Sunday, January 7, 2018

Offer the Gift You Need to Lose

Sermon for Jan. 7, Celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany
Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7,10-14; Matthew 2:1-12

Who were those giant puppets who just brought their gifts to the baby King and now are making their way back home again?  In the Gospel reading this morning, they’re called “wise men” or magi in Greek – court officials who studied astrology and practiced magic.  To our ears, that probably puts them right up there with palm readers in terms of their credibility, but that’s not fair.  Astrology and what we would call “magic” were the science of their day, so these magi were intellectuals and members of the court.  Now, over the centuries, Christian tradition conflated their royal role with Biblical writings anticipating foreign kings coming to honor Israel’s monarch and Israel’s God, so these royal visitors came to be described as kings themselves.  It’s a powerful image – a would-be king recognizing the true King, worldly power humbling itself before the humble throne of God.  Whether our visitors this morning were kings or court officials, the same message comes through loud and clear: “All kings shall bow down before him, and all the nations do him service,” as we prayed in this morning’s psalm (72:11 BCP).
And what about those gifts they brought?  Now we come to a detail the Gospel writer names quite specifically and whose meaning matters, I think.  It certainly mattered to the writer of the carol “We Three Kings”; three of the verses of that song explain what the gifts mean.  First, there’s gold, maybe the ultimate symbol of kingship and the wealth that goes with it.  Even today, when people go to England and visit the Tower of London, what do they stand in line to see?  The crown jewels, regal wealth on display.  Second, there’s frankincense, like the incense we’re offering in our worship this morning.  The ancient smoke wafts to heaven with the prayers of God’s people, honoring the deity who alone has the power to “form light and create darkness, [to] make weal and create woe,” as the prophet Isaiah said (45:7).  And third, there’s myrrh, the gift furthest from our experience.  The carol tells us that myrrh is about being “sealed in the stone-cold tomb,” and indeed it was among the preparations used with royal mummies, an extremely expensive resin for anointing and embalming bodies for burial.  So those very specific gifts carry great weight:  Gold symbolizing royal wealth, frankincense symbolizing divine power, and myrrh symbolizing our best human attempts to stave off the power of death.
 Here’s another detail in today’s Gospel story that matters, at least to me: the last line.  It’s the very best kind of last line, one that gives the story a satisfying ending while it turns the page to the next chapter.  So, the magi have made their way from a foreign land, and they’ve gone to see the earthly king, Herod.  They assume he’ll be rejoicing over the birth of a male successor and that he’ll help them find the baby.  Herod, of course, is more like Tony Soprano than King David, and he’s looking out solely for his own interests.  So Herod enlists the magi as his unknown agents, asking them to report back once they find this baby who might show Herod to be the fraud he is.  And the magi head off, following the star to Bethlehem and entering the most unlikely royal palace ever: a peasant’s shack, the kind of house we might visit on a mission trip to Haiti.  But the magi know they’ve found the real deal.  Their hearts know the truth that appearance denies.  These kings or court officials kneel down before this peasant baby and pay him homage.  And they open up their treasure chests to give him gifts fit for a King: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Then comes the great ending: The God who’s led them all this way spoils Herod’s ugly plans and warns the magi to head home “by another road” (Matthew 2:12).  They get on their camels and ride off into the sunset, the stage set for their next chapter.
Unfortunately, Scripture doesn’t give us that next chapter.  It’s left for us to write in our imaginations and in our own lives.  First, some imagination.  What do you suppose happened to these three kings or court officials?  Well, maybe nothing; maybe they just played their parts in Jesus’ story and went back to their regular lives.  But what if they couldn’t get their experience out of their heads?  What if the ugliness they found in Herod and the humility they found in the baby King changed their hearts?  Maybe, as they went about their work in the royal court, they came to see their own world with a different perspective.  Maybe, when a poor suppliant would come to the court, the last resort for an oppressed person seeking justice, maybe the king would listen a little more deeply and put the poor person’s interest first.  Maybe, when they found themselves tempted to build up their own power and wealth, maybe they heard a small voice reminding them of the King who put the well-being of his people ahead of his own life.  Maybe, when they began taking themselves too seriously and letting the burden of their responsibility weigh upon them so heavily it would begin to crush their hearts, maybe they heard a small voice assuring them they actually weren’t the one in charge after all.  Maybe, when they began to grow older and saw that the road ahead was so much shorter then the road they’d traveled, maybe they heard a small voice comforting them with the possibility that this life might not be all there is.
Here’s what I’m thinking.  These kings or court officials or whomever they were – they might be a model for us.  I doubt any of us will be driving camels across the desert anytime soon or holding audiences with a sociopathic puppet ruler who’s willing to kill babies to advance his career.  But think about what the magi do in this story.  They track the movement of the stars, and travel all that distance, and put themselves at risk – all for what?  To bring gifts and pay homage to “the child who has been born king” (Matthew 2:2). 
That’s still our call, too, of course.  But we often get tripped up by thinking that what we have to bring doesn’t count.  What have I got to offer Jesus, God’s anointed King?  Well, strangely enough, maybe you have the same gifts that those magi brought 2,000 years ago. 
Gold is the symbol of wealth, something with which we’re all blessed, to different degrees.  Wealth can build capacity and drive innovation and serve people and change lives.  But wealth can also be a heavy idol hanging around our necks, dragging us down and keeping us from focusing on much of anything else.  Then there’s frankincense, the symbol of divine power.  We are blessed by God to share in this power, made in God’s image and likeness to be co-creators of our lives and our world.  But that power can also delude us into imagining that it’s ours instead of God’s and that, like Herod, we can wield it for our own advantage.  And then there’s myrrh, the embalming resin, the symbol of our mortality.  From ancient times onward, we’ve done all we could to preserve youth and stave off the natural changes of growing older.  But our fear of death can also keep us from being fully present in the place in life where God has put us, spurring us into mid-life crises or deceiving us into extending life at all costs.
I’d like to encourage you to bring these gifts to the baby King – your gold and frankincense and myrrh, your wealth and your power and your fear of mortality.  The holy irony is that these same gifts that honor the truth of Jesus’ lordship over us are also some of the greatest burdens we carry.  Jesus does want us to bring them as a reminder that God is God, and we are not; but Jesus also wants us to bring those gifts to him because he wants nothing more than to shoulder our weightiest burdens for us.  “Come to me,” he says, “all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls,” he says.  “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
What do you have to offer the baby King?  The blessings and curses of wealth, and power, and mortality.  Jesus would like nothing more than for you to come to him, and lay down those burdens you carry, and let God take you home by another way.

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