Scripture:  Matthew 2:1-12

By now I would suppose that for most of you, it’s sinking in that the Christmas holidays are done.  It’s 2012.  The stockings and ornaments are in hibernation once again.  For some of you, the thought of twelve whole days of Christmas seems a little far-fetched to begin with.  You were ready to take the tree down before the New Year.  And so it’s good for you to reach a point at which Christmas is definitively over. 

 But I know that some of you are still hanging in there with Christmas.  And it’s not just that the decorations still haven’t come down.  You’ve still got the Christmas music play-list queued up on your iPod, and you’re still convincing yourself that you’re going to get a Christmas letter out to your friends this year. 

 My family falls into this second camp.  We had a lot of family in town through the holy days, and there never seemed to be a good time to put all the Christmas stuff away.  We were actually leaning towards taking ornaments off the tree Thursday or Friday, but then we realized that Christmas in Ethiopia was being celebrated on January 7^th, and that was all we needed to hear.  The tree is still standing, dry as a bone, needles cascading to the floor.  Today may be the day. 

 For those of you who, for one reason or another, are still clinging to Christmas, you’re in luck this morning, because today we’re zooming in for one more close-up of the manger scene.  Today is Epiphany Sunday.  The word “epiphany,” of course, means “a sudden moment of intuitive understanding,” or “a moment when something is revealed.”  For us as Christians, Epiphany celebrates the day that Jesus was revealed to the world as God’s son, and our Epiphany scripture comes from Matthew’s gospel.  It’s the story of the wise men who brought gifts to the baby Jesus.

 A couple things you may not have known about the wise men. First, there probably weren’t three of them.  Granted, three is a good number for crèches and Christmas pageants, but the Bible never actually says that there were three wise men.  There were three gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. When you think about it, it’s sort of funny to imagine three men with camels traveling across the countryside all by themselves with that much treasure on them.  Might as well have hung a sign on one of the camels that said, “Hi, we’re rich!  Please rob us!”  No, if the wise men were really wise, they would have traveled in greater numbers than just three.  In all likelihood, they’d have had some muscle with them—some strong men to go with the wise men.

 In our staff meeting this past week, Nikki pointed out something that I had never thought of before.  She asked, “Why didn’t anyone in Jerusalem go with the wise men to Bethlehem?”  Have you ever thought about that?  Matthew tells us that the wise men came into Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising,^* and have come to pay him homage.” 

Ordinarily you’d think that this would be front page news.  And Bethlehem is only, what, six miles from Jerusalem?  Matthew 2:11 says that “on entering the house, [the wise men] saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.”  You know, the next verse ought to be, “and then the thousands of people who came with them from Jerusalem lined up outside the door and started pouring in—person after person, family after family—all eager to see their newborn king.” 

But no one came.  The wise men showed up in Jerusalem, stuck out like a sore thumb, and told everyone why they were there and what they were looking for.  It’s like the whole city of Jerusalem said, “What’s that?  The Messiah’s been born and he’s close by?  Yeah, I’m kinda busy today.  Maybe some other time…”

Of course, there is one person in Jerusalem who took particular interest.  King Herod secretly called for the wise men^*, pumped them for information, and sent them out to find Jesus so that he might also “go and pay him homage.” 

So were the wise men wise?  Yes, maybe, but that doesn’t mean that they were persuasive with the people of Jerusalem or smart when it came to local politics.  They may have been wise, but that doesn’t mean they could smell a rat when they appeared before Herod. 

Had it not been for a vivid dream, the wise men’s next stop after the manger was Herod’s palace, where they were going to helpfully share Mapquest directions with the man who would have Jesus murdered. 

Wise or maybe not-so-wise, these foreigners in Matthew’s gospel reveal something about Christ’s presence in the world.  Their story is one of kingdoms clashing.  One kingdom is Christ’s kingdom.  In this kingdom, the king is a helpless infant child born to a poor peasant couple far from home.  The other kingdom is an earthly empire whose local king is so hell-bent on maintaining control that he justifies his tactics of fear, intimidation, and murder.  In Christ’s kingdom, the king is a servant who will grow up to love his enemies and pray for those who persecute him.  In Herod’s kingdom, the king fights to stay on top and his motto is “strike first and strike hard.” 

When Jesus was born, Rome was rapidly growing its power in the world.  The Roman Empire hadn’t yet stretched around the entire Mediterranean Sea, but it was close.  Cities like Jerusalem were some of the latest to be overtaken and occupied.  We might forget this when we read the gospels sometimes—that life was falling apart for the Jewish people, that Rome’s presence in Judea was brutal and devastating.  And from the word “go,” the gospel is a story about kingdoms clashing. 

Herod strikes first and then just keeps on striking, again and again.  From Christmas to Easter—from the manger to the cross—the kingdom of Herod is the kingdom of “might makes right.”  It’s the kingdom of swords and clubs, whippings and crucifixions.  It’s the kingdom of tanks and AK-47’s, persecution and institutionalized torture.

