January 24, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
3rd Sunday after Epiphany, Year C
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10, Ps 19, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a, Luke 4:14-21
There is a common thread woven throughout all our readings today. It is the idea of interpretation. Interpretation is central to our faith and how we understand our Holy Scripture. Every age and every person who reads the Bible engages in interpretation. Its meaning is neither static nor is there only one, unequivocal understanding. This has always been the case. We read it in the context of our personal lives; we read it in the context of our social setting. And this is a good thing, for if it didn’t continue to raise up questions for us it would be a dead text. It is a vehicle, a sacrament, I think, of God’s ongoing revelation and working in the world.
Of course, there is the need for an appropriate starting point and understanding about the texts in order to interpret them well. We see this in the reading of Nehemiah where all the people “who could understand” listened to the book of the law and this book was read to them “with interpretation”. Nehemiah was written after the return of the people from their exile in Babylon. They had been away for three hundred years and they were different. The law was reinterpreted to fit new times and places while holding to its essence. The law also helped people interpret the world and times around them. And it was interpreted by those believed to be wise enough and prayerful enough to give a sound rendering.
The wisdom spoken of in the Psalm is a variation of interpretation. Jesus engages in a bold and audacious act of interpretation by saying that this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, meaning that he was the fulfillment. We take that as a given, but imagine if I or someone else here made that statement today. We’d be shocked and understandably skeptical. Jesus’ claim is vitally important to us, though. We as Christians believe he is correct in that daring speech. Jesus is the Word of God for us, and it is this Word that we worship, not the words of the Bible. Those words, beautiful, essential and utterly necessary, point to him and to God and to a path of understanding. A very real temptation and reality is that all too often we begin to worship the Bible and that is idolatry. It is Jesus who is our ultimate and primary interpretive lens on our faith and our world.
This theme of interpretation is not as visible in the letter to the Corinthians, but it is there. It is not so much an interpretation of the written word, but an existential interpretation, an interpretation of who we are and how we see and understand ourselves. The image Paul gives is powerful and profoundly important. We have heard it so much that it is almost a cliché, but we do ourselves a disservice by passing over it lightly. It deserves our time and willingness to stop and really examine what this image is meant to help us understand.
Paul grounds us in the point I made earlier: Jesus the Christ is our starting point, the place from which our understanding and interpretation flows. Without that as a starting point the inclusive picture he paints would not have emerged so clearly and so quickly—one body of Jews and Greeks, slaves and free. And therein is the second vital point: we are a body.
We are a body. We are described as part of Christ’s body and that body is clearly described and understood by analogy to a human body. Here are some of the implications of such an image. It is organic. It is unified, though diverse. It is utterly interdependent and mutually dependent in ways clearly seen and ways that we can’t even comprehend. Every part is essential, necessary. If part of the body is lost or injured it affects all the rest; it may compensate, but is not ever again quite the same. Though there are perceived hierarchies, they are completely interwoven with a basic horizontal equity. One cannot exist without the other. No part is expendable. No part can be exploited or used without damage and detriment to the rest. This is how God sees us…absolutely necessary and needed, indispensible. No matter what we hear out there or at times within our own hearts, we are seen by God as part of this body. We each matter profoundly. And that type of love and connection is indeed Good News.
It is a tremendously powerful image of community within which resides autonomy and independence. It is a collective understanding in which individuals live and from which they are shaped and formed. But they never leave it and they cannot exist without it.
This is a radically different understanding of self, I believe, than that of our culture and the institutions we have created. There, the individual is seen as completely discreet, independent, mostly unattached to others by nature or need. Hierarchies sort people into separate groups and obscure notions of commonality. We believe we are self-defined and able to act on the world around us as if our ties to it were voluntary, not intrinsic. It is a picture of isolation presented as freedom. It is individuality presented as true identity. It is disconnection presented as common reality. It severs ties and mutuality in their existential sense and creates ties that are artifice and construct, often without much commitment or sense of accountability. To me that is a lonely and bleak prospect.
