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| God Makes Himself Known (Matthew 2:1-12) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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Grace mercy and peace … Today is a very unusual Sunday for us here at our Savior. We are in that time the Christmas Carols speak of as the 12 days of Christmas … the days between Christmas and this Tuesday, January 6. What’s so special about January 6? It’s the day the Church recognizes as Epiphany… a day, Like Christmas which is the same date each year. And so what is Epiphany? Epiphany, the name, literally means “showing forth” … and the date of January 6 is the date that the Church has recognized and commemorated the day the Wise Men, or Magi, visited the Christ Child. Now, as careful as St. Luke was to give us the precise timing of Jesus’ birth, during the first census while Quirinus was governor of Syria … timing of what happens after Jesus’ birth is not nearly as precise. Luke’s Gospel doesn’t record the visit of the Magi … but Matthew does. We have some clues of the timing, however … First, our reading is very clear that the Magi visited Jesus in a house … not in a stable. And second, we also learn that as Herod finds out from the Magi when the star appeared in the east, he then later orders all the boys under the age of two in Bethlehem be killed. So .. the visit of the Wise Men or Magi, could have been up to a year or a even a little more after Jesus was born. You know what that means? It means that our customary practice in our crèches, like over there and downstairs … and in our Christmas Pageants … of having the wise men visit the Baby Jesus in the stable is probably not very accurate. Another custom that may not be very accurate … is that as Matthew records the three gifts of gold and frankincense and Myrrh … he does not say that there were only three wise men. There very well could have been more. Speculation has it that these men may have been from the area of Babylon, where some 500 years earlier the Jews of Jerusalem had been taken into exile. And that’s how the people of that land had learned of the Jewish expectation of God’s Deliverer .. “King of the Jews.” And the biblical prophesy of a “Star of Jacob” foretelling the Messiah’s birth. Astrologers that they were … our planetariums today can take us back to that time of Jesus’ birth. And when they do, they show us that there was a very unusual sign at that time… a gathering of three planets in an area of the sky known to them as the “House of the Hebrews.” Was this the sign that encouraged them to go west to Jerusalem? Well, this side of heaven, we’ll probably never know for sure. But to get all tied up in dating and the number of wise men and the celestial nature of the Star of Bethlehem is not the point. The point is, as we talked about much in the past year … God was at work building His kingdom back then, even as He is today … at work all around us. And in this case, using people to make His message and purposes clear… He invited these wise men, these non-Jews, from a far Eastern land, to come and worship the Christ. And they did. And in their so doing, they fulfilled the prophecies of Scripture … that gentiles would bring their riches to the Messiah. The Epiphany, or the “showing forth” in this is … that the salvation which Jesus was born to bring was for both Jew and Gentile. For the entire human race. It was a showing forth of God’s grace and His love. And that all this had been prophesied centuries before by God through His spokesmen, whose words have been preserved for us today. But all this does leave a couple of Questions that are unsettling. Can you imagine the arrival of a large entourage, which these wise men would have surely had, making a very long trip and then arriving in Jerusalem with the news … “we have seen His star when it rose and have come to worship Him” ? Matthew records that this news troubled Herod and all of Jerusalem with him … and yet … who goes to Bethlehem? Bethlehem is a relatively short journey of only about 6 miles, compared to maybe 600 miles or more that the magi had already come? Who goes, though? Just the Magi … not the scribes nor the priests, the ones who might be most interested to see this Messiah the Jews had been waiting for, for thousands of years. But, perhaps to accompany the magi would have been deemed a disloyal act in Herod’s eyes. But it does seem strange that given the circumstances that no one in Herod’s court goes to see this thing that has happened and report back to him. No, Herod entrusts that job of reporting to Him to… these Gentiles. Perhaps this might reflect a certain spiritual malaise of that time. Herod himself was not of Jewish descent. Add to that, the Lord had been silent in Israel for over 450 years … Herod and his court’s expectations might well have been … if God was going to do anything this notable …the birth of His Messiah, then surely a prophet or priest in Jerusalem, in God’s city, would have been made aware of it. “Go see for yourself,” they might have said to these Gentiles, discounting their claims of seeing a God-given astrological sign … as astrology was not a way that God had spoken to His people in the past. That discounting of what God can do might give us pause, though, given what we learned this past year in “Experiencing God.” God reveals Himself, his purposes and His ways …we learned through Scripture, prayer, circumstance and the church. But all of those ways happen through the work of the Holy Spirit through God’s revealed Word. And so, it is from that fact, we might conclude that the revealed word of God played the primary role in motivating the Magi to come to God’s Messiah. Not some direct revelation from a God they did not know … But God used a sign that they would recognize in conjunction with His Word. And ironically enough, the Prophecy in the Book of Numbers of the Star of Jacob … was given not by one of God’s people … but by Balaam, a Gentile himself. God reveals Himself, His purposes and His ways … by His Word. As far as that goes with the Magi is speculation on our part, as Matthew does not give us all the details we might want … and yet, that speculation consistent with the event and how God worked through it. The Magi did come at God’s bidding, and they spoke of knowing of and seeing His sign. And so. For us, when we talk about Epiphany … of God showing forth His Glory … there is only one place to start … and to end … His Word. And that’s true for in those cases, also, when we find ourselves looking for a sign of our own. A sign that things are going to be all right. A sign to help us determine what to do … or which way to go. We do look to God for direction … and sometimes, just reading His word seems more like we’re looking at a history lesson from a different culture, long ago. We might conclude that the people in Herod’s court felt the same way. That God had been silent for so long … and that too much time separated them from the God that they read about in their Scriptures, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses … Samuel and David. A God of a different era and a different world. A world, now in their case, under Roman occupation … a power so great, no one man could ever lead a rebellion from their ranks that could defy the power of Caesar. So, perhaps they read their Scriptures through eyes a bit jaundiced by their circumstances. And perhaps, so might we. How does God fit into our world of cell-phones, 3-G networks, Internet connectivity … an economy where jobs and wages are influenced by global markets, stock prices jacked around by the slightest news … Where is God in all this? Or perhaps, more to the point, where is my sign? In the Book of Hebrews we read that God spoke in many and various ways to his people of Old … but with the coming of Christ … He has now spoken to us by His Son. So we are in a different place than those priests in Herod’s court. … We have seen the glory of the one and only from the Father, full of Grace and truth. The sign we all share since Jesus coming is the sign of our Baptism. God has adopted us as His sons and daughters. Made us heirs of heaven. Given us His Holy Spirit. In fact, we are each a temple of that Spirit. And as such, God’s intent is to have that Father/Child relationship with each of us. We see the sign of that as He comes to us in the true body and blood of His son to assure us of that relationship that Jesus came to bring. A relationship initiated in our Baptism … and now something we will enjoy for all eternity. The sign says: He loves you. And in that love relationship, He has promised to be with us in all that may come, good or evil, in this world. Not to spare us, necessarily … but to show us through it all, that we are not alone, and that we do have a Heavenly Father. And so, He … not me, not Pastor Kuder, not Mr. Nickel … but He, Your Heavenly Father, invites you to stay near … to let Him speak to you in His Word and to show you, daily, His loving Care … and let Him be the Shepherd of His sheep. The Peace of knowing Him in that way be yours in this New Year. In Him Amen. |