01/03/21 - All God's Children - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 01/03/21

01/03/21 – All God’s Children

ALL GOD’S CHILDREN

January 3, 2021
Epiphany of the Lord
Isa. 60:1-6; Ps.72; Eph. 3:1-12; Matt. 2:1-12
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

An item on the BBC World news caught my attention this week. It may seem to be a trivial matter, but it was quite significant and addressed a worldwide problem. Australia changed one word in its national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair.” The verse, “For we are young and free,” was changed to “For we are one and free.” What’s the difference” To say Australia is young indicates it didn’t exist before the colonists from the United Kingdom began arriving. It would be like our saying our country or North American didn’t exist until the colonists arrived in the 1600s. The recorded human population in Australia goes back some 65,000 years. The indigenous peoples of Australia have suffered many of the indignities and oppression that non-whites have in our country. It was a small step. Like our country, many Australians view their national anthem as being written in stone, however, Advance Australia Fair has only been the official national anthem since 1984. Perhaps, a new national anthem would have been a better solution, but the decision was made without the input of indigenous communities. This is how the long arm of oppression operates. Change comes slowly and begrudgingly, beginning with crumbs offered by those in power. Our scripture texts for today, from Isaiah, Ephesians, and Matthew were each written at a time when the Jewish people were living in the dark shadows of oppression. They yearned for a light of freedom to shine in that darkness.

Our reading from what is known as third Isaiah was written after the exiles were free to return home to the land that was once the kingdom of Israel. After being conquered by Assyria, Babylon, and then Persia, the Persian king allowed the former Babylonian exiles to return to their homeland. However, the first few that returned entered a desolate land. The mission of the prophet speaking to the Jewish people in third Isaiah was to encourage exiles to return and join with the ones that remained to rebuild their homes, the temple in Jerusalem, and their communal life.

The prophet begins his oration with the words: “Arise, shine, your light has come,” a fitting accompaniment to the story of the magi from the east who follow a star to Bethlehem and the Christ child.

A major obstacle was the division that had formed between those that had remained and those that were returning from exile. The prophet assures the people that God will support and guide them to create new lives; but, this new life will not be exclusive and self-focused. They must work together to be a united community that welcomes diversity. People from other nations will want to come because Israel will be a kingdom that models God’s will for human society to live in a mutually beneficial community. God’s ancient covenant with Abraham stands. Israel will be blessed to be a blessing and bring all nations together under God.

Our gospel reading from Matthew completes our Christmas crèches and celebrates the traditional Feast of the Epiphany. As you can tell from the gifts of gold and frankincense, Matthew draws from the passage from Isaiah we read this morning to tell his story. Matthew also used the description of a divinely appointed king from Psalm 72 as a thread that links the Old Testament with the infant king of the gospel. Psalm 72 is a royal psalm, written on the occasion of a new king’s coronation. The ascription is to King David, the greatest king in Israel’s history and Jesus’ ancestor. As with any new national leader, there is a hopeful tone that a new order will bring peace and prosperity, and all the ills of society will be rectified. The psalmist declares that the new king will bring about social justice for the most vulnerable – the poor and the needy. The new king will rule with righteousness, meaning he will rule according to God’s priorities, not his own. He will be a king who serves all of his people, not one who forces his people to serve him. The hope for the new king is that he will be a model of justice and righteousness that will inspire the kings of all nations to emulate his leadership, thereby bringing the same blessing to their people. The new king will not be king of a province or even a nation. He will be the king for all people, who bring God’s kingdom to earth. Kings of other nations will honor him with gifts as Matthew’s magi bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the infant King Jesus. The psalmist expresses this hope with the words: ^“May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts. ¹¹May all kings fall down before him, all nations give him service. (Ps. 72:10)

Matthew uses the Greek word, “magoi,” from which we get the words “magic” and “magician,” to identify the visitors from the East who followed a star to Bethlehem seeking a divinely appointed infant king. These men were most likely Zoroastrians of the priestly caste, from Persia, today the Islamic country, Iran. This famous visitation is the first interfaith event reported in the New Testament. The traditional notion that there were three visitors comes from the three symbolic gifts that were brought. The gifts have symbolic significance in light of the identity of the baby to whom they are given. Gold is a symbol of kingship on earth, frankincense (used for incense) is a symbol of deity, and myrrh (an embalming oil) is a symbol of death.

Although these men would have been from the same part of the world, their traditional depiction in art has been three men of different ethnicities, thereby asserting the universality of the yearning of all peoples to seek God and God’s seeking humanity with the original Abrahamic covenant to bring all nations of the earth together under God’s covenant of grace. Matthew saw a pattern in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, of God using strangers to deliver messages. Throughout the bible, God demonstrates a preference for using “outsiders” to reveal God’s desires and intentions rather than “insiders.”