Paul’s vision calls us into a truly interdependent life. His community exists based on Christ, nothing else and nothing less. Today community often means a group of people who share the same viewpoint or who like the same activity as us. But beyond that there is often not much that ties us together, requires us to stay with each other and bear with each other. We might join a line-dancing group and share good times, but when we are feeling blue or a difficult time arises are these people we feel we could call to be with us? Or Tom Friedman who writes that technology has made the world flat. Is that true? We may be able to connect with people all over the world in a second, but is a connection done through an impersonal medium where we can present (or recreate) ourselves as we want the same as face-to-face interaction? Is there the possibility for true understanding when we can’t meet and experience each other’s realities?
Our world may indeed be more immediate, but it is not intimate. Paul’s vision is one of profound intimacy and caring. It is a redefined freedom and identity, not one that negates our individual-ness and particular gifts, rather it rejoices in them, but one that puts them into a richer context and a deep understanding that we exist for each other first, even if that means that we can’t always do what we want or have all that we want. We discover that his image though gives us so much more of what we need and truly taps into who we are as created beings. Paul believes we find this by a deep recognition that our fullest life is found by understanding ourselves as part of Christ at all times and in all places. We are communal creatures defined and guided by his life. This is the community the Church aims to be at its best. It’s a grand and wonderful vision. It takes work and awareness and an openness to growth within us all.
I would suggest that this vision is not just valid for Christians. We aren’t the first people to have a similar idea of self and community. It exists in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, native traditions and so on. Ours has its particular aspects that are unique and that we hold to be divinely revealed. All to the good. But if we believe our understanding has a divine source, it is not just for us, but also saying something about the whole world and its character. This vision of Paul’s has something to offer the secular world. We have something to offer it based from this understanding. We have something of value to say to a world where suddenly corporations, artificial constructs of the state, are defined as and given all the rights of people and citizens. Such entities are not people; rather, they are collections of people and legal arrangements and constructions defined on paper and in practices. The interface with them is through lawyers and boards and ultimately many persons and yet no one. The relationship is ephemeral. They can be created and they can be undone overnight. Function is confused with essence. Corporations are necessary and needed for many things, but I think this is a symptom of confused interpretation and understanding. It is so very different from the body image.
Fragmentation and disconnect are the force pulling in the other direction depending on how we see ourselves. I am reminded of the words of the “Grapes of Wrath” where the farmers who are struggling to survive in a natural calamity are being forced off their land, even though they have not been negligent or irresponsible. The refrain from the representatives is it’s not me it’s the bank. Impersonal, everywhere yet nowhere, not in connection to the men and women who grow the very food they eat.
There is much in the world that will be shaped based on our images of who we are: the situation in Haiti, the vote this week, the ideas being put forward around our economic activity and actors, our annual meeting next week, and surely our own private concerns and situations.
My invitation to us this week is to ponder and pray with Paul’s image. What does it mean to us? What does it invite us to? Where is it good news and where does it challenge us? What does it mean to how we understand ourselves? What does it mean to be Church, to be part of this community? What does it call us to do in how we look at the world outside these walls and take part in it? What hope can it offer in times that are so very hard and where the tension is very real between highly differing visions of society? Where is the Word, Jesus, present to us here and now?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
January 17, 2010, Second Sunday after Ephiphany
January 17, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 62:1-5, Ps 36:5-10, 1 Cor. 12:1-11, John 2:1-11
When I hear the words of the steward in this story, “everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk”, I always give a wry smile. In the midst of this amazing story of grace, overflowing grace, there is a moment of subtle humor…and within it the crucial point for us. The steward reminds me of those music clubs that entice one in with “select 10 free and only buy 5 more at regular club prices” type of deals. Reading through that list of options is a music-lovers’ dream. All these latest and greatest groups! And so one blithely signs up only to discover down the road that it seems like the future selections aren’t as good and neither are the prices. We are given categories and definitions that may or may not be very good or accurate. Or on a more serious note we see it in our social discourse that seems so stuck in old and tired, virtually meaningless clichés, such as choice, freedom, socialism, development, free market, the American Dream, that we end up not really having much of a discussion at all. We’ve been hearing words and definitions of the way things are for so long that even when reality is truly presenting a starkly different picture we struggle to adjust our view. It must fit the old category!
