Who Invited Them?

Scriptures:  Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12  Matthew 2:1-12

There’s a story – probably more than a little embellished, if not outright confabulated - but it’s a memorable story nonetheless, just the kind that preachers like – about a middle-aged couple who turned up on the doorstep of the President of Harvard University.   Both the man’s threadbare suit and the woman’s faded dress had seen better days, as, apparently, had the couple themselves.  They told the President’s secretary that their son had recently died of typhoid fever – the year was 1884 – and the couple wanted to donate some money to Harvard in memory of their son.  Now, one might imagine that the President of Harvard University kept a busy calendar, and he didn’t have time among his many pressing meetings that day to chew the fat with these shabby out-of-towners who hadn’t bothered to make an appointment in advance.    So he told his secretary to send them away, and if they wanted to talk to him, to tell them to make an appointment next time.   As she was showing the couple out the door, the secretary casually asked how much money they had wanted to donate and the husband said, “Oh, about $5 million….but since your president doesn’t want to be bothered, we’ll see if we can set something up in our son’s memory on our own.”  As the story goes, the couple in question were Leland and Jane Stanford, and since Harvard didn’t have time to talk to them about their $5 million dollars, they went on to use the money to establish Stanford University.

 

Or so the story goes.  It’s hard to say how much of the story is fact and how much is fiction.   But, regardless how factual or fictional the story is, it’s a reminder that sometimes great opportunity comes in unlikely persons and situations, that an uninvited guest is not necessarily an unwelcome guest, that what may at first seem like an imposition can turn out to be a blessing.

 

Today we commemorate the Epiphany, the revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles.  Our reading from Matthew’s Gospel also tells a story about uninvited guests – that of the wise men coming to pay homage to the Christ child.   It’s helpful to keep in mind that a lot of what we think we know about the Wise Men isn’t from the Bible, but comes from various embellishments that have been added to the story over the course of many centuries and unknown thousands of Christmas pageants and productions of Amahl and the Night  Visitors.  We don’t know that there were three of them – there could have been six, nine, or twelve of them for all we know factually.  We don’t know their names – somebody decided to call them Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, but again, that’s tradition, not Scripture – for all we know, their names were Manny, Moe and Jack.  They didn’t arrive to greet Jesus in the stable, but some time afterward – Matthew’s account speaks of a house, not a stable – and Jesus could have been as much as two years old, given the age of the babies that Herod martyred in attempt to eliminate Jesus – still very young, but hardly a babe in arms.  

 

Who were these folks, and what motivated their journey.  We’re told they came “from the East” – possibly from Assyria or Babylon or Persia, former enemy countries that had conquered Israel at various times in centuries past.    We know that the ten tribes of Israel had never returned from exile in Assyria – they just intermarried with the local population – and likely there were many Jews who had likewise decided to stay in Babylon rather than return to Jerusalem at the end of the exile.  These Jews likely intermarried with the local population, and so at least some of the local population would have had some exposure to Jewish scriptures and beliefs.  While these wise men were not themselves Jews, whatever little exposure they’d had to Judaism had inspired them with great hope regarding the birth of a child. 

Now, their GPS had sent them a bit off course…..they naturally enough thought that the Jewish savior would be born in Jerusalem, the capital city, but Herod’s advisors told the wise men, “No, not here, but in Bethlehem, the city of David.”  The name Bethlehem literally means “house of bread.”  As it happens, Bethlehem, with a current population of about 25,000 is in what is now the West Bank…..since 1995, territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority.  The majority of the population is Muslim, but it’s one of the largest centers of what’s left of Palestinian Christianity as well.  These days, Bethlehem, like the rest of the West Bank is heavily patrolled and monitored by Israel…..if Mary and Joseph were making the journey these days, they’d have had guns pointed at them and had to go through checkpoints and searches of their baggage and such.  But that’s another story, for another time. 

 

Of course, the fact that these wise men landed on Herod’s doorstep asking about a child who had been born King of the Jews would have raised Herod’s hackles – and, in truth, while the visitors may have been wise about stars, they weren’t very savvy about politics.  You see, as far as Herod was concerned, there was already a King of the Jews – and that king’s name was Herod.  As far as Herod was concerned, Herod was the only King of the Jews that was needed.  No others need apply.  From Josephus and other writers of the time, we know that even on his best day, Herod was suspicious to the point of paranoia.  And the day the wise men landed on his doorstep wasn’t his best day.  He made nice to the wise men, but in his troubled mind he resolved to eliminate this rival of whom the wise men had tipped him off. 

