Coach, First-class and Class Struggle

—John M. Caldwell, PhD
January 27, 2012

I have been heard to say that if the Revolution ever happens in the United States it will begin at an airport.

Nowhere, I thought, were class distinctions so clear as when we travel by air. We masses queue up at the check-in, winding our way through a labyrinth, waiting to be checked in by two over-worked agents. While we make their way forward in serpentine fashion, a lone first-class traveler walks straight up to a lone agent. They have a pleasant conversation—they have time for it, after all—and he is on his way. At the security check-in it is the same story. While we lower life forms wait in crowded lines, other travelers of privilege have an express option.

Through the check-in and security processes our first-class travelers make their way to their Admiral’s Club or Platinum Lounge until it’s time to board. I know about these places only because I have seen them in movies—quiet, insulated from the press of the world’s citizenry who find waiting places beneath televisions that provide unending news and analysis, but never a diagnosis.

First-class passengers are among the first to board, right after the “pre-boarding” boarding of infants and the wheel-chair bound. They have enough time to find their seats, stow their gear and become comfortably installed in their first-class seats. Those seats are first-class, too: wide enough for even an ample posterior with leg room enough for a giraffe. As I make my way through Shangri-La a flight attendant is offering passengers blankets and pillows. They have already broken out the champagne. I am certain that, as soon as I leave the first-class cabin, they will raise their glasses and drink to the good fortune they have in common that they are not common.

Every step of the process is guaranteed to produce simmering resentment among the plebs in coach and a sense of entitlement in the hearts of the equites in the front of the aircraft. I console myself with the thought that if by some terrible combination of bad luck, mistakes and incompetence we should fly into a mountain in the fog, at least the bastards in front will die first.

If the Revolution ever happens in the United States it will begin in an airport. At least that’s what I thought. I thought that the friction between first-class and coach would be what first struck the flames that would touch off the explosion that brought the whole system down.

But the class distinction that is visible between coach and first-class pales in comparison to two other class boundaries that are kept carefully out of sight by the shared experience of travel by airline. The fact is there are two classes of Americans who are not in view from any seat on the aircraft at all, whether coach or first-class.

The first of these is the large group of people who couldn’t dream of scraping together enough quid to buy a ticket. They are the poor, the lower middle class, or whatever other euphemism we use to describe our proletarians. Those of us who fly coach are in fact already a privileged class. I say privileged because an amazing number of us are one pink slip away from getting kicked off the plane altogether.

The other is the very small group of people who aren’t on this plane, either, because they have access to privately chartered and corporate jets. They live in an entirely different world than the one that I inhabit. Not for them is the search for parking, the long walk to the terminal with luggage trailing behind, the lines, the noise, the crowded seats and aisles, the waiting for luggage which may or may not arrive.

Someone else drives them to the other side of the airport and handles their luggage. They have their flight to themselves. They leave and arrive on their schedule. They are privileged beyond our imagination. They are the one percent.

We don’t see them. Instead we are distracted by the ones we see. We imagine that the real dividing line in American society is between first-class and coach. It is useful for the political power of the one percent that we imagine this. It is expedient for them that we are distracted by the false division between first-class and coach. It is better for them that the rest of us not realize that there are really very few of them and very many of us. It is better for the corporate jet elite that we imagine that the real limit on our lives is that flimsy little curtain between us and the first-class section.

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Preaching in Mosul (Jonah 3:1-5, 10) - 3rd Sunday after Epiphany B

3rd Sunday after Epiphany - B
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
January 22, 2006

Preaching in Mosul

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

I don’t remember just how young I was when I first heard the story of Jonah. I’m sure it was in Sunday School or maybe in a children’s Bible. I’m not sure that I thought much about it. I had seen Pinocchio, and I knew that being in the belly of a whale was just not that unusual. Of course I was pretty young.