The steward gets all confused and lost in conventional categories. He thinks that the bridegroom has broken etiquette, that something got confused in the planning. He tries to explain this miracle of superabundant and superb quality wine by the usual rational means. Consequently, he misses the whole point. The disciples, in contrast, and this is the point, recognize that God has worked in an unexpected and transformative way through our world to shower us with abundant grace. It is a gift larger than we can explain in our limited capacities; it is running straight into God’s glory and accepting it.
This story of the miraculous is John’s first showing of who and what Jesus is and offers. After the lyrical prologue, after his baptism, and after his calling together his disciples, the first major act of Jesus in this Gospel is the story we hear today. It is a story that gives us a first definition of God who can and desires to transform our world into a place saturated with grace. It is God that offers us the very best wine, that can convert our lives into vessels of beauty and holiness, plenty and good. It is a God that meets our needs if we are open to give God the space to act in ways that are unexpected yet so truly meeting our needs and our places of brokenness.
This is the God the disciples meet in Jesus. It is the God we meet in Jesus: God with us to shower us with this grace. We meet God in the face of a fellow human who can take what we have and through his love and holiness turn it into the kingdom of God. We can’t do it without him, but with him we can do things, as Jesus says later in this Gospel, even greater than these. Jesus, we are told, is the well of life of which the psalmist speaks. Jesus is that good wine drawn from the jars. He is the wine we drink after we have drunk the wine of the world and realize it can only offer so much. Even the best wine from the finest vineyards in France is inferior, eventually gives out, when compared to the wine of Jesus, which he freely gives.
The community that gave us the Gospel of John experienced intensely this grace found in Jesus. It is why it is the first and foundational story of this Gospel. Through that grace they withstood being kicked out of the synagogue (this community was Jewish), they withstood rejection, and they flourished because they continued to draw on the love and grace of Christ. This was the Jesus they shared with the world. It invited them into living in this world but within new definitions, new categories, and the trust that through Jesus working in them they too could be the initiators of miracles as great as providing abundant wine to others—be it spiritual or material sustenance. What a glorious vision they held! And even in the face of their own losses and adjustments, they knew they had the better portion.
Which leads me to Martin Luther King, Jr. He is honored tomorrow in our calendar of saints, but our music today is in tribute to him and the movement that he represents is worthy of our attention, gratitude and continued allegiance. In preparing this sermon I spent time watching footage of his speeches and of the larger struggle of for civil rights. The images are arresting: thousands of people gathered, stirring speeches, vibrant, hope-filled faces, dogs, fire hoses, lynchings, beatings, the hate-twisted faces of other Americans yelling at men and women forcefully yet peacefully demonstrating their utter humanity and demand to be acknowledged as people of dignity and worth, equal in the eyes of God. What sustained them was not only the belief in the justice of their cause, not only great leaders, not only a desire that their children be given a better world, but a drawing on the wine of Jesus, a continual drawing on the grace and power of the crucified and risen one that enfolded them in a hope and a truth that was larger than the world.
They drank of the wine of that grace, relied on it, and trusted it would see them through years of struggle. In drinking that wine they lived into different categories—who they were and who they were to become; and how to reach the end for which they were aiming. If they had chosen violence to match the violence inflicted on them nothing would have been transformed. If they had chosen to adopt a belief of racial superiority over whites that would justify inverting the system nothing would have been transformed. If they had chosen to work within the established categories of media, lawsuits and so on, nothing would have changed or it would have been a continuation of the snail-like pace they already knew. They drank the wine and created new categories…categories founded on a justice rooted in love and reconciliation.
For us the invitation is to believe in the outpouring of God’s grace as revealed in Jesus Christ. He draws wine from the water jar and offers it to us if we can open our hearts to a larger world. He offers that wine so that our hearts will open for this is his desire for us. To drink of his wine is to live into a new category: living members of the Christ. Before all else, this is who we are. It can’t be put on a passport or seen in our language or ethnicity. It is a reality that can’t be made to fit into the world’s categories. But it is our reality, and we are reminded of it and nourished from it each time we receive Holy Communion, each time we look with Christ’s eyes on the world, each time we step out and offer our lives to be incarnations of the kingdom of God.
