Sermon for Epiphany Sunday Zoom Worship – 3rd January 2021: Matthew 2, 1-12
Fr Leonard W Doolan – Athens
In this first sermon of 2021 we begin with a question. I will offer four responses to the question, but these are personal responses, so others may offer different responses. However before we do this, we have to know the question.
Why is it that only St. Matthew tells the story of the arrival of the Magi, the wise men, to worship at the Christ manger?
The first response is a pragmatic one, but we need to say it, even if we don’t expand too much on it. From the academic discoveries of biblical criticism we know that the 3 gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are similar. This is why we call them the ‘syn-optic gospels’. The 4th gospel, that of St. John, is excluded for these purposes.
The material included in St. Mark’s gospel constitutes the ‘core’ material for all three synoptics. However, St. Luke has additional material distinctive to himself, as does St. Matthew. This choice of material stresses their own ‘take’ on divine events. For our purposes it is enough to say that both Matthew and Luke add their own tradition of stories, especially around the infancy of Jesus, and again after the resurrection. So this is a purely pragmatic first response.
The second is that Matthew introduces us early in his gospel to the ruling family of Judea, who will persistently be seen as opponents of Jesus and the kingdom he came to preach and fulfil. The story of the Sages’ journey gives an account of a stopping place chez Herod. This is Herod the Great, the murderous Herod. We are told of his shocking reaction to the news that a ‘king’ had been born in Bethlehem of Judea – namely the slaughter of the holy Innocents, whom we commemorate a couple of days after Christmas Day. The Orthodox give the specific number as 14,000. It is one of Herod’s sons, King Herod Antipas who will later be the adulterous king, denounced by John the Baptizer, and who will have John beheaded. At the time of the trial of Jesus before his death, St. Luke and only St. Luke, tells of Jesus being put before this Herod (but that is outside St. Matthew’s account so we must move swiftly on). This royal household of Herods is not a family to be messed with, and represent a kingliness entirely of this earth.
The 3rd response I offer to the question about Matthew’s unique inclusion of this story lies at the very end of his gospel. The beginning is in the end, so to speak. 27 chapters after the story of the Journey of the Magi, Matthew completes his gospel with a scene of a gathering on a mountain in Galilee. Despite the doubt of a few, his disciples worshipped the risen Jesus. This is the same word in Greek to describe what those Magi did when they presented their gifts – they worshipped him. Jesus with his disciples gathered around him on the Galilean mountain gives what we call ‘The Great Commission’. He instructs his followers saying ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’ (Matt. 28, 19)
This commission to go out to the nations – an inclusive and embracing apostolic mission – is a universality that is already shown by Matthew at the beginning of his gospel, with the journey of the Wise Men. These are not of the house of Israel; they are not of the faith of Abraham, Jakob and Isaac, but gentiles, foreigners, and even worse than that, they were astrologers because they interpret events through the movements of the firmament.
The 3rd response I offer to the question about Matthew’s unique inclusion of this story lies at the very end of his gospel. The beginning is in the end, so to speak. 27 chapters after the story of the Journey of the Magi, Matthew completes his gospel with a scene of a gathering on a mountain in Galilee. Despite the doubt of a few, his disciples worshipped the risen Jesus. This is the same word in Greek to describe what those Magi did when they presented their gifts – they worshipped him. Jesus with his disciples gathered around him on the Galilean mountain gives what we call ‘The Great Commission’. He instructs his followers saying ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’ (Matt. 28, 19)
This commission to go out to the nations – an inclusive and embracing apostolic mission – is a universality that is already shown by Matthew at the beginning of his gospel, with the journey of the Wise Men. These are not of the house of Israel; they are not of the faith of Abraham, Jakob and Isaac, but gentiles, foreigners, and even worse than that, they were astrologers because they interpret events through the movements of the firmament. The arrival of these aliens, by which I mean foreigners, ξένοι, in Greek, is an early glimpse into the kind of message and the kind of Jesus that Matthew will be presenting, which culminates in the risen Jesus offering a universal salvation.
