Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
Epiphany of Our Lord, 01/06/2015
Sermon on Matthew 2:1-12, by David H. Brooks
Our preferences for the Christmas stories we tell tend to lean harder on Luke than Matthew. Luke, with his expansive account of singing angels and hard-working shepherds, offers more support to our soft, rose-tinted images of Baby Jesus asleep on the hay. Of course, we do make use of Matthew’s story as well, finishing up our Christmas observances with our remembering of the long search the Magi make and the gifts they bring. Indeed, most of our Nativity scenes have Magi, shepherds, animals and all squeezed into a tiny manger!
But Matthew’s infant stories are not like this. There is a shadow drawn across the scene almost from the first. To be fair to Luke, there is a hint of what is to come contained in the story of Simeon and Anna in the Temple, but that story is told in the midst of the bucolic scene of a eight-day old Jesus being brought to the Temple in observance of the Law. But Matthew tells of nighttime flights to foreign lands in a frantic effort to seek safety.
And the reason is clear: “In the time of Herod...”
The story Matthew tells in these early pages highlights how this Anointed One of God creates conflict from the start. The very presence of Jesus causes the halls of power to quake; Herod—conniving, ruthless client king of a far more powerful Roman emperor—likely sees the arrival of visitors from the east as the potential first stones in an eventual avalanche that could bury him. Who do these Magi represent? Who is this upstart king? In the machinations between the Persian and Roman empires, Herod could become the grass upon which two mighty elephants would fight. And so it is no surprise that Herod, first by cunning, and later by force, seeks this infant rival. The stakes are too high, the larger realities too important to let this one child live and cost Herod his throne.
And so, says Matthew, right from the start, this child was the catalyst that revealed both God at work in the world, and the hearts of everyone who heard the news of this child.
As we start this Epiphany season, with its focus on the ways in which God is revealed, we must hold this story before us as both encouragement and as warning--for this is a story that puts all the Herods of the world on notice. We cannot and should not deny the political implications behind this story. It is a moment that highlights that the King who is born in Bethlehem in answer to the prophets’ hopes is that eternal King to whom every knee should bend and every tongue confess. The presence of Jesus—true God and true man—calls into question every human effort to create ultimate meaning apart from God. It is as St. Paul said in Romans: all human power, all human authority is derivative, drawing from the Lord its legitimacy to act. And in a world that increasingly acts as if authority to rule is self-legitimizing, Christians need to remember that they are under another authority, an authority who is self-giving rather than self-legitimizing. To remember that God is at work in this world can be an encouraging thought.
But there is a second reason to hold this story close to us as we journey through Epiphany. It is an easy thing to think that God’s gracious self-revealing happens only in so called “good” or “joyous” ways; it is a mistake to think that God is self-revealing only in ways that we would recognize and approve. We must remember that God is at work in this world to rescue us from sin, death and the evil one. When God breaks into our world, he does so in ways that exposes our cunning, reveals our power plays, and shines light on things that we would rather keep hidden. When God breaks into our world, it is to upend those cozy alliances we have made for ourselves, and put an end to our so-called wisdom that insists that there are higher stakes or larger, more important realities that we must acknowledge.
In other words, this infant will cost each of us our throne, and like Herod it will frighten and infuriate us. Rather than change, we connive; when cunning doesn’t work, we become ruthless. Too many of us have decided that it is too costly to give our lives over to this particular king.
But this Jesus, who comes to us not with pomp, not with power, calls to us still. We would seek to blot him out, but he answers our fury with grace and love. We would have him banished from our presence, but he is announced in songs of peace and joy.
We would have him approve our plans, bless our purposes; he comes in the way of obedience and teaches us to live after the purposes of God. We would ignore his presence among us; he continues to be revealed in ways we do not expect, but to which we must respond. So, if we feel challenged by his teaching, or threatened by his claim on us, or resistant to his Lordship, then beware—God is at work in your life, and is about to be revealed. Amen.