Matthew 2:1-12 • January 6,2013

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Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

I haven’t done this in quite a while, so I’d like to start by taking a poll. First – How many of you still have your Christmas tree up? Interesting.

Second – This question. What do you have on the top of your Christmas tree, a star or an angel? How many have stars on the top of your tree? How many have angels? Interesting.

The reason why I ask the first question is Christmas for followers of Jesus Christ, isn’t over until January 6th or the Feast Day of Epiphany. In fact, Christmas doesn’t begin in early September and end on Christmas Day, Christmas begins on Christmas Day and ends at Epiphany. The past 12 days are actually when you should have been doing all of your Christmas shopping and gift giving. And the reason for my second question about angels or stars on top of your Christmas tree is that I think there are two types of people. Some are star people and some are angel people.

Anyway, on this feast day of Epiphany, we celebrate three wise men or magi or kings from the east – whatever you want to call them. What’s important is not what you call them, but who they are and how they play a role in the Christmas story – the coming of the Messiah into the world. Do you remember the Christmas story? We hear it nearly every year on Christmas Eve from the gospel of Saint Luke? Do you recall the role that the wise men play in Luke’s gospel? That’s right, they are not even mentioned. For Luke, there is no star, no wise men, only a few ordinary everyday shepherds from Bethlehem who briefly encounter angels.

In fact, Matthew is the only gospel that mentions these men from the east. Luke writes of Mary. John writes eloquently of the Word becoming flesh. Mark doesn’t say anything about the birth of Jesus, but rather begins his gospel with proclamations from John the Baptist.

So why are the wise men so important to the story of the birth of Jesus – the savior – the Messiah? I mean, are the three wise men only important because they have the coolest costumes and props at church school Christmas programs? I think the writer of Matthew’s gospel wants us to see something else. Matthew wants the reader to see that this Jesus is not only king of the Jews, but the savior of ALL nations. He introduces us to these men from the east who are not Jewish and are not part of the inner circle of temple or political life and power, yet, they have come bringing gifts and wanting to worship this new king.

Matthew brings these foreigners from the east into the Christmas story to show us something. In Matthew’s telling of the birth of Jesus, King Herod and all of Jerusalem as our text says today are frightened at this newly arrived Messiah. They even begin to devise a plan to kill him. It’s the foreigners who arrive to worship.

But you and I, as followers of Jesus the savior of all nations in 2013. Followers who know the entire story. You and I are never frightened or experience jealousy like King Herod and all of Jerusalem do. You and I never scoff at visitors who worship in ways that are different from the way we have always worshiped in our congregations. You and I never push foreigners away who have experiences of Jesus that are different from ours – especially those of us who live in western North Dakota. You and I would never do that…or…

As Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Professor Craig Satterlee offers, “We have our own ways of reaching out, just far enough to slaughter someone’s experiences of God’s grace for the sake of our patterns, practices, and perspectives.”

I think that’s why Matthew introduces us to these men from the east at the beginning of his gospel. He needs to shake things up a bit as he begins to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ that has forever changed the world. With the Messiah’s arrival, the world, with all of its darkness and judgment and death, has changed. The world was changed by a Messiah who didn’t arrive on a golden chariot bearing swords and guns and proclaiming war. It was changed by a Messiah who came in the gentle sounds of a new born baby. Changed by a Messiah who eats with tax collectors and prostitutes and Lutherans from western North Dakota. Changed by a Messiah who heals blindness and disease and restores broken relationships – many of which exist in this house of worship today. Changed by a Messiah who died on a cross and three days later destroyed every power of death that will ever exist by rising out of the stench of death’s darkness.

If we believe this – that God’s coming into the world in the baby Jesus is true and changed the world forever, then the title of the sermon today is probably the wrong question. Have you found our God? That doesn’t work with the gospels. On this feast day of Epiphany, the good news of the birth of a Savior named Jesus is that God has found you. After all, God found the shepherds. God found Mary. God found these foreigners from the east who were outside of the inner Jewish circle, yet, they bring gifts and bow down in worship.

So, there are two kinds of people. Star people and angel people. In scripture, angels often appear to people who are waiting. Waiting for the Messiah or for a sign from God. And usually they have been waiting for a long time, like the Shepherds in Luke’s Christmas story.

And the star is for those who are still searching, those still unsure, those who still have questions, those on a quest to find out about this mystery and message from God wrapped up in human flesh and swaddling clothes.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, it doesn’t matter if you have an angel or a star on the top of your Christmas tree. What matters is that the good news of the birth of the Jesus Christ is for you. It’s for foreigners like wise men from the east or the annoying neighbors living across the street from you today. It’s for the insiders of temple and political life in first century Judea and 21st Century Lutheran Christians living on the prairies of North Dakota. The good news is that the God of Jesus Christ came, found you and me, and meets us right where we are. Amen.

