robb 38)?

Here’s the thing: everyone matters to God. We know that, but do we live like that? There was no one who did not matter to Jesus, and there ought to be no one who matters to us. We are the most like Jesus, I believe, when we care for people who do not look like us, talk like us, live like us. I may have told this story before, but as I often remind you, I only have so many stories, so you may have to listen to them over and over again. But it was a Friday morning and I had gotten the kids off to school successfully. Friday is my day off, so I settled on the couch in a quiet house and began reading a good Christian book. I even remember that it was a book by Max Lucado and he was talking about this sort of thing, how we live out our faith by showing love to everyone we encounter. And I was nodding along as I read, thinking, “Lucado is such a good author. He really says it like it is.” No sooner had I finished that chapter than there was a knock at the door. Who was bothering me on my day off? And I went down the short flight of stairs, opened the door, and there he was—the neighbor kid. Now, you have to understand that we didn’t care for our neighbors. They were not the original neighbors who had been there when we moved into the parsonage. In some way I never understood, these people had swindled the older gentleman out of his home, and now we lived next to people who were regularly visited by the police because of domestic violence and other things. Now here’s the kid, and he looked up at me and said, “I missed the bus and my mom is gone to work. Can you take me to school?” Do you know how badly I wanted to say no? I didn’t even know this kid’s name, for heaven’s sake! And then I remembered the chapter I had just read in that “wonderful book.” That’s when I said something like, “This is not funny, God,” and took the young boy to school. The mom never came over and thanked me; I’m not sure she ever knew. And it was the last thing I wanted to do on my quiet Friday morning, but following Jesus isn’t convenient, comfortable or quiet. Sometimes—most times—our lives get disrupted because Jesus calls us to welcome the stranger. Who is the stranger in your life Jesus is calling you to reach out to this week? What barrier is he calling you to cross, maybe this very day?

Wise Men—Magi—came to visit Jesus as a toddler in what was most likely an average (at best) home in a run-down town called Bethlehem. They brought gold, frankincense and myrrh, things probably not very often seen on the streets of this poor town. And pretty soon Jesus and his family were on the run, becoming strangers themselves in a strange land. Often during Advent, we remind you that one of Jesus’ names is “Emmanuel,” which means (say it with me), “God with us.” It’s because of that name that, I think, Jesus came the way he did. He did not come to a palace. He did not come to a time of peace. He came into a world of violence, stress, poverty, tension and fear—a world, honestly, not that different from our own. Biblical scholar N. T. Wright puts it this way: “No point in arriving in comfort, when the world is in misery; no point in having an easy life, when the world suffers violence and injustice! If he is to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, he must be with us where the pain is” (Matthew for Everyone, Part One, pgs. 14-15). And if we are to be Jesus’ people in the midst of a world of pain, brokenness, viruses and other fearful things, then we must be with those in need where the pain is. We’re called to welcome the stranger and see our community as bigger than we once thought it was. Let’s pray.