Such a reception of Jesus’ abundant grace may draw us into struggles just as intense and profound as that of the Civil Rights. God knows they are out there. It will help us be open to new categories in our perception. God knows they are needed. But first and always we must take our empty vessels to Jesus and ask that he fill them and transform them so that it is indeed his wine that we are drawing from and that it is his grace that is sustaining our lives. As members of the Body of Christ we are invited to live constantly into new categories or to challenge the categories of this world with the radical categories of Jesus. It is his concern and he will freely and lovingly fill us in ways expected and unexpected, known and unknown, for it is his very nature to lavish us with grace. And as his people it is our nature to lavish others from that same grace. May it be that we serve the good wine to this world. Amen.
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 62:1-5, Ps 36:5-10, 1 Cor. 12:1-11, John 2:1-11
When I hear the words of the steward in this story, “everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk”, I always give a wry smile. In the midst of this amazing story of grace, overflowing grace, there is a moment of subtle humor…and within it the crucial point for us. The steward reminds me of those music clubs that entice one in with “select 10 free and only buy 5 more at regular club prices” type of deals. Reading through that list of options is a music-lovers’ dream. All these latest and greatest groups! And so one blithely signs up only to discover down the road that it seems like the future selections aren’t as good and neither are the prices. We are given categories and definitions that may or may not be very good or accurate. Or on a more serious note we see it in our social discourse that seems so stuck in old and tired, virtually meaningless clichés, such as choice, freedom, socialism, development, free market, the American Dream, that we end up not really having much of a discussion at all. We’ve been hearing words and definitions of the way things are for so long that even when reality is truly presenting a starkly different picture we struggle to adjust our view. It must fit the old category!
The steward gets all confused and lost in conventional categories. He thinks that the bridegroom has broken etiquette, that something got confused in the planning. He tries to explain this miracle of superabundant and superb quality wine by the usual rational means. Consequently, he misses the whole point. The disciples, in contrast, and this is the point, recognize that God has worked in an unexpected and transformative way through our world to shower us with abundant grace. It is a gift larger than we can explain in our limited capacities; it is running straight into God’s glory and accepting it.
This story of the miraculous is John’s first showing of who and what Jesus is and offers. After the lyrical prologue, after his baptism, and after his calling together his disciples, the first major act of Jesus in this Gospel is the story we hear today. It is a story that gives us a first definition of God who can and desires to transform our world into a place saturated with grace. It is God that offers us the very best wine, that can convert our lives into vessels of beauty and holiness, plenty and good. It is a God that meets our needs if we are open to give God the space to act in ways that are unexpected yet so truly meeting our needs and our places of brokenness.
This is the God the disciples meet in Jesus. It is the God we meet in Jesus: God with us to shower us with this grace. We meet God in the face of a fellow human who can take what we have and through his love and holiness turn it into the kingdom of God. We can’t do it without him, but with him we can do things, as Jesus says later in this Gospel, even greater than these. Jesus, we are told, is the well of life of which the psalmist speaks. Jesus is that good wine drawn from the jars. He is the wine we drink after we have drunk the wine of the world and realize it can only offer so much. Even the best wine from the finest vineyards in France is inferior, eventually gives out, when compared to the wine of Jesus, which he freely gives.
The community that gave us the Gospel of John experienced intensely this grace found in Jesus. It is why it is the first and foundational story of this Gospel. Through that grace they withstood being kicked out of the synagogue (this community was Jewish), they withstood rejection, and they flourished because they continued to draw on the love and grace of Christ. This was the Jesus they shared with the world. It invited them into living in this world but within new definitions, new categories, and the trust that through Jesus working in them they too could be the initiators of miracles as great as providing abundant wine to others—be it spiritual or material sustenance. What a glorious vision they held! And even in the face of their own losses and adjustments, they knew they had the better portion.