When I was older, I read about a modern day Jonah in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, or, as I prefer to think of it now, “Just how gullible are you?” This man had been swallowed by a large fish and had been disgorged, unharmed, three days later. Unharmed that is except that his skin was bleached white by the stomach acid of the fish. Or so it was alleged.

It all sounds kind of fishy to me now.

Fishy or not, the story of Jonah and the big fish isn’t in our reading for this morning. In fact, there isn’t anything interesting in our reading this morning. That’s a shame, really, because Jonah is a marvelous story and deserves to be heard more often than once every third year.

We don’t know anything about Jonah except that he was a prophet who is mentioned in passing in 2 Kings¹ and that he was the son of Amittai. And we don’t know anything at all about Amittai except that he was the father of Jonah, so that doesn’t help us much.

Jonah was hanging out, doing whatever Jonah did, when he wasn’t doing prophet stuff, when God told him to speak against the Ninevites on account of how wicked they were. Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian Empire was the regional bully of Jonah’s day. Nineveh was several hundred miles to the north and east of Judah,mostly east and little north.

So, when Jonah was told to go mostly east and a little north to the city of Nineveh, he quite naturally went to the nearest seaport, walked up to the ticket counter and said, “Give me a ticket on the first boat headed west. There’s a boat leaving for Tarshish in fifteen minutes? Sounds great!”

On the face of it I don’t blame him. Imagine going into any imperial capital city, say, Washington, DC, and shouting that God had seen their wickedness and was about to destroy them. Today, of course, we would be bundled off to a hospital for observation. But in those days they had less elegant ways of dealing with such talk. We would be lucky to get away with our lives. So we can understand Jonah’s reluctance to take this mission on. Maybe we would have bought a ticket for Tarshish, too.

If you’ve read the story before you know that this was not the end of the matter. Apparently God was serious about this mission. God caught up with Jonah and “hurled a great wind upon the sea.” Mediterranean storms can appear suddenly and they can be brutal. This was one of those. Soon all of the sailors, not usually noted for their great piety, were praying hard, each to their own god. They weren’t fussy about which god was addressed as long as they got one to listen to their plight.

Nothing did any good, not even lightening their load, not even demanding that Jonah join them by praying to his God,something that Jonah seems not to have been doing.

The sailors ran a diagnostic procedure involving dice and discovered that the problem was Jonah. As soon as they heard his story—that he was running away from God—they knew they were done for and they rowed in desperation. To no avail. Finally, all out of options, they followed Jonah’s suggestion that they throw him into the sea. Immediately the sea was calm and the sailors all made plans to join Jonah’s church.

Jonah in the meantime was swallowed by a large fish that God had provided and remained in the fish’s belly for three days and three nights. He was praying then! In fact he prayed a beautiful little psalm—one that isn’t in the book of Psalms. The psalm doesn’t quite fit his circumstances, but it has stuff about water and seaweed, so we can see how the psalm ended up in Jonah. And it certainly is beautiful.

And then, in an image any sixth grader can appreciate, the fish spewed, hurled, vomited Jonah out on dry land. And the word of God came to Jonah a second time. And this time Jonah listened and obeyed. Good choice.

Jonah began to walk through the city crying out, “Just forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!” And—wonder of wonders—the people listened. From the lowest to the highest, they listened. And they responded. They fasted and put on burlap bags for clothing. This was a grassroots movement at first but when the king heard about it, he made it official: Everyone was to fast from food and water, everyone was to wear clothing made of burlap, and everyone was to “call upon God forcefully.” More importantly, perhaps,everyone was to turn away from violence.All this on the off chance that God might have a change of heart.

The decree not only included all the people, but the animals as well. I can see it in my mind, all the cats and dogs walking around with their little burlap vests. They, too, must fast. They, too, must cry out to God. This I can believe, knowing what a racket a cat makes when supper is late.

They may be the bullies on the block, but the Ninevites have had a change of heart. They turned from their evil. And God turned from the evil God had intended as well.

And now the story get interesting. And we begin to see why the lectionary committee’s choice is so odd.

