Sermon

The Magi Among Us

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

It was during coffee hour a couple of weeks before Christmas when I overheard two parishioners arguing with each other. I know, I know. It’s hard to imagine such a thing happening at the Cathedral, but indeed it did this one time. It had to do with where the Cathedral should choose to focus its limited resources. One person argued persuasively and passionately that the primary constituency of the Cathedral ought to be its members. The other person argued equally persuasively and passionately that the primary constituency of the Cathedral ought to be those who are not yet members. It was a spirited, respectful discussion and, as one eavesdropping in on it, profoundly encouraging in that both parties clearly saw the complexities involved. Sorting out mission priorities, thinking deeply about those for whom the church exists, is never easy.

It’s never been easy, as our gospel passage today from Matthew shows.

Matthew is the most “Jewish” of the 4 gospels – mostly likely written in the last decade of the first century to Jewish converts to Christianity. Like Luke, he includes a genealogy, showing the generations of ancestors who preceded Jesus. Unlike Luke, he intentionally goes back to Abraham – the ancestor of God’s chosen people. Throughout the gospel, Jesus is portrayed in the manner of Israel’s greatest national hero – Moses. Matthew’s infancy narrative is the one that includes the slaughter of the innocents at the hand of Herod the King, and of the flight to Egypt – clear reminders to a Jewish audience of another brutal king who ordered the death of male infants, and of a Jewish baby miraculously spared, found by Pharaoh’s daughter in the bulrushes, who will grow up to be the means of salvation for the Chosen People.

And in today’s gospel, we hear that familiar beloved account of the magi from the east following the star to Bethlehem – the city of another national hero, King David. We know the story from countless Christmas pageants, but what Matthew’s audience might have heard that we might not is the ominous phrase, “from the east.” To Jews of the homeland, nothing good had ever come from the East. To the east of Judea lies Babylon – modern day Iraq -- which, 6 centuries earlier, had laid waste to Jerusalem. The temple had been destroyed, and the people either slaughtered or taken into captivity. The land was desolate for 2 generations before they were able to return and begin to rebuild. But never again would Judah enjoy home rule. Their kings would serve at the pleasure of mighty empires -- first under Persia, then Greece, then Rome. By the time Matthew wrote his gospel, the temple had been destroyed yet again, this time by Rome. The destructive power of Gentile influence remained as disquieting for Jews in first century Judea as it had five centuries earlier.

Nor does Matthew make it easy on his Jewish convert audience when he includes the detail of the magi following the star. These were Gentile sky-watchers. Centuries of Christian tradition has morphed these travelers into scholars or kings. Our text from the NRSV refers to them as wise men, but the term that Matthew uses is magi which, when it appears elsewhere in Scripture, is never used in a positive sense. In their own homeland, the magi may well have been regarded as learned or wise, but to Jewish sensibilities, magi were sorcerers, astrologers, people who intentionally engaged in practices that were utterly forbidden by the Torah. Of all people for God to first make manifest his only begotten Son! What on earth was Matthew thinking in telling the story this way?

I believe he was thinking of us. Not us, as in residents of metropolitan Kansas City in 2010, but us in the sense of those on the inside. Members. The ones who know we belong. The ones who know the stories of our faith because we have been brought up with them. The ones who occasionally raise our eyebrows at folks who come our way who perhaps don’t know what we know. Who don’t look like us, or who don’t think like us, or who don’t see the world as we see it. By the time Matthew wrote his gospel to Jewish converts, the mission to the Gentiles was well underway. A generation or two earlier, Paul the apostle – himself a remarkable Jewish convert – had argued that the things that defined rabbinic Judaism – circumcision and the keeping of the whole of the Torah – were not the things that defined membership in the Body of Christ. What had begun as a reform movement within Judaism was already moving inexorably into a different tradition entirely, as more and more Gentile converts were drawn in.

Matthew may well have been reminding his insider audience that from the beginning of Christ’s life, God was at work revealing his Incarnate Presence to the whole world, including most especially those who were on the outside. He concludes the account with the magi going home by a different way. We assume this means by a different route, but it could as easily have been intended as a play on the word, “Way,” as in the term for the early church – the Way. God Incarnate is manifested to Gentiles and they are converted. They are never the same again. And, Matthew seems to suggest to his insider audience, neither is the Body of Christ. Change occurs both ways – a reality which may be cold comfort to a contemporary Church who tends to welcome newcomers so long as they are willing to adapt to existing realities.

I didn’t hear how the argument at coffee hour ended, as my attention was drawn elsewhere. Knowing the folks involved, I strongly suspect that they arrived mutually at the conclusion that the Church’s mission isn’t a matter of polarities, but one of balance. A Church who focuses solely on its members fails to see the fullness of the gospel imperative; a Church that focuses solely on those outside its walls does the same. Sorting out mission priorities, thinking deeply about those for whom the Church exists, is never easy. It is, however, our heritage and our responsibility. May we embrace it with the courage of Matthew’s audience. May this beloved Body of Christ – both the Church-with-a-capital-c and the church-with-a-small-c – embrace the gifts the contemporary magi bring to us, and dare to be changed by them. 

© Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral