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
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