This turn of events, this great success of his mission, didn’t make Jonah happy. No, “Jonah thought this was utterly wrong, and he became angry.”It turns out that we misunderstood Jonah altogether. He didn’t run away from God because he was afraid his mission would fail. He ran away because he was afraid his mission would succeed.

Jonah complained to God, “This is just what I said: I know what kind of a God you are. Sure, you talk trash and threaten to bring destruction on this evil city. But then you get all full of mercy and grace and steadfast love and you let them off the hook. That’s why I didn’t want to come here. That’s why I didn’t want to speak your word to these people. I knew there was a chance they would listen. And if they listened, they might change their ways. And if they changed their ways, all your trash talk would be forgotten. And you’d be all sweet and gracious and loving. I can’t stand it. Kill me now.”

With that Jonah sat down and waited. He waited to see what would happen to Nineveh. There was still the chance, I suppose, that God would destroy the city anyway. Or maybe God would kill Jonah. And Jonah sat and listened to all the Who’s down in Whoville and they were singing.

Okay, I’m making that part up. But I’m not making this up: Jonah sat down and sulked. He sat there and pouted. It was a major snit.

And then a funny thing happened. But not to Jonah’s heart—it remained two sizes too small. No, as Jonah sat there in the hot sun, stewing, God hit the fast forward button and a plant grew up overnight and gave him a little shade. It felt good, that shade did. And Jonah was happy because the plant lived. And then God sent a worm that attacked and killed the plant overnight. The next day dawned with a hot wind blowing and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head as he sat and sulked.

Jonah whined, “I want to die.”

And God spoke again, “Are you right to be angry about the plant?”

“Yes,” Jonah sniveled, “I want to die.”

And then God said, “You ‘pitied’ the shrub, for which you didn’t work and which you didn’t raise; it grew in a night and perished in a night. Yet for my part, can’t I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred twenty thousand people who can’t tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”Notice the animals—they fasted and wore sackcloth, too—so they get special mention.

Jonah was sent with a message to the Ninevites, a warning from God. As far as we know they were not told to repent. They were not told what to do. They were given no way out. But they acted anyway, trusting in the essential goodness of a God they had never known. They turned from violence. And God’s mercy was wide enough to include even them.

Jonah, on the other hand, knows this God intimately, knows this God’s character, knows that this is “a merciful and compassionate God, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy.” Jonah knows this and resents it from the bottom of his heart.

And so the story leave him there, on a hill out east of town, sulking like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son, a brother who likewise does not understand that God’s mercy stretches further than we can reach, that God’s love embraces more than we can touch, that however wide we imagine God’s circle of concern, it is far wider than that.

Our text today suggests that the point of the story concerns the repentance of the Ninevites. But that’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is Jonah’s need for repentance, his need for a heart that reflects the heart of God. The point was always about Jonah’s need to change his attitude toward his enemies.

All this was long time ago. Nineveh has gone the way of all imperial cities. It has crumbled back into the desert dust. All that is left of it is a mound outside the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. A Spanish rabbi traveling in the 12^th century visited the site and the local people, both Jews and Muslims, were able to show him the grave of Jonah. I wonder: did Jonah get his wish to die rather than see his enemies spared, to die rather than to see God being God? Did he die still sulking, still defiant, still unrepentant? Or did his heart make up that two-size deficiency? Did he change his mind about the evil he was doing? Did he come to see the city differently with its 120,000 people (and also many animals)?Do he come to see them as God’s children, as his own brothers and sisters?

We don’t know. This story about Jonah ends before Jonah’s story does. We are left with our imaginations to fill in the rest. And, in any event, it’s too late to change the ending, whatever it was.

We don’t know the end of our story, either, but for us it’s not too late to change it. Whether our enemies are single individuals, making fun of us in class when the teacher isn’t paying any attention, or whether they are our enemies as a people, wishing our suffering and even our destruction, The book of Jonah calls us to see them differently. The book of Jonah calls us to see them as God sees them, to love them as God loves them, to hope for them as God hopes for them. Only then will our story have the ending that God wants.

