Episode IV: A New Hope (Christmas 1a; Matthew 2:1-12; December 28, 2014)

Episode IV: A New Hope

Christmas 1a
Matthew 2:1-12
December 28, 2014

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

It hardly ever fails.  Sometime around Christmas there will be an article in the newspaper.  A reporter will talk to an astronomer asking for a scientific account of the star of Bethlehem.  The astronomer will rehearse the usual theories.  It could have been a supernova, an exploding star.  Or perhaps it was a comet.  Or maybe it wasn't really a star, but a conjunction of planets.

Of course, other questions will emerge along the way:  Who or what were the Magi?  Where did they came from?  Were there two stars or only one?

Fundamental to all of the theories is one assumption: there really was a star or some other astronomical thingy that people could and would have seen.  There really were visits from the magi, whoever they were.  These were historical events.  Whatever they were, they all took place in Bethlehem.  If you had had a smart phone, you could have recorded it all and posted it on YouTube.

Now, I'm not out to debunk the gospel account, although considered as history there are real problems with it, especially if we also have to harmonize it some way with the account in Luke's gospel.  The gospel, the good news, in this sermon is not that there was no Bethlehem star or visitors from the East.

But I think it is worth a look at this story to see not what happened, but what it might have meant for the folks who first told and heard it.  To me it is always far less interesting to decide whether this or any other biblical story is historically true than to see what the story does with the people who hear and tell it.

In some ways this story is not at all unusual.  Jesus was an extraordinary person.  In the ancient world it was understood that extraordinary people had extraordinary births.  For one thing they would more than likely have been descended from the gods themselves.  For another, their births would have been accompanied by “signs and portents.” Very popular portent possibilities were comets, meteor showers, “new stars,” and alignments of planets in favorable constellations

According to the Roman historian Suetonius, the birth of Caesar Augustus was proceeded by such portents.  In his case they predicted the birth of a king.  In response, the Roman Senate (who were not interested in having a king) required that any male child born that year should be exposed and allowed to die.  He also recorded a story that the god Apollo in the form of a serpent was actually Augustus' father.[1]

According to Matthew, the Emperor Augustus had nothing on Jesus!  And this, I think, is part of the point.  But only part.

The delicious part of Matthew's story is that Herod's court was clueless.  Herod was a savvy politician who had managed to be rewarded by Augustus even though he had supported Augustus' rival Mark Antony in the Roman civil war.  He rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem to please the Jewish people and gain the support of the priesthood, but he also built pagan temples and his own palace complex .

This Roman puppet known to history as Herod the Great knows nothing at all about the birth of the new king.  In fact, he's even ignorant of his own ignorance.  It takes the Magi to show him how little he knows—this powerful and sophisticated ruler—Magi who are neither Jewish nor even Roman.  Only then do his national security advisors produce a briefing.  Jerusalem may be the capital, but it's not where the action is.  Unknown to them, unlooked for by the powers that be, unsuspected by the intelligentsia, God has acted in Bethlehem.  Bethlehem was the Judean equivalent of Burr Oak; someone famous had come from there a long time ago, but nothing to attract the attention of the National Security Council had happened there recently. But it was there in Bethlehem, not in Jerusalem, where God had acted. 

It was episode IV of Star Wars.  It was the birth of a New Hope.  Of course, the Empire would strike back.  It always does.  Next week we will hear the rest of the sordid story.

Herod began the story entirely unaware that his reign was threatened.  When he did learn of this, all his ruthlessness could do nothing to stop the threat.  Herod cannot stand against God.  Later in the gospel we will discover that Herod's puppet masters cannot stand against God either.  They killed Jesus, but death is nothing to the living God.  Royal ignorance could not prevent Jesus' birth.  Royal ruthlessness could not prevent his survival.  Royal violence could not keep him dead.  That was the good news for Matthew's earliest readers.

So where is the good news for us in the story?

Well, let’s see.  In a few days, on January 6 to be exact, a new Congress, the 114th, will be sworn in.  The fact that this will be the Day of Epiphany is mere coincidence and, since the Day of Epiphany signifies the entry of God’s light into the world, it is in fact an ironic coincidence.  The next two years promise to be frustrating for anyone who is hoping for the solution of problems, whether the problems are ours, or whether they are the problems of people with even less political power than we have. 

The eyes of the politicians, pundits, and pollsters are all on 2016 and the Presidential election.  If in the next few months there should be a tsunami that carries away half of the population of California, the breaking news is sure to be followed by the teaser, “Join us at ten for the news that matters most: What does this mean for Hillary’s chances?”  Well, as Will Rogers once said, “We have the best Congress money can buy.”  Still, I wish the 114^th Congress well.  I will pray for them.  And from time to time I will even give them a piece of my unsolicited advice.  I am, after all, a citizen of this country. 

But I hold another citizenship and it comes first.  I am citizen of a different commonwealth, the new thing that God is doing in our midst.  Matthew tells me that it is not in the halls of power in Washington that this new thing will be fashioned.  Nor will that new thing be undone there. 

God is at work primarily in other places: in the neighborhoods of Ferguson, Missouri, where residents struggle with lack of meaningful work, living conditions that are not livable, and schools that do not educate.  God is at work there.  God is at work in Afghanistan where President Ashraf Ghani is, in effect, the mayor of Kabul, the countryside is controlled by the warlords, ordinary folks turn to the Taliban in desperation as the only way to have a semblance of good governance, and the small and impoverished Christian community struggles to find the wisdom and the courage to offer a witness for peace.  God is at work there.  God is at work in Gaza where Palestinians struggle to rebuild their lives back to the unlivable level that they had achieved before the latest Israeli “lawn mowing.”  And, yes, God is even at work in Bethlehem, caught up as it is in the struggle between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government and in the centuries-long quarrels of Christians.

I rather doubt that there was ever a star in Bethlehem, but I tell you that I believe the star shines now.  It shines in the slums of Ferguson.  It shines in the mountain villages of Afghanistan.  It shines in Gaza and in Bethlehem.

It shines into the hospital rooms where families wait for a loved one to die.  It shines into the too-empty homes of the grieving.  It shines into the darkness of the broken lives of the addicted.  It shines into hollow stomachs of the hungry.  It shines into the despair of the hopeless and the isolation of the lonely.  The star of Bethlehem shines into every dark place that humankind has fashioned for itself.  Nothing can extinguish its light.  It shines and shines and shines.

Wherever it shines, wherever it rests, we, if we are wise, will rise up and follow, and there we will offer whatever gifts we have.

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[1]    Suetonius Lives of the Twelve Caesars 2.94.3-4. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Augustus*.html