Still, in the midst of it all, the gospel of a new kingdom was lived and proclaimed.  Jesus was born into a culture of violence and oppression, and his kingdom grew around his good news that the kings of this world will not have the final say.  This is part of what we celebrate in Christ’s birth, and it’s what we commit ourselves to when we hear again these stories of Christmas and Epiphany—we commit ourselves as citizens of Christ’s kingdom, aware, perhaps, that the kingdom of Herod is still alive and well.

Some of you, I’m sure, are familiar with the book, Children’s Letters to God.  It came out quite a few years back.  In it, the author has compiled children’s questions, comments, requests, prayers—all addressed to God. 

“Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.”  - Joyce

“Dear God, Maybe Cain and Able would not kill each other so much if they each had their own room.  That works with me and my brother.”  - Larry

“Dear God, instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don’t you just keep the ones you got now?”  - Jane

But there’s one that caught my attention and made me think of this clash of kingdoms I’ve been talking about today.  Harriet, a 5-year-old, writes: “Dear God, are you real?  Some people don’t believe it.  If you are, you’d better do something quick.”  [1]

Sometimes even our children see it—the clash of kingdoms.  The kingdoms of this world—kingdoms of greed and hatred, kingdoms of “me first” and “every man for himself”—these are the kingdoms that thrive so easily in this world.  But sometimes, it’s in the midst of these kingdoms that the kingdom of God emerges.

Some of the most beautiful music ever composed was played on a cold January night in 1941in an unheated barracks at Stalag 8, a German death camp.  It was composed by a prisoner at the camp.  His name was Olivier Messien.  He was a devout Christian, and he wanted to compose some music that would say, even in the death camp, that the forces of oppression and evil cannot squelch the kingdom of Christ.

There in the camp, he was tired of the constant hup-two-three-four, the one-two-three-four beat of the jack boot.  And so he composed a “Quartet for the End of Time,” a quartet of kingdoms clashing in which all fragmented and broken and hopeless time has been gathered into the time of God.  How do you compose music like that?  The meters, rhythms are irregular.  The musicians cannot play in splendid isolation, simply keeping orderly time.  They have to attend to each other.  They have to play as an ensemble.  In fact, right on the score where most composers would have written, “Play slowly, play rapidly,” Messien wrote, “Play tenderly, play with ecstasy, play with love.”  A “Quartet for the End of Time” was composed and played in the middle of a death camp, and so this kingdom of life and hope clashed with the kingdom of death.  We live in a world where kingdoms clash. [2]

Where the story about a Savior’s birth gets lost in flyers announcing 60% off a Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  Where we worship the Prince of Peace, but violence rages on unquestioned and sanctioned or even ignored.  When we celebrate Christmas and now Epiphany, we commit ourselves and our citizenship to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. 

Pastor and writer Quinn Caldwell recently shared a reflection and a creed with the wider Church, and this morning I invite you to join voices together in that creed.  Caldwell reminds us that the word "creed" comes from the Latin “credo,” which means “I believe.”  It's a statement of faith, an attempt to capture in words the essence of the content of the faith.  [3]

Caldwell observes that “Herod’s creed might have gone something like, ‘I believe in the divine right of kings.  I believe in intimidation, fear, and murder.  I believe that infants and peasants do not matter.  I believe in the sword.  I believe in me.’  That is not a Christian creed.”

Friends, in defiance of all who place their faith in themselves or their swords, in rulers or in fear, I invite you now to rise with me and join me in saying a Christmas Creed.  Will you do that with me now?  Do not be quiet, do not be timid; God knows Herod’s not.

A CHRISTMAS CREED

I believe in Jesus Christ and in the power of the Gospel which began in Bethlehem.

I believe in the One whose spirit glorified a small village, of whose coming the shepherds saw the sign, and for whom there was no room in the inn.

I believe in the One whose life changed the course of history, for whom the kings of the earth had no power, and who was not understood by the proud.

I believe in the One to whom the poor, the oppressed, the discouraged, the afflicted, the sick, the blind and the leprous gave welcome and accepted as Savior.

I believe in the One who, with love, changed the hearts of the proud, and with his life, showed that it is more important to serve than to be served, and that the greatest joy is in giving your life for others. 

I believe that Christmas is strength and power, and that this world can change if, with humility and faith, we kneel before the manger.  Amen.

1.  I have Children’s Letters to God somewhere on my shelf, but a member of First Presbyterian recently brought it to my attention again and, coincidentally, I saw these letters used effectively in Mark Ramsey’s December 4^th sermon “Unbent,” preached at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, NC.

2.  I also received this story from a wonderful Mark Ramsey sermon.

3.  Quinn Caldwell’s reflection and this creed appeared in the January 2, 2012 Stillspeaking Daily Devotional of the United Church of Christ.