©2012, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.

12 Kings 14:25.

Called by Name (1 Samuel 3:1-20)

2nd Sunday after Epiphany - B
1 Samuel 3:1-10, (11-20)
January 15, 2012

Called by Name

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Our children, Peter and Beth, both graduated from a high school in Syracuse, NY, a school of some twelve hundred students or so. There are advantages to going to a large high school. Nottingham High offered extraordinary opportunities in performance arts, for example, and students could choose from among four foreign languages. It had a diverse student body. There was no racial or ethnic majority. About forty percent of the students were white with significant numbers of African, Hispanic, and Asian Americans. There were large numbers of students who did not speak English at home, including Russian, Latino, and Vietnamese immigrants.

A school of that size is a good place to be anonymous. It was like that when Peter started, but three years later, when Beth started there, things had undergone a little shift. There was a new principal, Granger Ward, who had an unusual approach to the job. Imagine Beth’s surprise when she walked through the door on her first day at Nottingham High School and Granger Ward—whom she had never met—greeted her, “Good morning, Miss Caldwell. Welcome to Nottingham High.” Granger Ward had gotten the yearbooks from each of the middle schools and memorized the names and faces of all the incoming students during the summer. He was able to call them by name, every one of them, on the first day of school. Beth knew instantly that just because her new school was big didn’t mean she could remain anonymous. She knew that she mattered.

Our names are important to us. They are one of the very few things we have that no one can ever take from us. The IRS knows us by number; so does the Social Security Administration. But God knows us by name. We tell children when they are baptized that God has called them by name. They don’t usually remember it, but that’s okay. There are lots of decisions that we make for our children and things that we tell them before they have any idea what any of it means and before they will remember it.

We tell our children that we love them long before they could possibly know what the word means. We repeat it until they do understand. When they are confirmed we remind our children that God has called each of them by name. That’s a good thing to do. That God has called us each by name is one of the most important things about us, but it’s also a thing that tends to get lost, crowded out by all the other messages aimed at us. To call us by name is one of the most important gifts that God can and does give to us.

To be called by name is a gift, but it’s more than that as Samuel discovered as one night while he was serving an apprenticeship under the priest Eli in the shrine to Yahweh at Shiloh.

There is a back story to this episode of Samuel’s life and the story as a whole occupies a special place in the broader story of Israel’s covenant life with God. Samuel was a transitional figure. According to the story as told in the Bible, before Samuel Israel was a loose confederacy of tribes with no permanent authority or government. When a crisis happened—and these were often military crises caused by the expansion of any of the small city-kingdoms on its borders—a special military and religious leader called somewhat misleadingly, a “judge” would arise and give leadership through the crisis. When the crisis was over, the work of the judge was completed and Israel reverted to being a collection of tribes.

After Samuel there was a new arrangement: there was a king for all the tribes of Israel.

Like many other important figures in Israel’s history, Samuel’s story begins with fertility issues. His mother Hannah was the first wife of Elkanah. This should have been a place of relative privilege, but Hannah had not been able to conceive. Elkanah’s second wife Peninnah—with her small multitude of children—used Hannah’s misfortune to taunt her and generally make her life miserable. (Remember that the Bible does not really have a “traditional” notion of marriage. Its stories take for granted whatever arrangements happen to be common at the time. In the present case the book of Samuel does not see anything remarkable about Elkanah’s having two wives.)

Hannah was pretty miserable so, when her family went on its annual trip to the regional shrine at Shiloh she made a promise to God: if God would give her a son, she would give him back to God. Sure enough, Hannah conceived and had a son and, when the boy Samuel was very young, she brought him back to the shrine at Shiloh and gave him to God as an apprentice to the priest Eli.

