Epiphany 4, Year C (2016)

Jeremiah 1: 4–10; Psalm 71: 1-6; I Corinthians 13: 1–13; Luke 4: 21–30

This is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, January 31, 2016.

“IF GOD CAN’T WORK WITH US, HE’LL WORK AROUND US”

(Homily text:  Luke 4: 21-30)

I once served under a wonderful Bishop whom I once characterized him as being an “Armchair Theologian”. His insights and wisdom were of the very practical, everyday sort.

One day, he said this:  If God can’t work with us, He’ll work around us.”

As I think about today’s gospel, that’s the essence of what’s going on in Jesus’ interaction with the villagers who were residents of Nazareth, where He had grown up….Jesus is telling these villagers who had known Him since His childhood that their attitudes make it impossible for God to work with them.

Let’s unpack our gospel text a little.

Remember from last week that Jesus had been asked or appointed to read from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in His hometown, Nazareth. He read from two different parts of Isaiah, from Isaiah 61: 1 – 2 and Isaiah 58: 6. The text He read began this way: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor….”. Then, Jesus sat down and began His homily, which began with this statement: “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Initially, Luke tells us, the reaction of those who had gone to the synagogue that day was very favorable. Luke tells us that “all spoke well of him (the Lord).”

But then, the mood, as we remarked last week, turned ugly. We don’t know exactly what happened, and Luke doesn’t narrate those events for us, but apparently those in attendance began to question Jesus and His authority, for they ask themselves, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” Then, a little later, Jesus says, “Truly, I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”  Somehow, what Jesus had to say rubbed His listeners the wrong way. His remarks rubbed them the wrong way so deeply that, Luke tells us, they took Jesus to the cliff (which is south of town) in order to throw Him over it.

Some of what Jesus said in the exchange with the residents of Nazareth needs some clarification:

First, He mentions the widow of Zarephath, to whom the prophet Elijah was sent (see I Kings 17: 8 – 24).  Jesus’ hearers would have known this story quite well, for it is a story in which a Gentile woman was obedient to God at a time when God’s chosen people in Israel weren’t being obedient. Jesus reminds those hearing Him that God’s prophet, Elijah, was sent to her specifically, and not to any of the widows in Israel.

Then, Jesus mentions another incident, this one is of the healing of the Syrian General Naaman, who was a leper. Naaman’s obedience to God’s command (made through the prophet Elisha) to wash in the Jordan River stood in contrast to others in Israel who did not receive God’s healing. (See II Kings 5: 1 – 19.)

Jesus’ hearers on that occasion were no dummies. They all knew the Hebrew Scriptures and they surely knew (very well) these two stories that Jesus cited.

They also knew the meaning of those two stories, for they were both accounts of the favor that Gentiles had received from God.

Now we come to the nub of these two stories, and of the reaction of Jesus’ hearers:  The prevailing attitude among many of God’s chosen people in that day isn’t a very favorable one, for many of them thought that they – by virtue of being children of Abraham – were automatically entitled to God’s special favor. It’s also quite possible that many of them also thought that God’s favor was reserved especially for Jews, and for no one else.

But Jesus’ message is a stark wakeup call to these hearers. It is also a stark wakeup call to you and me, for none of us, then or now, can claim a special place in God’s plans, unless we are willing to follow and do God’s will. The problem with God’s people 2,000 years ago was pride, the sort of pride that got in the way of being able to hear God’s voice and to follow God’s will.

The point of Jesus’ two stories is summed up in the words of my former Bishop’s bit of wisdom:

If God can’t work with us, He’ll work around us.

The Scriptures are full of accounts in which those who – by human estimations at least – do not seem capable of receiving God’s favor. Oftentimes, these are the very ones whom God chooses to advance His will in the world. Why might this be so? The reason is that, oftentimes, people who have the least to lose are precisely those who are most willing to give up what little they have (possessions, social status, etc.) in order to take on God’s agenda.

The Jews of Jesus’ day had an agenda, and it involved invoking as often as possible the fact that they had some of Abraham’s blood running through their veins. The conclusion for them was that that was all that God required in order to find favor with Him. Their insistence on their inherited status blinded them to the heart and soul of the requirements of the Law of Moses, which required the loving of God with all their hearts and minds, and their neighbors as themselves (see Deuteronomy 6: 5 and Leviticus 19: 18). So, in that day and time, many pious Jews regarded the poor, the lame, the blind, and the captives as victims of their own sin, people for whom there was no love from God and no love from them, either.

