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EPIPHANY, 01/06/2010
Sermon on Matthew 2:1-12, by Marlene R Lorensen
The Cathedral of Copenhagen Foto: Ulrich Nembach
(click here to enlarge the foto)
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." When King Herod heard this he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written: " 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.'" Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him." After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
We have followed his star...
The Christmas season is coming to an end. We have been putting away Christmas decorations and taking down our Christmas tree. For a while Mary's boy child, angels and stars have been very tangible company in our living rooms. The nativity scene has been given a very central place in many homes and churches. In churches and schools we have had the chance to see Christmas pageants being performed. Sunday school teachers have tried to predict who was capable of walking straight towards the altar, thereby qualifying for the roles of Mary and Joseph, and who was likely to run off during the performance and had better be clothed as one of the many sheep.
The Christmas pageant can turn out hilarious due to the uncontrollable actors yet it also has the capability of touching something deep inside us. The re-enactment of the first Christmas gives us a chance to place ourselves in some relationship to the newborn Messiah. It can seem childish to play roles like this, using our fantasy to relate to something that we consider the highest truth. Yet storytelling and imagination, tradition and texts have always been woven together in a way that makes it almost impossible to discern what is original and what is later addition.
The narrative of the magi is illustrative for this interweaving. The tradition calls them "The Three Holy Kings" and has even given them the names Caspar, Balthazar and Melchior. However, from Scripture we do not know their names or number and there is nothing indicating that they were kings. Rather than describing them as highly-esteemed kings, Matthew called them magi from the East - designating them as foreign astrologers and wizards. In early Christianity (as well as Judaism) astrology was deemed heresy with the exception of this special biblical star together with the Star of Jacob in the Old Testament. Although we cannot know for sure who the first people who came to visit the newborn Messiah were, there are significant characteristics on which Matthew and Luke: All those gathering around the child underneath the star are outsiders. They do not belong to the inner circle of the true believers, the scribes, the chosen people. They seem to be a contradiction.
In preparation for this sermon I met with a couple of people from this church[1] to do a joint reading and to have a dialogue about the text. We found ourselves in quite different positions regarding the Messiah. Some of us took for granted that we fit into the roles of the wise men eagerly wanting to worship the child. Yet one from the group, who might have a little more insight than the rest of us, admitted hesitantly:
" I cant help but fear that I would be one of the scribes...and that is why I join the animals, in order to get out of that ‘yada-yada-yada"
And with this insight she confirms something that is quite central in the whole Gospel of Matthew. This is the insight, that the ones who are eminently qualified to recognize, seek out and adore the newborn King and Saviour, are those who are most reluctant. Those who know Scripture and the prophesies know quite well that Christ, the light of the world is to be born, yet they feel no need to look up at the starry sky. However the animals, the shepherds on the field and the foreign wizards, they find themselves in tension between sheep dung and the starry sky. They cannot close the Bible and choose a cookie and a cup of coffee. They must let themselves be guided by a star that outshines the others and themselves slowly move against the stream.
We have seen his star, we have seen it go ahead of us and stop over the place where the child is. In the Old Testament, God's chosen people were given a pillar of cloud by day and of fire at night. Yet few of us seem to catch a glimpse of such spectacular beacons of light. We cannot steer ignorantly after a monotonous, impersonal voice that constantly gives clear directions like a GPS[2] in the car.
In the dialogue-group, however, we all recognized the sense of letting ourselves be guided from time to time. As one participant said: "Isn't that how we want to live our lives? We want to be led, not blindly, but in a way that allows one patiently to listen for the truth. I have a thorough desire NOT to do something that only I wish to do. The interesting part only appears when there are several interests at stake!"
Letting oneself be led, patiently listening and asking. Not blindly but with a focus that shuts off from disturbances. Do you know that feeling? It can be a very bodily kind of experience. Like floating in the water. Floating requires a special kind of surrender to another element. An element which at one and the same time is the foundation for all life, yet simultaneously is capable of ending lives in a matter of minutes. There is something incredibly joyful about going with the flow, but it can also be frightening to lose one's foothold and self-determination. A friend of mine once told me that she now, as an adult, was working hard learning to float in the water. It was an incredible experience, because to her it had a lot in common with giving herself over to God in prayer.
The Danish theologian Svend Bjerg describes the act of prayer in a way that resembles the experience of floating. He summarizes the act of prayer as ‘intent attention toward that which is foreign in life'. It is an intense preoccupation with all that which we cannot assimilate, the foreign, which has its own existence. In contrast hereto prayer can take on selfish forms when I disregard the other one's foreignness. Then I transform prayer into a magical formula which is to work by its mere utterance. Then I mechanically exorcise the other. He is to stand at my disposal exactly as I wish. The other one is reduced to a peripheral figure that I can use as it pleases me. This way prayer doesn't differ from magic.