That’s where our story picks up this morning. Samuel is an apprentice priest. Eli, the priest at Shiloh, had sons—named Hophni and Phinehas—who were supposed to be following in their father’s footsteps, but they were not up to the job. They used their position to steal from those who came to worship and to extort sexual favors from the women who served at the shrine. Eli knew about this and tried to stop them, but they simply refused to listen and went on doing whatever they wanted.

The boy Samuel was what Hophni and Phinehas should have been. And Eli was pretty much a father to Samuel, since Samuel only saw his family when they came to Shiloh on their annual trip. As Samuel “kept growing up and was more and more liked by both the Lord and the people”—and, yes, this is language that reminds us of the boy Jesus in Luke’s gospel because Luke used the Samuel story as the pattern for telling the story of Jesus—as Samuel was growing up, Eli was losing his sight.

Visions were rare, the narrator tells us, and Eli was going blind. But “God’s lamp hadn’t gone out yet.” Samuel was awake and God called to him, “Samuel, Samuel!” Samuel thought it was Eli calling so he went to Eli to find out what was needed. “I didn’t call you, my son,” answered Eli. “Go and lie down.”

Samuel heard God’s voice again—“Samuel! Samuel!”—and again rushed to Eli’s beside. “What are you doing? What kind of a game are you playing? Lie down and let me sleep already!” Well, that’s not exactly what it says in the story; I’m filling in the blanks a little.

Anyway, when the voice came a third time—“Samuel! Samuel!”—Eli realized that Samuel was not out to ruin his night’s sleep. It was clear that God was speaking to Samuel, so Eli gave Samuel some guidance about how to answer, if God should speak yet again.

Sure enough, God called Samuel once more: “Samuel! Samuel!” Samuel spoke as Eli had told him, “Speak. Your servant is listening.”

God calls Samuel by name, not once but four times. God summons Samuel by name to be one who speaks God’s message, to be a prophet. To be called by name is a gift, but it is more than that. It is also an intrusion into a well-ordered anonymity. To be summoned by God is to have our plans for melting into the background in a big world set aside. To be called by name is to have the truth that we tell about ourselves placed within God’s parentheses.

Samuel knew this as soon as he said, “Speak. Your servant is listening.” What followed was not his idea of how to live his life. The very first thing that he would have to do was to denounce the man who had been a foster father as well as a master. Eli’s failures had caught up with him. There was bad news for him and Samuel was tapped to deliver it. Yes, God was about do a thing in Israel that would make the ears of anyone who heard it tingle. Ours, too, I think.

For Samuel to be called by name was a wondrous gift and a painful task. He bore them both as well as he could. He could have settled in for a life as the resident priest of the shrine at Shiloh, sacrificing sheep and offering sheaves of wheat on behalf of the members of the covenant community. Not a bad life, all in all, but because of the gift and the task that he bore, it wouldn’t be his life. He became the prophet and priest who led Israel into a new way of living as God’s covenant people. He found an anointed Saul to be king. And when Saul proved to be unable to bear the weight of rule, he staged a ritual coup d’etat, placing David on the throne. Because he bore the gift and the task he became someone who mattered. To be named by God is to live a life of consequence.

Oscar Romero came from a rich Salvadoran family. He was a conservative priest who got along well with his parishioners. He was a theological and political conservative and a safe candidate to be the bishop of San Salvador. He would live comfortably. He would celebrate masses in the beauty and splendor of the cathedral of San Salvador. He would attend the wedding receptions and tea parties of the rich, blessing them with his presence. He would be Rome’s ally in its struggle with the priests of the countryside who preached justice for the poor.

The only thing was that God had called Oscar Arnulfo Romero by name. He bore that gift and task as well as he could. When the government forces started killing his priests, he suffered a change of heart. He was no longer a safe appointment to the diocese of San Salvador. He began to speak for God’s justice. He began to preach good news to the poor. In weekly radio messages he assured the people of the El Salvador that their poverty was the result of systemic injustice, not a punishment sent from God. He gave them hope and courage. The government could not forgive that so they killed him. It wasn’t the life that he planned for himself. That possibility was closed to him. He bore the gift and the task and, because he did, his life mattered.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was part of a growing black middle class. He was a brilliant student and graduated from Morehouse College at the age of nineteen and went on to earn a Bachelor of Divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary and a PhD from Boston University. He could have settled into the prestigious pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He could have seen to the needs of his congregation. He could have worked in quiet ways for the betterment of the lives of the African Americans of his community.

