January 6, 2013 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. | Epiphany of the Lord

Changing Course: Going by Another Road

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 72:1–7
Isaiah 60:1–9
Matthew 2:1–12

When the song of angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flock, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoners, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among brothers and sisters, to make music in the heart.

Howard Thurman

If you find time, check out the pictures on our website—www.fourthchurch.org/photos—of the Christmas pageant from this most recent Christmas Eve. You will see wonderful pictures of the children of this congregation playing the parts of shepherds and angels and kings. There are choirs of angels, magnificent animals, Mary, Joseph, the manger scene, candlelight. The faces of the children in those pictures are filled with joy and giddiness and excitement. There are also pictures of a few children whose faces reveal that they are quite dazed or tired or confused. Some of the children are raptly attentive, and some are clearly wondering, “What the heck is going on?” As I looked at those pictures, it dawned on me that the expressions on those faces—joy, anticipation, giddiness, confusion, disorientation—those expressions mirror the feelings that people have had over the centuries when they have encountered the Christ child.

When my children were young, some years before I was a pastor, our church had a large Christmas pageant, too. We went year after year. Sometimes our girls had roles to play—either to sing in the choir or to play a musical instrument before the pageant or to be one of the adoring angels gathered around the manger. Other times, as they grew older, we were all able to sit together as a family. Each year, one of the highlights of the pageant, was the dramatic entrance of the three kings. In that pageant, the roles of the kings were played by male members of the adult choir. They all had deep, resonant bass voices. We looked forward to their stately entrance from the back of the sanctuary. The costumes they wore were stunning. As they strode down the aisles in that church, each would take his turn and sing a verse of “We Three Kings”—first one, then the second, and finally the third. And each time, the congregation would join in the refrain: “O, star of wonder, star of night . . . guide us to thy perfect light.” The entrance of those three kings on those many Christmas Eves was thrilling.

That’s what has happened in today’s scripture reading. The wise men have made their entrance and have found the place where the baby and his mother are. But today’s story wakes us up to the idea that the wise men arrived at the side of baby Jesus later—after he was born, after the shepherds and angels were there. Days later. Some think as long as two years later. In other words, the three kings—or magi or astrologers or stargazers, however it is we refer to them—weren’t really there on that first night, like all of our pageants lead us to believe. Their parts are written into the script for Christmas Eve. And other parts are written out. Have you noticed that Herod is never part of the Christmas Eve pageant?

I don’t think any of us would want Herod’s part written into those pageants, and I don’t think any of us would want the visit of the three kings written out of those pageants. For a moment, when we watch, we can forget that danger existed all around that scene. Herod and his power and the threat he poses are easily forgotten. When the kings arrive in those pageants, no matter when the correct arrival date should have been, there is no sense of the danger that surrounded their journey. But on that first night, there was danger everywhere surrounding the birth of the Christ child.

Barbara Brown Taylor says “today’s text from Matthew offers a rare opportunity to rescue the magi from their fixed places in the annual Christmas pageant and restore them to their biblical roles as key witnesses to both the threat and promise of the Christ child”: the threat and the promise that comes with God entering into the world, the threat and the promise that comes with the light of Christ being revealed (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, p. 213).

The wise men, said to be astrologers, knew something had happened. They read the stars in the heavens, and they tried to get the hang of present and future events by reading those stars. These magi were from somewhere in Persia or present-day Iraq. They knew a significant baby had been born, and they wanted to find him. And so they went to Jerusalem first, to King Herod. They must have thought Herod knew about the baby, and so they went to ask where this baby was. Or maybe they simply thought it was important to check in with the seat of power before they went off on their own. No matter what the reason was that they went to him, it appears that Herod knew nothing when they asked. Their asking set Herod off. The mention of another king frightened Herod. He is frightened because he is threatened: his power, his status, his empire, his wealth. And so because he’s threatened, he begins to exert more force and control.

The persistent march of light into this world has always been accompanied by fear and threat and resistance and danger. That has been the story repeated over and over and over again. We get a brief respite as we watch our pageants—respite from having to acknowledge the many things that diminish the light. We can watch on Christmas Eve and for a moment we don’t have to deal with the danger in the world, and we can forget our own complicity with darkness and how we struggle with that. The birth of light into our world is a hard labor, always filled with threat and resistance.