However, in genuine prayer I give myself over to the other. I expose myself, let go of myself. My dependence on the other is absolute. The strange thing is, according to Bjerg, that the words of prayer function as something different and more than means of communication. The words of prayer are like a house I inhabit and which I ask the other one to inhabit as well. Then we meet: I who pray and thou who are being pleaded. Prayer is, after all, not an application, forwarded with the best recommendations, but rather a room, in which the other is to encounter me[3].
Those of us who do not have a pillar of cloud by day and of fire at night can still get a glimpse of God's guiding star if we are willing to maintain that focused balance. Like the Wise Men we can get a glimpse of the light if we are willing to stop and ask for direction and read the Scriptures in a continuous focus on the guiding light. We can meet him in the house of prayer: not a fixed place where we go to have our wishes fulfilled, not a throne in which we can detach ourselves from the cares of the world, but in a temporary shack in which we can get a glimpse of the newborn King and give ourselves over to God so that we may go home by another route.
We have seen his star, we have seen it go ahead of us and stop over the place where the child is.
The Word of God comes to us, like in a dream. God calls on us through the body of a newborn baby. The Word of God has become flesh, alive and yet fragile....It is a strange kind of communication. The Word of God comes to us in the body of a baby who must first learn our language. He gives orders to the wise men through dreams. It is a very different kind of authority than that which we get from King Herod. The earthly king speaks kindly about wanting to join in worship, but he puts deadly power behind the words. The voice of God has a very different kind of authority and certitude. There is strength in the weakness.
The word of God is characterized by an urgency quite different from the commands of military kings and rulers. Like a dream that might as well have slipped into oblivion or have been rejected because the circumstances are so weird. When we wake up from one of these dreams where everything has been turned upside down, where we suddenly find ourselves walking on water, yet cannot find our way home, then we should be able to reject it rationally. But there is something in it calling on us, inviting us to ponder what it might mean. His calling is like a newborn baby, who by his bare existence evokes compassion and the setting aside of one's own needs. Jesus, the infant, is a defenceless, inarticulate body which others must take care of, yet from him radiates a light, a star which attracts strangers and outsiders....The word of God comes to us, like in a dream. He speaks to us through the body of an infant. The word of God has become flesh.
We go to the house of worship; we go to give our gifts and to meet him in prayer....To worship is not an expression we use often in everyday language. When we do, it is often negatively charged. Surely Herod's claim of wanting to worship the newborn king smells badly of hypocrisy, yet there are also other kinds of worship that tend to turn into self-centredness. We can worship our children in a way in which we mainly see them as our own trophies. We adore them through a camera lens or acknowledge their grade-sheets because their attributes counts as if they were ours, but we don't really see them for who they are. Another kind of adoration is the grovelling admiration, a falling prostate before the adored idol. In this relation the worshipper becomes self-effacing in a way that excludes genuine dialogue and relation.
Just like we can maintain distorted relationships with human beings we can relate to God in a way that impedes a genuine, reciprocal relationship. Common to the above mentioned distorted ways of worship is that they keep the worshipped object at a fixed place. Either too distant to be touched or too close to be seen. What I think characterizes genuine relationship and communication, including worship, is a continuing change of roles and places. In these continuing switches there is an ongoing interchange of gift giver and receiver, of speaker and listener. We give gifts out of gratefulness. The object of our prayers becomes co-author, because we only really know what to pray about when we sense a response. We start to search for him because he has shown himself. The dynamic interaction and the continual shift of roles is what characterize the truth of God because the truth is a person, not a statement.
However we should not accept any arbitrary change of roles. We should not worship someone who initiates the relationship with a friendly request, yet puts deadly power behind the words. Instead Christ can be recognized in the baby who becomes a heavenly host, inviting outsiders into the inner circle. He is recognized in the ruler who exchanges his sceptre for a shepherd's staff....We go to the house of worship; we go to give our gifts and to meet him in prayer...
We have followed his star and seen the place where it stood still. The word of God has come to us in the body of a baby and in a dream. We can go through deserts and float on the water when we have seen a glimpse of the guiding star. Yet we will have to choose between different voices; the demanding ruler or the infant heavenly king. We can go to the place that was ordered to us, or we can go home by another route. The other route is not the highway to the capitol. It is a path trod by the sheep, the strangers and the outsiders among us. It is a path full of filth and hay. It goes through ways that have not been commanded, but which may be more than necessary.
Preached in the Cathedral of Copenhagen, January 3rd. 2010.
[1] The Church of our Lady, Cathedral of Copenhagen.
[2] Global Positioning System for navigation.
[3] Svend Bjerg, Det Evige i det Flygtige, s. 110. Gyldendal 2004.