The magi were observant. In their time they would have been viewed as scientists as well as men of faith. They used their powers of observation, applied them to their surroundings, and made deductions based on these observations. It is only in more recent history that science and religion have been considered in opposition to one another. It has been observed that faith is to science as the thumb is to the forefinger: without both working together we grasp nothing.

The only detail of the path the magi took Matthew tells us is that they briefly left the path to seek directions from a different kind of king. Why did they stop following the star and veer off its trajectory? Matthew seems to be telling us, the magi succumbed to their worldly assumption that a king would be found in a palace. They made the same mistake we do when we are lured off the path Jesus has shown us by worldly powers and temptations. This side trip to King Herod’s palace set up a critical dichotomy between the earthly king and the divine king. Herod’s rule was supported by a small elite group of Judeans who were given money and privileges to serve the Roman Empire first over the tenets of the Jewish faith. Herod’s reign was reinforced by a great disparity between the wealth and power of a few and the poverty and powerlessness of the rest of the population, which was antithetical to the Jewish faith he claimed.

Herod understood the fragility of his position. He ruled by inciting fear because he was fearful of himself. The news of a new king of the Jews was so frightening that he did what he had always done to potential rivals – he planned to have him killed. He asked the magi to return to the palace after seeing this newborn king so that he could honor him also. The deception was one of King Herod’s trademarks, which he used to lure many perceived enemies to their deaths. Giving up his power was so terrifying that Herod even killed many of his own family members. He was taken by surprise that a threat to his power would come from outside of the great city of Jerusalem and in the person of one without political connections or great resources of wealth. Herod’s appointment to rule over Judea, though he was from an Arab family, was aided by his claim to be a “practicing Jew.” Yet, he did not read or study the Holy Scriptures. How often we have seen leaders who use religious claims for political advantage! The advisors with whom he surrounded himself knew about the prophetic scriptures that promised a new king for the Jews, but they had become distracted from their study of sacred texts. They were busy placating their insecure king and ingratiating themselves for the favors he might bestow on them. They retained the power given to them by telling Herod what he wanted to hear.

When Herod learned that the Hebrew Scriptures contained a prophecy that the new king was to be born in the small backwater town of Bethlehem, he saw his chance to remove this threat to his power and position. In contrast to these foreign visitors who were seeking the Christ child for a purpose beyond themselves, to give him honor, Herod’s goal was totally self-centered. He had no interest in the people entrusted to his care other than a means of gaining more power, enhancing his reputation as a strongman, and lining his own pockets. Herod had no qualms about harming innocent children if it served to secure his base of power.

Matthew doesn’t tell us why these Arab Zoroastrians were looking for the king of the Jews. What we do know is they were looking up, paying attention, and showed up. Not a bad model of faith seeking understanding. We don’t know what effect seeing the Christ child had on the magi’s life afterward. The only clue we have is that they did not return to Herod as he asked but instead listened to God’s voice, revealed in a dream, that they should not return to Herod. Where do we find Christ revealed in our world, our communities? If we do not seek him, we will not find him. If we do not find him, perhaps we are paying attention to the wrong people and showing up in the wrong places. The magi’s returning home by a different road serves to challenge us with the question: – do we take the road God has revealed to us in Jesus Christ or are we drawn to palaces of worldly kings?

Our world is not so different from the one into which Jesus was born — ours is a world of political and economic oppression, of homelessness and forced emigration, of violence and fear-mongering. There are five leaders named Herod mentioned in the New Testament and all of them were in opposition to Christ or Christ’s church. Still today, King Herods abound with self-glorifying, self-serving agendas that create divisions and injustices. We enable them when we fall into the deceptive trap of creating boundaries and hierarchies that close our hearts and minds to loving our neighbors in the way Christ taught us.

In this season of Epiphany, the selected texts will challenge us to pay attention to what Christ has revealed to us, to leave our comfort zones to places where we will find Christ waiting for us, and avoid the worldly palaces and kings that dazzle us with wealth and power that die like a shooting star.

This morning we are celebrating the sacrament of communion. Here we are reminded of what happened when God became flesh and dwelt among us. It propels us forward from this Epiphany Sunday to Holy Week. Come and eat. Christ, whose post-resurrection presence was revealed to his disciples in the breaking of bread, invites you to His Table.

Amen, may it be so.

My Story

“As a newcomer to Westminster, I’ve found it to be a most welcoming fellowship. I look forward to going to services and events and find the warmth of the congregation to be most helpful to a newcomer to the entire area. I find sermons challenging … music beautiful and well prepared … and a dignity in the worship that is all too lacking in most Protestant congregations. Mix this with an open atmosphere where it is OK to question and still be seen as a good Christian, and I know I’ve found one important ‘home’ in Central Illinois.”