Which leads me to Martin Luther King, Jr. He is honored tomorrow in our calendar of saints, but our music today is in tribute to him and the movement that he represents is worthy of our attention, gratitude and continued allegiance. In preparing this sermon I spent time watching footage of his speeches and of the larger struggle of for civil rights. The images are arresting: thousands of people gathered, stirring speeches, vibrant, hope-filled faces, dogs, fire hoses, lynchings, beatings, the hate-twisted faces of other Americans yelling at men and women forcefully yet peacefully demonstrating their utter humanity and demand to be acknowledged as people of dignity and worth, equal in the eyes of God. What sustained them was not only the belief in the justice of their cause, not only great leaders, not only a desire that their children be given a better world, but a drawing on the wine of Jesus, a continual drawing on the grace and power of the crucified and risen one that enfolded them in a hope and a truth that was larger than the world.
They drank of the wine of that grace, relied on it, and trusted it would see them through years of struggle. In drinking that wine they lived into different categories—who they were and who they were to become; and how to reach the end for which they were aiming. If they had chosen violence to match the violence inflicted on them nothing would have been transformed. If they had chosen to adopt a belief of racial superiority over whites that would justify inverting the system nothing would have been transformed. If they had chosen to work within the established categories of media, lawsuits and so on, nothing would have changed or it would have been a continuation of the snail-like pace they already knew. They drank the wine and created new categories…categories founded on a justice rooted in love and reconciliation.
For us the invitation is to believe in the outpouring of God’s grace as revealed in Jesus Christ. He draws wine from the water jar and offers it to us if we can open our hearts to a larger world. He offers that wine so that our hearts will open for this is his desire for us. To drink of his wine is to live into a new category: living members of the Christ. Before all else, this is who we are. It can’t be put on a passport or seen in our language or ethnicity. It is a reality that can’t be made to fit into the world’s categories. But it is our reality, and we are reminded of it and nourished from it each time we receive Holy Communion, each time we look with Christ’s eyes on the world, each time we step out and offer our lives to be incarnations of the kingdom of God.
Such a reception of Jesus’ abundant grace may draw us into struggles just as intense and profound as that of the Civil Rights. God knows they are out there. It will help us be open to new categories in our perception. God knows they are needed. But first and always we must take our empty vessels to Jesus and ask that he fill them and transform them so that it is indeed his wine that we are drawing from and that it is his grace that is sustaining our lives. As members of the Body of Christ we are invited to live constantly into new categories or to challenge the categories of this world with the radical categories of Jesus. It is his concern and he will freely and lovingly fill us in ways expected and unexpected, known and unknown, for it is his very nature to lavish us with grace. And as his people it is our nature to lavish others from that same grace. May it be that we serve the good wine to this world. Amen.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
January 10, 2010, The Baptism of Our Lord
Mother Tasha did a Question and Answer sermon on January 10. Replies to unanswered questions and will soon be posted in the church.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
January 3, 2010, The Second Sunday of Christmas
January 3, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Jeremiah 31:7-14, Ps. 84, Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a, Matthew 2:1-12
Year C, Christmas 2
One of the more interesting things one can do while preparing a sermon is to look at what others have written on the same passage. All I can say is be glad that Martin Luther or St. Chrysostom are not your preacher today. They took this passage from Matthew and talked about it for at least an hour if not longer, traveling all through both testaments to make their points. I promise you I will be much briefer and not nearly so comprehensive! Aside from their rather lengthy eloquence, it was also very instructive to see where their emphasis lay. There was a lot of concern around the issue of astrology and sorcery, disproving it or showing how God worked through the Magi beyond that, and explaining the star and all that. There was a lot of concern with buttressing the story as the fulfillment of various prophecies or earlier Biblical stories other than the one reference made in the story itself. There was quite a bit of talk, particularly in Luther, focusing on the laws of Scripture and proper behavior. Only in passing do we hear of Herod’s fear of an insurrection and what God might be saying to us about our way of doing business and that of Jesus. Of course, that habit is not unique to Luther; we find it alive and well at all points in Christian history. But it’s rather odd given that the Wise Men came in order to pay homage, that is the reverence due a king and only a king, an earthly ruler, to Jesus, not to go and pray over him.