We are not so unlike Herod. We know fear when we are threatened. We fear losing the love of our children when they seek different options than what we might have chosen. We fear loss of position when someone new comes into the workplace. We fear all sorts of situations in which we might lose love or power or wealth or health or youth. We’re not so different from Herod. Some of us know the fear that comes when we start seeking, when we begin looking for the Christ child, when we begin to follow our own internal tug that makes us want to pay homage to him in ways we never have before. We know what it is to be fearful and threatened. We know the same fear and threat exists on the national and international stage too. Jerusalem and Bethlehem are just nine miles apart and still, today, there are so many barriers between the two places—a wall, checkpoints, tremendous disparity in economics, political strife and fear and threat on both sides. And it is so sad. It is so sad.

Peter Gomes, who died a few years ago, was a longtime chaplain at Harvard Divinity School. He is known to this congregation because he preached here. He has made me think about this disparity we can feel at Christmastime when all we want to experience is the promise of the Christ child, the peace of the manger scene, and yet we know that there is still threat and danger and darkness that exist all around. His book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus asks the question “So what’s so good about the good news?” and in that book, he has written a chapter titled “The Gospel and Hope.” He tells a story about the South African author Alan Paton, who is best known for his novel called Cry, the Beloved Country. It is a novel about apartheid South Africa. Paton came to speak at Memorial Chapel and gave three lectures. There was a question-and-answer session afterwards, and at one point a woman, whom Gomes describes as despairing, stood up and asked, “Given all that you have said and we have heard, are you optimistic about the future of your beloved country?” According to Gomes, Paton paused and then scowled and then said, “Madam, I am not optimistic, but I remain hopeful.”

I’ve thought about that answer: “I am not optimistic, but I remain hopeful.” Gomes further writes about the difference between sugarcoated blind optimism and hope. Voltaire said optimism was “the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.” Hope is something different. Hope is knowing that God is working on a grander scale than we can see. And maybe that’s where we get confused at Christmastime, because we want to witness to the promise of the Christ child’s arrival and we want to forget the threat that has always surrounded the presence of light. Gomes continues in his exploration of the difference between optimism and hope and quotes a Methodist preacher of the ’50s: “Christianity did not come into the world with a fixed silly grin on its face and a vapid ‘Cheerio’ on its lips. At its center was a cross.”

So I’ve been thinking about those wise men, and what captures me so about their entrance into our Christmas pageants. I’ve decided it’s that they give me hope, even if part of their story is left out. They give me hope because they remind me that people are still seeking the light of Christ and diligently searching and journeying toward that light. They make their way to the manger, and the sight of it takes my breath away. They give me hope because they are outsiders; they are not the least bit like the people who Matthew would have been telling the story to. Their kneeling at the side of the manger would have set off fear and threat of its own to those first hearers of this story, because these guys are strange and foreign. So when I see them make their way, I’m reminded that God seeks out people who surprise us still. That’s who our God is, and I am thankful.

Those wise men, when they arrive, pay homage to the Christ child, and then they decide to ignore what Herod told them to do, which was to report about where that child was. They remind me that there are people who are still speaking truth to power or finding ways to be subversive to power.

I just received an email about a lecture in February focused on the many grassroots organizations in the Middle East that persist in their dedication to people-to-people diplomacy between Israelis and Palestinians. These are groups that give me hope, that tell me that people are still seeking the light, that sometimes in order to do that we need to keep going no matter how threatened the people around us are and no matter what the danger. The magi remind me of the same.

The wise men follow the light of the star; they follow the light that keeps leading them to the “perfect light”; and they offer gifts. I see them kneel and present their gifts in those Christmas pageants, and those gifts remind me that my gifts are to be offered too. So maybe I’m not optimistic but instead hopeful. And maybe, as I enter into the reality of the tree and the lights being put away and the pageants being over and the difficulties of the world, I can believe it’s true that the wise men really did sing “Star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright, westward leading, still proceeding, guide us to thy perfect light.” And even if they didn’t really sing those words, I know I can.