Second Sunday after Christmas (C), January 3, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of hope, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

The readings for the Second Sunday after Christmas are as full of treasures as the caravan of the magi. There is the beautiful promise of return from exile, a picture of restoration and redemption – a prediction that the people of God will finally be satisfied with the bounty of God. The passage from Ephesians predicts that the eyes of the heart of the congregation in Ephesus will be enlightened so that they will know the hope to which they have been called, so that they will know the riches of their glorious inheritance (which is hope), and what is the immeasurable greatness of the power of God (or Love) for those who believe. I’d add that the power of Love is immeasurably great whether or not they believe!

It seems to me that both of these scripture lessons are about what is longed for and what is possible when the power of Love is fully engaged. And then, for our Gospel reading, there are three choices offered by our lectionary. One is the lesson from the Gospel of Luke that we heard last Sunday. (You’ll hear it again in our cantata this morning. [1]) The other two were the first half and the second half of the second chapter of Matthew, with the few verses about Herod’s slaughter of children omitted. I decided to choose both because the chapter is not that long, and because I wanted you to hear the Gospel of Matthew’s whole story of the birth of Jesus. You might have thought that this story picked up after some other information about Jesus’s birth, but there’s no other information offered by Matthew other than Joseph dreaming of an angel telling him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, and to name the child Jesus that she has been found to be carrying.

Matthew’s narrative is the only gospel to imagine what happened in the few years after Jesus’ birth, when Jesus and his parents were living in a house in Bethlehem. Since the Feast of the Epiphany falls exactly between this Sunday and next, I thought I’d reflect a little with you on the story of the magi. Each year at this time, I pull out a framed print, given to me as an ordination present from my brother and sister-in-law, “Three wise women would have asked for directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, brought practical gifts, and there would be peace on earth.” The late Dr. Letty Russell, of Yale Divinity School encouraged readers of this (and other Gospel narratives) to “read against the grain of patriarchal assumptions, looking between the cracks of the story for the wise women who are bearing gifts for the Christ Child.” So I wanted to go back and look at the patriarchal assumptions and look between the cracks of the story – and I thought I’d take you with me.

The first glaring patriarchal assumption has to do with the folks who came from the East asking about the location of the child. Our Bible translation renders “magoi,” wise men. Our Church tradition translation renders them three kings. But the scripture text says nothing about kings, nothing about three, nothing about wise, indeed nothing about men. It’s not that translating magoi as wise men is absolutely wrong, it’s just that there are about a dozen other acceptable translations. Such as: members of a tribe from Persia or Babylon who were magicians, sorcerers, astrologers, priests, experts in the occult and the interpretation of dreams, enchanters, wizards, even jugglers or impostors (if you use the word in an insulting way). Jewish New Testament scholar, Aaron Gale notes that “early Jewish readers may have regarded Persian astrologers not as wise [at all] but as foolish or [even] evil.” [2] The word is plural — there were two or more of them. So looking between the cracks of the story, there’s no reason that I can find not to imagine that there were some women in the group of visitors who were looking for the Christ child.

The next patriarchal assumption in the story is Herod’s. He was the King of the Jews. The visitors from the East ask a question that sets all his alarm bells jangling. If a child has been born to be King of the Jews, he assumes that this a direct challenge to his own Kingship. A patriarchal assumption is that there can’t be two at the top. So Herod feels very afraid – presumably he likes being at the top enough to want to stay there. His primary focus is on himself, on the threat he perceives, and on his need to control the situation. He says he wants to pay homage to the child, but what he really wants to do is annihilate that which scares him. When he realizes that his first plan to locate and kill the child king hasn’t worked, he’s willing to commit mass murder just to be on “the safe side.” Of course that doesn’t work either. It doesn’t seem to ever occur to Herod that real power is shared – that it is mutual and collaborative and compassionate. Looking between the cracks, we see “the child with Mary his mother.” Mary doesn’t get any speaking parts in Matthew’s Gospel. But looking between the cracks, I can imagine that Mary and Joseph taught Jesus a lot of what he knew about living a life that is responsive to God’s love – knowing that they were God’s beloved and teaching everyone they encountered that all God’s children are beloved.

There are many layers of patriarchal assumptions here, but three are enough for now, so the last one I’ll draw your attention to is the assumption that worship – or paying homage – is the ideal response to finding Jesus. The visitors from the East search for the child so that they can pay him homage and in fact, that’s what they do. They bow down to honor him. They open their treasury and give him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. That seems to our ears like the climax of the story – treasure! Presents! Indeed in our crèche scenes and our nativity pageants, we usually end with the exotic visitors mingling with the crowd of shepherds and angels from Luke’s Gospel story. We don’t even include the next line in our Christmas scripts. It’s hard to stage for one thing and it seems anti-climactic.

But I want to suggest that the high point of this story is the next line. It is that “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road” – or by another way. Looking through the cracks we see that this is an amazing conclusion. The foreigners had gone directly to the big boss king when they arrived in Jerusalem. They made an agreement to give him the information he wanted. They were complying with the rules of the patriarchy. But having experienced the joy of finding the Christ child and being warned in a dream, they changed their way. They went back on their word of honor. They didn’t keep their commitment to King Herod. I imagine that this involved considerable risk. Herod didn’t only murder babies. He murdered his own wife and three of his sons when he suspected that they weren’t loyal to him. So not keeping their word, and going home by another road meant putting their lives on the line.

This is actually a recurring theme in Matthew’s Gospel. In Matthew, the best response to witnessing divine activity (that is Love) is repentance. Jesus never scolds people for failing to worship or give thanks in this Gospel, but he does criticize those who have witnessed mighty works of God (Love) and not changed their ways. [3] Repentance implies a change – a change of way – the same word that is translated “road” here, gets translated “way” in other places in this Gospel – as in the way through the narrow gate that is hard and that leads to life (7:13-14), as in the way of righteousness which requires changing one’s mind (21:32), changing one’s heart.

So today I want to challenge us to read scripture against the grain of patriarchal assumptions and to look between the cracks of the stories. Look for the women who aren’t given speaking parts, for the women who aren’t named, for the women who aren’t even mentioned. I want to challenge us to look all around and between the cracks of our own stories and recognize God’s beloved – especially in those who have less far power than we have. I want to challenge us to look and see that we, too, are God’s beloved – each one of us is God’s beloved. We are being promised a return from whatever exiles we have endured. We are being invited to be satisfied with the bounty of God – of Love. And so let us go home by another way today – to change our minds and our hearts – so that, as St. Paul writes in Ephesians, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which Love has called us, what are the riches of Love’s glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of Love’s power for all. The concluding chorale of our cantata prays to God to open the gates of grace and goodness – and I want to tell you, the gates are always open. You may go through them at any time.

← Back to sermons page