The 4th response I offer to the question about why Matthew includes the Journey of the Sages is perhaps the most significant, and requires a slightly longer description.
The gospels generally present a humble venue for the birth of a Saviour – perhaps oddly ordinary. We are told that, because all the hotels were full in Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary are offered a little lean-to to shelter them. Orthodox ikons normally depict a cave rather than a stable. The details we are given is that there was livestock around, so maybe things didn’t smell too fresh. Compared to the clinical cleanliness that surrounds natal delivery nowadays this was not a hygienic scene at all. No hermetically sealed labour ward. This is where Jesus was born – good to know that Joseph was there for the birth, another sign of a liberated man – and apart from Joseph and Mary the only other living things there were domestic animals. The first visitors were shepherds, the lowest form of work.
This is a strange way for the God of glory to do his work among us – a profoundly unexpected place for the God who revealed the glory on the mountain top to Moses; who revealed the glory to the pilgrim people of Israel as a pillar of cloud in the day and a pillar of fire at night; and so forth.
What we have here is the glory of God in a newborn baby, in a cave or in a stable, lying on some hay. Nothing could be more humble, less antiseptic, yet we are being told, here lies God’s glory, his δοξή. It is surely a divine paradox – a para-doxi – that we are witnessing in this scene in the narrative of a gospel writer. The paradox is extended and compounded by the arrival of these Sages from the East, who bring precious gifts, prophetic signs of what is happening in this child’s birth.
Such a divine paradox was brought home to me just over Christmas by the arrival of some Jackie Lawson ‘e-greetings’ cards. They are all the rage now, but in fact some are profoundly full of meaning. A couple of these animated cards show some dogs in a shed playing around with a whole load of rubbish – bits of this, bits of that – and just generally being mischievous puppies. When the owner comes to see what the hullabaloo is all about he is greeted by a deep silence, and the dogs are looking entranced towards the shed wall. All the mayhem they had created and thrown about had been transformed by the shadow it cast. For the pile of junk reflected in the light formed a shadow of a manger scene, and they were looking on with adoration.
It is a scene of transformation and it emanates from the most unexpected of situations. It is this type of picture that St. Matthew is presenting us with. The Eastern sages with precious gifts kneeling before the King of Glory on a bed of straw. The gospel writer is helping us to see where the glory of God is to be found – the paradox that God is in man so that man can partake in the Godhead (variant of St. Irenaeus). It is for us to see this and to understand this and to allow this to form and reform our lives; how we see God and just as importantly, each other.
In his book Christ on Trial (Zondervan 2002 p.26-27) which has recently been published in Greek (by the publishing house En Plo, trans by Christos Makropoulos) Rowan Williams quotes an unlikely source for this type of revelation. It is a short conversation between Dr. Watson and the great detective Sherlock Holmes. Watson begins, ‘I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather ruefully…’I can see nothing’, said I, handing it back to my friend. ‘On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences’. (The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle – A Conan Doyle, Penguin series).
What might the reasoning of those wise men be after worshipping Christ lying in this tattered object, this crib of majesty, this straw strewn throne of glory? What are we to take from it – how does it transform our real understanding of ourselves, of each other, of the work of God in Christ, and the work of God in us? Will this revelation shape our lives, our attitudes, our interaction with others in this year of Our Lord 2021?
One less well known Epiphany hymn, written in 5th century by Caelius Sedulius, runs as follows in verse 2;
‘Lo, sages from the east are gone
To where the star hath newly shone:
Led on by light, to Light they press,
And by their gifts their God confess. (trans. P. Dearmer NEH 46)
So these are four suggestions as to why St. Matthew alone records the visit of the Magi. The episode suits so well his overall presentation of the Good News of Jesus Christ. You may have other suggestions of course. Do think about it.
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