It would have been a good life, but God had called Martin by name. That was the gift and the burden that he bore. The nation became his parish. The Lincoln Memorial steps became his pulpit. From there he preached good news to the outcast and the poor. In God’s name he proclaimed an end to discrimination and economic injustice. In God’s name he went even further than that: he connected the dots between racism and poverty and war.

His life was by no means flawless. He plagiarized significant portions of his doctoral dissertation. It is almost certain that he broke his marriage promises more than once. But because God had called him by name, because he bore that gift and task, his life mattered.

And now, here we are. We, too, have lives that we have made as comfortable as we can. We are not fond of strife. We like the quiet and the peace. But God has called us by name. If we listen we, too, will bear that gift and task. Our lives will not be easy. But I promise you this, if we listen, we will matter.

©2012, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.

Arise! Shine! (Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12)

Epiphany B
Isaiah 60:1-6
Matthew 2:1-12
January 1, 2012

Arise! Shine!

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

They were dark times. True, the exiles had returned from far away Babylon, many of them anyway. But the city of Jerusalem was a mess. In the two generations that they had been away the ruined walls and burned out hulk of the Temple hadn’t fixed themselves. The city was not really a very good place to live any more.

Maybe they expected cheering from the people they had left behind. Maybe they expected a grateful welcome when they announced, “We’re here to lead you!” What greeted them instead was a stony silence.

Those people who had been left behind, the ordinary workers and farmers, blue-collar types, had discovered something in two generations of fending for themselves. They discovered that they were up to it. They found out that they didn’t really need the elite for much. They were perfectly capable of leading themselves. “Thanks but no thanks,” they said to the returning exiles. “We don’t need your help and we have our own leaders.”

So things weren’t going very well for the exiles. For them the times were gloomy, dark. It was pretty hard to make money. They had some money, but no one around them had much they wanted to sell. The people of the land had what they needed but not much by way of money, so even if the elites had something to sell, there was no one able to buy it.

Like I said, they were gloomy times, especially for the investor class. The stock market wasn’t doing very well. Profits were small. There wasn’t much in the way of trade going on. There were no consumers at all, confident or otherwise. There was a recession going on, the worst, they said, since the “Crash of 597”¹.

They needed some good news. They needed some hope. They needed a lift for their spirits and some light in the gloom.

Fortunately for them, they had the prophet. We don’t know his name, although the scholars have named him Third Isaiah, because that’s better than calling him , “that guy, you know, who wrote the stuff at the back of the book of Isaiah.” Third Isaiah was part of the tradition that begins with Isaiah and his writings have been folded into the book of Isaiah. He didn’t have a name in the book, but he did have a message. And it was this:

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let's sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again.²

“Yes, gloomy days are coming to an end. God is bringing light. You haven’t counted for much in the grand scheme of things, but that is changing. Kings have no idea who you even are right now, but that is changing. And when it does, Kings will come to you. There will be a free trade agreement that will bring all sorts of luxury goods to you that you can buy and sell to your hearts’ content. Camels will come so that you can buy and sell stuff all over the Persian Empire and maybe even beyond. You will have more money than you can spend and everyone will know that it is God who has blessed you.”

Now, the elites might have wanted to make a lot of money, but all ordinary folks wanted was a chance to make decent lives for themselves and for their families. They weren’t really interested in things like frankincense or gold or myrrh. Those were luxury goods. They weren’t really interested in camels, either. Camels were good for traveling long distances across desert spaces. But they weren’t really interested in travel whether for business or pleasure. Camels weren’t really good for much of anything else.