This story is read on the Feast of Epiphany, which is on the 6th of January, when we celebrate traditionally the baptism of Jesus and the discovery of seeing and realizing that what we have been looking for, searching for, has broken into this world and into our hearts. An epiphany! The wise men are looking, looking hard for God, for the holy. Unlike the shepherds they aren’t given the answer, but are invited to walk a road. They see something and believe it may reveal more than what is on the surface. So they collect themselves, gather precious gifts, and head off on a long journey into a foreign land. They are not mere tourists out on a spiritual holiday; they are searching for God. They are searching for the source, for what it is we are to look at, gaze at, so that we can enter into truth and life.
In those days of Roman rule the only person who could be called a Son of God was Caesar. It was on his coins. He was divine, end of discussion. The will of the gods was indistinguishable from earthly power. Herod was a crafty politico trying to maintain power in his petty kingdom and this depended on the continuing benevolence of Rome and the guarantee on his part of no political upheaval. Thus, when three foreigners walk in and announce that they have seen someone else’s star rising and that they want to go and recognize this person’s authority, rule and kingship, Herod is not pleased. Kings had one purpose and that was earthly rule in the model of earthly kings. In other words, Herod had a challenger to the throne, his throne, and this was not welcome news. Herod is not interested in his star waning. He has plans. Herod overlooks the treasonous claim of the wise men and at first consults the other leaders for background. There is the public conversation. Then, the backroom deals and secret talks begin as he calls the wise men to him in private and makes an arrangement. Go and find this child, read upstart, for me so that I too may worship him, read find out where he is and get rid of this threat. The wise men leave with their heads still attached to their shoulders, which is almost a miracle in and of itself, and continue their search.
The essential question, though, has been posed: what we look to for guidance and the way we are to live will call us to one road or another. Do we look to Herods and Romes, or do we look to God as revealed in Jesus? The heart of this story is about looking and gazing and being transformed by that gaze. Where we focus that gaze has the possibility of being a place of glorious change and transformation if it is searching for God. Do we look with the eyes of the Magi or do we look with the eyes of Herod?
The wise men in all their elegance and wealth continue to search, looking, looking for this true king, this divine king, the one to whom they are to give ultimate and full allegiance. And finally, their search ends at a humble house in Bethlehem. Jesus is not a newborn baby any longer; he is a child, probably out toddling around and exploring his world. What must he make of these strangers who come in such grandeur to see him. What must Mary make of these nobles coming to her modest home. In some sense she knows her child is destined to be a special servant of God, perhaps as a temple priest or a teacher or prophet, but who are these strangers that treat her son as if he were the rightful ruler of the world? And the mystery grows as they greet them all with joy; in fact, they are overwhelmed with joy--speechless and gazing with pure adoration at a child, an innocent, a powerless and growing one. This is not the reaction of people to rulers generally or of the power of the world. Herod’s reaction and that of all Jerusalem is the norm: fear, awe, compliance, but not joy, not a sense that something wonderful has come to us.
The power of the gaze and of recognition is at the heart of the Magis’ encounter with Jesus. It is a transforming event. Their eyes have seen something of the will of God and it is an invitation to another road, another way of being. In the face of such a recognition there are two reactions: fear or joy. We see both in this story, but it is the reaction of the wise men that we are to listen to most closely and to imitate, for they are worshipping the right thing. In him they have found themselves in the presence of the God of Psalm 84, a place of springs, a safe haven for the sparrow not just the eagle, a nest for the youngest and most vulnerable not just a castle for the wealthy and powerful. They see a new world opening up through this gaze of men and child that is enfolded by God. Where are they looking, these wise men from afar? And thus, where are we looking? And what happens as we allow that gaze to linger, to lengthen, to penetrate us to our core? What happens when our gaze no longer focuses on the world defined by the powers that be, but instead gazes on the world around us with intent, with a deep understanding of God’s action in the everyday and the face of Jesus revealed in all?