 

So the wise men found their way to the house where Mary and Joseph and the baby were staying. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall to watch that scene…..knock at the front door, Joseph opens up – “Who’s there” – and here’s a bunch of outlandishly-dressed foreigners on their doorstep, probably looking just as outlandish as I do in my robe today.  The visitors looked funny, they talked funny, and after their long journey they probably smelled a little funny too.  Imagine if a group of Arabs, with traditional headgear and robes wafting in the breeze, landed on our doorstep.  We’d likely stand there blinking for a bit, ask, “Can I help you?”, and probably wonder about their intentions.  Perhaps we’d be tempted to leave them stand outside.  Quite possibly someone might call 911.  But, faced with this scenario, and likely with some misgivings, Joseph says, “C’mon in.”  And, as Matthew tells us, the visitors paid homage to the child and left the gifts they’d been carrying so far for so long.

 

Matthew’s account of the Wise Men fulfills two functions.  First, it basically represents a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy to the Jews, which we read this morning, that “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn…A multitude of camels shall cover you; all those from Sheba will come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”  In the visit of the wise men, we see this text literally come to life, on a small scale.

 

Beyond Isaiah’s image of the wealth of the nations flowing to Israel, Matthew’s account speaks of the broad reach of God’s grace. Through this story, Matthew told the predominantly Jewish early Christian communities in which his Gospel circulated – and continues to tell us – that God’s grace and God’s love cannot be contained by national borders or ethnic boundaries, that within the expanse of God’s grace and love there is room not only for Jews, but for Gentiles – even for such outlandish characters as the wise men. 

 

As I’d mentioned earlier, today is Epiphany, when we remember the revelation of Jesus to the  Gentiles – ultimately, the revelation of Jesus to us.  While the visit of the wise men was a one-time event, the revelation of Jesus to Jews and Gentiles alike is an ongoing event.  Every day, people are experiencing the grace of God through Jesus Christ for the first time.  I pray that each of us here has experienced that grace, and if not, that God will grant that grace today. 

 

We, as church, are one of the ways in which God has chosen to reveal God’s grace through Jesus Christ.   Inevitably, this means that the church has to be in contact with those outside the church.  Archbishop William Temple was quoted as saying that “The church is the only organization that exists only for non-members.”    And so God will send new visitors our way.  They may not be as exotic as Matthew’s wise men, and likely won’t be dressed as exotically as I am.  They may be dressed more like the Stanfords on their incognito visit to Harvard.   But every visitor to Emanuel church comes bearing a gift – the gift of opportunity.  Everyone who visits bears the image of God.  Everyone who visits is infinitely beloved of God, is one of those for whom Christ died.  Everyone who visits gives us an opportunity to live out the Gospel, to share good news.

 

And we aren’t called on just to wait for visitors to come to us, but to venture outside the sanctuary of this building, to hit the streets.  Last Sunday, the Adult Bible study group finished our seemingly endless study of the Gospel of St. Matthew.   The last chapter of Matthew’s Gospel contains Jesus’ great commission to his disciples – “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.”  Go and make disciples.  Go!  It’s an intimidating request.  But Jesus also equipped his disciples with this promise:   “And remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”  So when we go, we do not go alone.  God does not leave us out there hanging by ourselves. 

 

Matthew’s account of the visit of the wise men ends by telling us that, being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they returned to their own country by another way.  Likewise, when we, or when those with whom we share the Gospel - are transformed by the grace of Christ, they cannot return to their old lives; they do not return by the way they came.  We cannot continue in the way of Herod, serving the priorities of the world, the priorities of empire – money, power, personal glory.  Instead, we walk a new path, the way of the cross, following in our lives our crucified and risen Savior.  We don’t seek to save our lives – self-preservation, self-justification, self-glorification is no longer our primary concern – but rather we seek to lose our lives in humble service to the Gospel.  May this transforming grace of Christ be active among us here at Emanuel Church, and may this transforming grace touch all those with whom we come in contact.  Amen.