Three antagonists, three places, three gifts

Sometimes the Christmas pageant with its bathrobes and tinsel halos are just so clever and downright cute that we can forget for a while that the coming of Christ Jesus in the flesh has always been a conflict-engendering event, from the very beginning.

We mentioned several weeks ago about how Mary's song, the Magnificat, has been banned or outlawed by dictators regularly across the centuries because they correctly sense its revolutionary character.

If that is true for Mary, how much more so is it true for Mary's Son, the Savior of the world?

He will face conflict, the most serious kinds of conflict, from the moment of his birth.

It is Herod ”the Great” we're talking about here.

Herod, whose greatness is so called because of the vast scale of the public works that were constructed during his reign.

Palaces, amphitheaters, aqueducts, cities, and the entire platform on which the Temple of Jerusalem sat was expanded to 6 football fields in size by filling in valleys and adding massive retaining walls, etc.

All of this came at great cost; crushing taxes, forced labor, and suppression of any dissent.

Historical accounts say that the roads around Jerusalem were lined with thousands of crosses with victims sometimes taking days to die.

Herod “the Great” ordered the murder of a wife, several sons, various advisors and other officials when he suspected them of some misdeed or plot against him over the years.

And the Magi meander into this hotbed of political intrigue with a story about a new-born king!

Our Christmas pageants have given them a dignity which they probably don't deserve.

They're not likely kings; they are more like ancient-day Jeanne Dixon than Queen Elizabeth.

That is, they were astrologers, making up opinions about events based upon the observed position of starts and planets.

(We do have to note that the distinction between astrologer and astronomer was not made in the ancient world.)

But having blundered once by speaking to Herod, they do not blunder a second time.

They get out of town without reporting back to Jerusalem.

This would have been a breech of protocol; as foreigners, their travel permissions would have been rather specific.

But nonetheless, they depart quickly, thus making themselves antagonists of Herod.

They would need to get beyond his reach very quickly.

Meanwhile, when Herod discovers that he has been duped, he is so terrified of a baby that he orders the murder of a town's worth of babies in a failed attempt to murder the right one.

So what has become of our three antagonists?

- the magi have made it to Jesus, delivered their gifts, and departed, not to be heard from again.

- Herod “the Great” murders yet more persons, this time babies, and soon dies himself, quite painfully.

- the baby Jesus is born in obscurity, receives gifts and visitors, and escapes murder to begin life.

II. Three Places:

It is important that we tell the Christmas story each year in ways that resonate with every age.

And so on Christmas Eve, I ask for the help of younger members of the parish to carry the crèche figures as we read the story and move from the road to Bethlehem to the stable and from out in the fields to the place where they all gather.

And I gave each of them a small book to read themselves and then to give away to a younger friend or neighbor.

But in doing this good thing, perhaps we have made the setting of the story more exotic than it means to be.

It was the point that a mid-eastern peasant hearing the story would immediately recognize the setting in Luke's telling of the birth of Jesus, and say “That's just like my house!”...where the animals are on a lower level separated from the people only by the feeding-area, the manger, and where the single guest room may be on the roof of the house.

And here in Matthew's story, the magi enter “the house where Jesus was” and it is the ordinary word for house, with nothing special or unusual implied at all.

And that is precisely the point.

Jesus is come among us in these ordinary places, to deal with us in our ordinary lives.

He is not going to be satisfied with us playing dress-up once a week for worship, and ignoring him the rest of the time.

He will remind us repeatedly that he has been right beside us all the time.

He called us into being.

He lives with us on the trying days.

He send his Spirit to comfort us on the sad days, with sighs too deep for words.

Yes, right here at the intersection of Ordinary Overpass and Boring Boulevard.

There are two other places in the story.

The first of those is the palace of Herod.

It is a whole different world than the ordinary houses of everyone else.

Think marble, lots of marble, imported marble.

It has to be imported; there is no native marble in all of Israel!

So right away we know upon seeing marble that it was expensive and ostentatious to use it.

On the very lowest level of the city of Tiberias on the west side of the Sea of Galilee, there was a palace built by Herod around which the rest of the city grew up.

Yes, I saw its marble floor; that is all that is left.

(The people were so angry with Herod some years later that they stormed the place and tore it down.)

[We had an English man in our crew who turned out to be almost useless as a worker because all he was interested in doing was digging for “Herodian marble”.

Unfortunately for him, the area in which we we working that year was from the 9^th century, and one does not get to the 1^st century without passing through all of the other centuries first.

No one wanted to tell him that there was probably no “Herodian marble” under this section of the city anyway, even if the excavation ever did get down that far.]

One can contrast the smoothly fitted marble slabs of Herod's fine buildings with the rough stones barely fitting together than make up most ordinary houses.

And that Israel is astride the Great Rift valley and thus prone to earthquakes makes the problem even worse.

Roughly built houses collapse more quickly in earthquake conditions.

So we have a housing style available to Herod and his entourage which is not available to the vast majority of the population.

And then there are the places outside Israel.

From outside come the magi, as representatives of that outside world, to be the first to pay homage to the infant king.

It is a way of saying that this Jesus is come for everyone, not just the people of Israel.

The idea of the Day of the Lord had undergone some variety of thinking among the prophets over the centuries.

Some prophets had stressed that the Day of the Lord was to be a time of reversal, when the oppressed of Israel would lord it over their oppressors.

Other prophets thought the Day of the Lord was a time when all the nations would come streaming to Jerusalem in an equal kind of way.

And there are various nuances of position between those two, but they all involve a breaking down of the barrier between “inside” and “outside” Israel.

No more is Israel to be in splendid isolation, but in appropriate connections with its Shepherd and Lord.

And then also “outside” is available to serve as a place of refuge, as it had done for Cain, for Jacob,

for Moses, for David, and many more.

So our three places are these:

- Jesus is come to the very “ordinary” places, then and now!

- Herod's palace represents everything removed from God and each other.

- the “outside” places are missionary goals and also places of refuge when needed

III. And now to the gifts.

Scripture only specifies the number of gifts they brought, not the number of magi!

Speculation over the centuries has ranged from 2 to 14 magi; its just a fun game.

The notable thing is that they came and offered expensive gifts, fit for Jesus' triple office of prophet, priest, and king.

They are gifts for a adult, even though given to an infant.

We don't hear whether or how Mary made use of them.

Along with the objects they gave another gift; and they knelt down and paid him homage., that is, their worship.

On the other hand, the only gift Herod gave was hate and murder of the Innocents of Bethlehem. It has been the sad reminder of the power of evil over the centuries whenever we have felt too secure in our own power.

And finally, the greatest gift in the story is the one still unfolding, that is, the presence of the Lord Jesus himself.

This is the gift that endures, the one that really matters the most, that Jesus reaches out to us.

So, most gracious Lord, may we

Evermore be led to thee.

There forever may we sing

Alleluias to our King.

The gifts are these:

-the magi's gifts of objects and worship

-Herod's gift of hate and murder

-Jesus gift of himself in God's love.

Three antagonists: magi, Herod, and Jesus

who operate in three places: outside Israel, marble palaces, ordinary houses

and who give three gifts: objects and worship, hate and murder, and Jesus himself.

Isn't it marvelous that God has chosen to use such a powerful story to get the Gospel told! Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.