James Allison, a brilliant Roman Catholic theologian and one whose piercing gaze has caused the powers of the Roman Church to marginalize him, writes this about our passage and the wise men:
“…at the center of this feast is a mystery of looking. Who looks at whom? As adults we tend to focus on adult looks. Matthew, with his picturesque details, trains our gaze on the strangeness of the kings, the determination and persistence of their journey, their exotic dress, their laden beasts, their rich and symbolic gifts. What might this One be who is the desire of the nations?
We are taught by the Magi to value the One who lies in the manger. He acquires worth and splendor through their eyes. That is part of what the feast gives us: models for our desire, for our adoration. With each gift we are offered a way to shift the weight of our heart in an unaccustomed direction. When the Magi offer him gold, which indicates a king, we are invited to lessen the tribute we offer to the power structures to which we belong and on which we depend; when they offer him frankincense, which indicates a priest, we are invited to tiptoe out from under the delusions of our sacred canopies, to be drawn into the jagged-edged sacrifice of presence that this Priest will carry out; and when they offer him myrrh, which indicates a prophet's death, the Magi invite our hearts to lighten as death loses its hold over our drives and desires.”
We, like the Magi, are invited to realize that if our gaze is shaped by Jesus and if our lens on all the world is shaped by Jesus, then we too must take another road, a different way. This discovery should be one that overwhelms us with joy, not fear. The old road and the old glasses don’t fit any more, not after they have adored the Christ. So, come, let us adore him…and let us follow the other road that invites us to shift our hearts in unaccustomed directions. Amen.
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Jeremiah 31:7-14, Ps. 84, Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a, Matthew 2:1-12
Year C, Christmas 2
One of the more interesting things one can do while preparing a sermon is to look at what others have written on the same passage. All I can say is be glad that Martin Luther or St. Chrysostom are not your preacher today. They took this passage from Matthew and talked about it for at least an hour if not longer, traveling all through both testaments to make their points. I promise you I will be much briefer and not nearly so comprehensive! Aside from their rather lengthy eloquence, it was also very instructive to see where their emphasis lay. There was a lot of concern around the issue of astrology and sorcery, disproving it or showing how God worked through the Magi beyond that, and explaining the star and all that. There was a lot of concern with buttressing the story as the fulfillment of various prophecies or earlier Biblical stories other than the one reference made in the story itself. There was quite a bit of talk, particularly in Luther, focusing on the laws of Scripture and proper behavior. Only in passing do we hear of Herod’s fear of an insurrection and what God might be saying to us about our way of doing business and that of Jesus. Of course, that habit is not unique to Luther; we find it alive and well at all points in Christian history. But it’s rather odd given that the Wise Men came in order to pay homage, that is the reverence due a king and only a king, an earthly ruler, to Jesus, not to go and pray over him.
This story is read on the Feast of Epiphany, which is on the 6th of January, when we celebrate traditionally the baptism of Jesus and the discovery of seeing and realizing that what we have been looking for, searching for, has broken into this world and into our hearts. An epiphany! The wise men are looking, looking hard for God, for the holy. Unlike the shepherds they aren’t given the answer, but are invited to walk a road. They see something and believe it may reveal more than what is on the surface. So they collect themselves, gather precious gifts, and head off on a long journey into a foreign land. They are not mere tourists out on a spiritual holiday; they are searching for God. They are searching for the source, for what it is we are to look at, gaze at, so that we can enter into truth and life.
In those days of Roman rule the only person who could be called a Son of God was Caesar. It was on his coins. He was divine, end of discussion. The will of the gods was indistinguishable from earthly power. Herod was a crafty politico trying to maintain power in his petty kingdom and this depended on the continuing benevolence of Rome and the guarantee on his part of no political upheaval. Thus, when three foreigners walk in and announce that they have seen someone else’s star rising and that they want to go and recognize this person’s authority, rule and kingship, Herod is not pleased. Kings had one purpose and that was earthly rule in the model of earthly kings. In other words, Herod had a challenger to the throne, his throne, and this was not welcome news. Herod is not interested in his star waning. He has plans. Herod overlooks the treasonous claim of the wise men and at first consults the other leaders for background. There is the public conversation. Then, the backroom deals and secret talks begin as he calls the wise men to him in private and makes an arrangement. Go and find this child, read upstart, for me so that I too may worship him, read find out where he is and get rid of this threat. The wise men leave with their heads still attached to their shoulders, which is almost a miracle in and of itself, and continue their search.