The ordinary folk were people |who made what little money they needed on Main Street, rather than Wall Street. They traded locally, and that was mostly by barter. They were locavores—eating locally-grown foods—not because being a locavore was chic or trendy, but because they had no choice. That was okay, because they had enough.

Third Isaiah speaks for and to the elite and offers them a God who will guarantee that they become rich. We don’t know who was speaking for and to the ordinary folk, so we can’t say for sure, but I imagine that whoever it was was offering them a God who would provide them with enough. But like I say, we don’t know.

Six hundred years later, Third Isaiah’s pep talk to the elite returning exiles was picked up by Matthew to tell the story of Jesus’ birth. It makes sense doesn’t it? After all, Jesus was a king. It said so on the inscription above his cross. As Matthew told his story elements of this oracle of Third Isaiah made their way into the story and into our tradition. Camels and kings aren’t in Matthew’s version, but they are in the tradition. Gold and frankincense are in the story. And the magi, whoever or whatever they were, were clearly from far away.

They are part of the intelligentsia, clearly. These are people who have the leisure for study, for gazing at the stars and wondering what they mean, and for dropping everything to travel for a long time, maybe as long as two years, depending on how we are supposed to understand the story.

These magi had seen something that suggested to them that a new king had been born for the little Roman province of Judea. So they came to see for themselves. And they came to Jerusalem, because it was the only city of any consequence in Judea. It was where the king was. It was the center of economic and political and religious power in Judea. The magi paid a visit on the palace to congratulate Herod on the birth of a new and remarkable heir about whom the stars had said so much. But there was no heir there. Herod consulted his own scholars.

Herod’s scholars told him an odd thing, a very odd thing, indeed. In spite of all the hints—kings, camels, gold and frankincense—they did not turn to Isaiah 60:1-6, our lesson for today. They did not turn to words of comfort intended for the rich who wanted to be richer.

Strangely, Herod’s scholars found the answer to Herod’s question, “Where is the messiah to be born?” in Micah. Micah was a small-town prophet who was unimpressed by Jerusalem, or its cultural and financial elites. He didn’t speak to or for the elites, but for ordinary folk. He was like Third Isaiah in that he believed that God was indeed going to set things to rights. But he differed in what he thought that would look like. For Micah it wouldn’t consist of riches for the rich. In fact he cried out against accumulated wealth:

Alas for those who devise wickedness

and evil deeds on their beds!

When the morning comes, they perform it,

because it is in their power.

They covet fields, and seize them;

houses, and take them away;

they oppress householder and house,

people and their inheritance....³

For Micah God’s future would favor the humble and the small:

“For you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,

who are one of the little clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to rule in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,

from ancient days.

Epiphany is a Greek word that means “a revelation, a showing forth.” What is revealed in the Epiphany? The scriptures for the this morning suggest that it is God’s intentions and commitments that are revealed, that are shone forth. God knows that there are elites. There are always some folks who manage to accumulate wealth and power and prestige. People are pretty impressed by the wealthy and powerful. And in truth there are some remarkable success stories among them. But mostly accumulated wealth is an expression of what my father calls the golden rule: Those with the gold make the rules. And the rules that they make almost always make it easier for them to hang on to their wealth and accumulate even more.

But God isn’t impressed by wealth. God isn’t moved by power. God isn’t wowed by prestige. God chooses from the “little clans of Judah,” not from the Jerusalem elite. God chooses a child born to a peasant family from a backwater town to challenge the powerful and the rich.

When the magi asked their question, Herod was frightened, the story says. Good. He should be frightened.

©2012, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.

1
Please note that, to my knowledge, there was no “Crash of 597”. This is simply an attempt to make the story seem contemporary.

2
Jack Yellen and Milton Ager, “Happy Days Are Here Again” (EMI Robbins Catalog, 1929), http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/games/songs/childrens/happydaysmid.htm.

3
Micah 2:1-2