Related articles

• Feast of Epiphany (January 6): “They saw the child with Mary his mother.” (shechina.wordpress.com)
• Epiphany: Celebrating the Appearing of God in Christ by Mark D. Roberts (lacykitkat.wordpress.com)
• Epiphany: Encounter with Jesus in faith and good works (junjunfaithbook.com)

John 1:1-14 • December 25, 2012

Click here to hear an audio recording of this sermon.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

Merry Christmas.

For several years now, as I’ve reflected on the Christmas story, one thing continues to fascinate me. The location of this event. It all begins in the tiny town of Bethlehem. Bethlehem was probably not unlike many small towns that we are familiar with in North Dakota. You know the kind of town – where everyone knows everyone else in minute details that make most of us uncomfortable. You know what I mean – you live in one of these small towns and travel to Bismarck to run a few errands. When you get home your neighbor has a play by play recap of your trip to the big city ready for your immediate review. And of course, this play by play needs your review before going to print in the next edition of the town’s weekly newspaper. You just gotta love small towns.

So here’s where my fascination with Bethlehem is. In a town where everyone probably at least knows everyone on a first name basis, I’ve always been amazed that, within a half mile radius of the manger and birth place of Jesus, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of people who were absolutely clueless about what was happening right in the neighborhood. Maybe there were just too many other things happening in town that week,or maybe people in Bethlehem were just more absorbed in details that focused on their own individual needs and gratification – really not unlike life in the towns we live in today, if you really think about it.

While at the exact time that everyone was worrying more about who was on the cover of People magazine that week, eternity was breaking into time. God was entering the world. God was moving in.

In our gospel reading from Saint John on this cold Christmas morning, we hear, “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

What the beginning of John’s gospel reminds us is that the Christmas story had its beginning long before Joseph and Mary, and in a place far beyond Bethlehem. In the beginning, the Word was “with” God. What God was, the Word was. Not human becoming God, but God becoming human. God coming into human flesh, coming in from outside.

It’s not that God wasn’t around before the birth of Jesus. But in the birth of Jesus, God entered into relationship with the world in a new way. The Word came in flesh to live among us and make God known to us. In the Christmas story, God’s desire to bless and love and redeem the world will not be denied.
God moved in.

That’s the joy of the Christmas story on this cold December morning. God has come to be with us. And the good news of this relationship is that nothing in this world can separate any of God’s children from that relationship. Not even our rebellious nature or our indifference; our sins or our suffering. God moved in. In times of insecurity – God is there; in deserts of isolation and temptation – God is there; in gardens of indecision – God is there; in crosses of suffering – God is there. God is there. God is here. God moves in.
An what’s most exciting is that for the writer of John’s gospel, the idea of God taking on flesh through Jesus, of God moving in, was not a onetime event – but part of an ongoing process, beginning with Jesus and continuing through every follower of Jesus from that time on.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, you and I are part of this Christmas story. Just like so many in that tiny Bethlehem town who missed it, I think you and I miss the reality of God moving in too from time to time. Our attention at Christmas is centered on things that actually have little to do with the Christmas story. I know I can think of dozens of things in the past month that have caused me to miss the fact that God moved in. Things that have distracted me from participating in the Christmas story.

Pastor Peter Marty offered a nice reflection about Christmas last week in one of my favorite theological journals, The Christian Century. It helped me focus as I prepared for today. Pastor Marty wrote, “God came into the world through intense labor pains to meet the absence of brotherly and sisterly love. God’s encounter with our often cruel species would happen in a face-to-face manner, a flesh-to-flesh way. The wake-up call began with Jesus. As his love spread beyond the confines of Bethlehem, your face and body – and mine – somehow became involved. So we celebrate Christmas with a joy that must seem odd to some. We sing our hearts out. We cherish relationships that are not entirely perfect. We look other people in the eye. We give chunks of ourselves away. It’s not that hatred and cruelty have disappeared. It’s that the arrival of love in the midst of the sorry mess we have made of creation gives Christmas its special wonder.”

I don’t know why you are here today, but I’m glad you are. Maybe you’re here because you feel a sense of obligation. Maybe it’s just a tradition for you to worship on Christmas Day. Maybe your spouse or parent made you come. Maybe you’ve experienced a significant loss in your life this past year and you are trying to capture that old feeling Christmas used to bring to you. Maybe you’re struggling for answers to questions that you have in the wake of tragic events that have taken place in our world recently. I don’t know why you’re here, but I do know that there is good news for you today. For all of us. The good news is not that the Visa and MasterCard bills won’t come due for another 30 days or that all of the holiday parties and preparation is finally over so we can rest. The good news is that the God of all creation, the One who created you and loves you, knew that you could never find your way to God on your own, so God came after you. God moved in.

Many missed that in the tiny town of Bethlehem so long ago. Let’s not miss that in the town of Bismarck today.
The birth of a savior named Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, that we celebrate this morning, changed the world forever. I hope and pray that God coming to you and me and embracing us with his love through this child has changed us and will continue to change us in all the days to come. God has moved in. Merry Christmas. Amen.