“By Another Way' Matthew 2:1-12 Dranesville Umc Sunday, January 3, 2021
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“BY ANOTHER WAY’ MATTHEW 2:1-12 DRANESVILLE UMC SUNDAY, JANUARY 3, 2021 At the beginning of this year, as with many other years, we hear the Gospel story of the Visit of the Magi. In most of Western Christianity, when we come to this Sunday, Epiphany Sunday, the Christmas Season comes to an end. We will now enter the Season of Epiphany or Ordinary Time; one of two seasons in the church calendar called Ordinary Time. Today’s lesson begins by telling us that Jesus has been born in Bethlehem during the reign of Herod. There were several kings in the Herodian Dynasty in Palestine. This Herod was known as Herod the Great. He would reign from 37 - 4 BC. I’ll have more to say about him later. Let me take a moment to try to answer a question you might have. If you remember last week’s Gospel Lesson from Luke 2, Jesus was presented at the Temple when he was about six weeks old. After that, Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph took Jesus to Nazareth. Now we have this story in which the magi encounter the child Jesus in a house in Bethlehem. How do we account for Jesus’ presence in Bethlehem? The short answer is: We can’t; except to say that one story is found in Matthew and the other is in Luke. Both Gospels are theological documents; they are neither history nor biography, yet they contain elements of both. We will make unnecessary problems for ourselves if we try to reconcile the two accounts from a historical perspective. With that in mind, let’s get back to today’s lesson. Magi from the east came to Jerusalem. Much has been made about these magi over the centuries. “Magi” is the plural form of “magus;” which may mean one who practices the art of divination; something prohibited for Jews. Magi were non-Israelites and non-Jews. A magus could be a man who studies the stars and makes predictions based on their positions and movements. Magi combined astronomy and astrology to make their predictions. They were often found in some royal courts where the kings placed great stock in their pronouncements. Kings made important decisions based on what the magi told them. That’s about all we can say with certainty about magi. That hasn’t stopped persons with very fertile imaginations from supplying details that are not given in the text. We even sing of some of these details when we sing of “three kings of Orient.” As I mentioned earlier, magi is a plural noun. We know that more than one visited Bethlehem. Beyond that, we 1 can’t say with certainly how many there were. The common assumption has been that there were three magi because they presented three gifts to Jesus. Think of the Christmas gifts you just received. Did you only receive one gift from each person who gave you something? Probably not. The number of gifts given to Jesus may not be much help in determining the number of magi. For example, what’s to say that multiple magi didn’t give Jesus gold, or that one magi gave two gifts? Bottom line - we don’t know how many magi there were. They were not kings. While they may have served in palaces, they were not themselves royalty. While they were highly regarded in some kingdoms, in others they were considered frauds and quacks. For that reason, the Jews held them in low regard. King Herod, on the other hand, may have welcomed them. At least one legend holds that the magi were all from different countries; symbolizing the coming of all nations to worship Jesus. Like the idea of them being three kings, there is no support for this theory. Over the centuries, not only did the theory that there were three magi gain in credibility, but names were given them. The Twelfth Century English church historian Bede lists their names as Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar. In the Travels of Marco Polo, written in the Thirteenth Century, Polo describes visiting three tombs in what is Iran today and being told these were the tombs of the magi. All of this may be interesting; but it’s all conjecture about these exotic foreign visitors who show up early in Matthew’s Gospel. What we can take note of is the fact that the first persons to worship Jesus were not Jews; they were pagan Gentiles from nearly 1000 miles away from Israel. Allowing for the time it took for them to recognize a new heavenly phenomenon and gather the people and supplies for a lengthy journey; they probably traveled for months, perhaps over a year, before reaching Jerusalem. This was a major effort to find and worship someone outside their faith traditions. Let’s keep that in mind. The magi are looking for a newborn king. They started by going to the logical place - the palace of the reigning king. Big mistake. No new king there. Herod, the one they encountered, claimed to be the King of the Jews; but was a mere pretender who had been installed by Rome. Herod was from Idumea, south of Israel. One of his wives was the daughter of a Jewish priest. That was the extent of his ties to Judaism. Any newborn Jewish male with ties to King David would pose a threat to Herod’s rule. An infant wouldn’t be able to do anything; but babies grow up. Herod will have to do 2 something about the baby before he became old enough to be a viable threat. That helps to explain why Herod was troubled. The rest of Jerusalem would have been troubled because Herod was volatile and unpredictable when he felt threatened. During his reign, in addition to many other perceived threats he had killed, Herod also ordered the death of one of his wives and at least two of his sons. One Roman Emperor sarcastically remarked that a pig in Herod’s court would be safer than a member of his family. So far, we have met two of the three significant players in our lesson. The magi represent outsiders who are seeking the truth about Jesus. Herod represents those in power who find Jesus and his mission a threat to be eliminated. Next, we encounter the third group - the religious leaders and scholars. Once Herod heard about a newborn king, he wanted more information. Not being a Jew himself, he called for the chief priests and the teachers; the men who would be able to either confirm or refute the word the magi brought. After consulting the book attributed to the prophet Micah, the scholars told Herod that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. That made sense. The Messiah was to come from the line of King David, whose hometown was Bethlehem. Notice how the magi get their information. Up until this point, a star, a natural phenomenon, has guided them as far as Jerusalem. It took Scripture to steer them toward Bethlehem. The same may be true for people today. Persons may unknowingly be seeking God. They may receive some prompting, a nudge or even inspiration from some event, natural occurrence, words from a friend, or something else. This seeking can be confirmed and refined by combining it with Scripture. Let’s consider the religious leaders in Jerusalem. Here is the theological brain trust of the nation. These men know their Scriptures inside out. That may be their problem. They may have spent so much time in study and analysis of Biblical minutia that they miss the evidence of God’s action right in front of them. The same thing often happens today. When I took my first Scripture courses in Divinity School, I was surprised by how much attention was paid to matters like sources and authorship, places and times of writing, forms of literature, and other things rather than what the particular Scripture might have to say to you and me. Even my preaching course 3 spent little time on moving from Biblical text to sermon and more on techniques of speaking and crafting the presentation. I understand that the professors were intent on students not trying to preach in a way that we make the text say something other than what it should say. The problem for me was we spent little time on what the meanings of the texts were. Bible study can often get sidetracked by some of these issues. For my part, I try to mention what I think are interesting aspects of the text without detracting from the meaning for present day readers. Sometimes, knowing the historical and cultural context, the subtle meaning of words and phrases in the original language, and other bits of information may be useful if it helps clarify what we read. If it gets us bogged down, it’s counterproductive. Speaking of getting bogged down - consider the fact that the scholars were located in Jerusalem. The magi had just arrived, after traveling for hundreds of miles, with news of a newborn king, possibly the Messiah. The scholars reported that the king was to be born in Bethlehem, less than six miles away. Matthew doesn’t tell us that even one of these learned men took the time or had any interest to make a short journey to either confirm or refute the report. For these scholars’ study, academic exercise, was their focus; not the news and opportunities to which their study pointed. Have you known persons who thoroughly know the Bible but their actions would lead you to believe they have never opened it? Being steeped in the Word is a commendable goal; provided it can be applied.