The essential question, though, has been posed: what we look to for guidance and the way we are to live will call us to one road or another. Do we look to Herods and Romes, or do we look to God as revealed in Jesus? The heart of this story is about looking and gazing and being transformed by that gaze. Where we focus that gaze has the possibility of being a place of glorious change and transformation if it is searching for God. Do we look with the eyes of the Magi or do we look with the eyes of Herod?
The wise men in all their elegance and wealth continue to search, looking, looking for this true king, this divine king, the one to whom they are to give ultimate and full allegiance. And finally, their search ends at a humble house in Bethlehem. Jesus is not a newborn baby any longer; he is a child, probably out toddling around and exploring his world. What must he make of these strangers who come in such grandeur to see him. What must Mary make of these nobles coming to her modest home. In some sense she knows her child is destined to be a special servant of God, perhaps as a temple priest or a teacher or prophet, but who are these strangers that treat her son as if he were the rightful ruler of the world? And the mystery grows as they greet them all with joy; in fact, they are overwhelmed with joy--speechless and gazing with pure adoration at a child, an innocent, a powerless and growing one. This is not the reaction of people to rulers generally or of the power of the world. Herod’s reaction and that of all Jerusalem is the norm: fear, awe, compliance, but not joy, not a sense that something wonderful has come to us.
The power of the gaze and of recognition is at the heart of the Magis’ encounter with Jesus. It is a transforming event. Their eyes have seen something of the will of God and it is an invitation to another road, another way of being. In the face of such a recognition there are two reactions: fear or joy. We see both in this story, but it is the reaction of the wise men that we are to listen to most closely and to imitate, for they are worshipping the right thing. In him they have found themselves in the presence of the God of Psalm 84, a place of springs, a safe haven for the sparrow not just the eagle, a nest for the youngest and most vulnerable not just a castle for the wealthy and powerful. They see a new world opening up through this gaze of men and child that is enfolded by God. Where are they looking, these wise men from afar? And thus, where are we looking? And what happens as we allow that gaze to linger, to lengthen, to penetrate us to our core? What happens when our gaze no longer focuses on the world defined by the powers that be, but instead gazes on the world around us with intent, with a deep understanding of God’s action in the everyday and the face of Jesus revealed in all?
James Allison, a brilliant Roman Catholic theologian and one whose piercing gaze has caused the powers of the Roman Church to marginalize him, writes this about our passage and the wise men:
“…at the center of this feast is a mystery of looking. Who looks at whom? As adults we tend to focus on adult looks. Matthew, with his picturesque details, trains our gaze on the strangeness of the kings, the determination and persistence of their journey, their exotic dress, their laden beasts, their rich and symbolic gifts. What might this One be who is the desire of the nations?
We are taught by the Magi to value the One who lies in the manger. He acquires worth and splendor through their eyes. That is part of what the feast gives us: models for our desire, for our adoration. With each gift we are offered a way to shift the weight of our heart in an unaccustomed direction. When the Magi offer him gold, which indicates a king, we are invited to lessen the tribute we offer to the power structures to which we belong and on which we depend; when they offer him frankincense, which indicates a priest, we are invited to tiptoe out from under the delusions of our sacred canopies, to be drawn into the jagged-edged sacrifice of presence that this Priest will carry out; and when they offer him myrrh, which indicates a prophet's death, the Magi invite our hearts to lighten as death loses its hold over our drives and desires.”
We, like the Magi, are invited to realize that if our gaze is shaped by Jesus and if our lens on all the world is shaped by Jesus, then we too must take another road, a different way. This discovery should be one that overwhelms us with joy, not fear. The old road and the old glasses don’t fit any more, not after they have adored the Christ. So, come, let us adore him…and let us follow the other road that invites us to shift our hearts in unaccustomed directions. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