But Jesus’ message stands in opposition to these attitudes, for it is to such as these (the poor, the lame, the captives, the outcasts) that He had been anointed to bring the Good News, that God’s love knows no bounds, that God’s love crosses all boundaries, that there is no one who is outside of the possibility of finding favor with God. For God seeks to bring each and every one of us into a lasting and loving embrace, into a relationship in which God’s holiness becomes our holiness. In truth, another of my former Bishop’s earthy statements rings true in this context:  He said: “God never leaves us where He finds us.”

Only when we are willing to set aside our notions of who’s found favor with God, a process that means becoming “poor in spirit”, will we realize that God will choose to work with just such persons as these, will we be enabled to do God’s will, thereby finding favor with Him.

AMEN. 

Epiphany 3, Year C (2016)

Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; I Corinthians 12: 12-31a; Luke 4: 14-21

This is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, emailed out to the members of St. John’s Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, January 24, 2016.  (Services this day were cancelled because of snow.)

“SELF-EMPTYING:  THE LORD’S AND OURS”

(Homily text:  Luke 4: 14-21)

This morning’s gospel reading relates to us the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, as He returns to his hometown of Nazareth, where He reads from the prophet Isaiah these words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Following the Lord’s reading of these verses, He sat down, having said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Though we do not read the verses which immediately follow, we know from the reaction of those synagogue-goers that day that they were incensed that the Lord would apply those verses to Himself, for they round Him up and take Him to the brow of the hill just south of Nazareth, so as to throw Him over the cliff to His death. Of course, the Lord, Luke tells us, passes through the crowd and escapes.

This incident tells us a lot about a number of conditions, beliefs and practices that the people of that day engaged in. We would do well to examine some of these in more detail.

We could easily begin with the worship practices in the synagogues in Jesus’ day:

• It is apparent from Luke’s account that the worshipers in the synagogues were reading not just the five books of Moses (the Law, or Torah), but they were also reading from the prophets, in this case, Isaiah. Some scholars suggest that the readings from the prophets were chosen because the texts from the Torah and the one(s) chosen from the prophets shared a theme.
• Apparently there was someone whose job it was to facilitate the flow of the worship, for Luke tells us that an “attendant” handed Jesus the scroll from which to read.
• At least three readers would normally read the selection, each one taking a short passage. (Since the text of Scripture wasn’t divided into verses until the sixteenth century, that may account for Luke’s report of the text that Jesus actually read, for Luke’s citation contains both Isaiah 61: 1-2 and 58: 6.[1] These may have been the portions of the text that Jesus actually read.)

Now, let’s turn our attention to Jesus’ comment, and to the reaction of those who were in the synagogue with Him that day. After Jesus had finished reading the Isaiah passage, Luke tells us that He sat down. Since sitting was the position that a teacher took in order to teach, some scholars have suggested that Jesus’ comment that Isaiah’s prophecy had been fulfilled “in their hearing” was the beginning of a commentary or teaching on the passage.

In the verses which follow this morning’s gospel text, Luke tells us that all spoke well of Jesus. But then, the mood of the worshipers became quite ugly: They demand that Jesus do some of the mighty works they had heard that He had done in Capernahum. 

Though we do not know the exact flow of events (for Luke doesn’t narrate them for us), we do know that those synagogue worshipers began to question Jesus, saying, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” Then they try to take Him to the cliff which is south of town in order to throw Him over it.

Why this opposition?

Several answers have been proposed. One very plausible answer is that Jesus connects Isaiah’s prophecy with His own ministry and mission.

It would be good for us to unpack this just a little.

The prevailing attitude among the Jews of Jesus’ day was that they were constantly looking back, over their shoulders, at the great and mighty periods in their history. They remembered Abraham, and claimed to be Abraham’s children. They remembered Moses and God’s deliverance from bondage in Egypt. They remembered Kings David and Solomon and the glory days of the united kingdom of Israel that had existed a thousand years earlier.

All of those things were in their past. But many Jews in that time didn’t seem to be able to conceive that God would act in mighty ways in their own day. Many seemed to think that God had become silent. Many seemed to think that the promises made through the prophets ages before would come to pass in some long-distant time in the future, but not in their own time.

So Jesus’ claim to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy may have been a shock to the sensibilities of the Jews of His day. We might frame their reaction in this way:  They might say, “Who does he think he is, claiming to fulfill Isaiah’s promise? What audacity!”

It is one thing to hope for God to act. It is quite another to see God act right before our very eyes.

It would be good, at this point, to turn our attention to the nature of Jesus’ ministry, as He claims it from Isaiah.

Notice who will be the beneficiaries of His ministry:  The poor.  The captives. The oppressed.

Jesus’ liberation of these people is deeply caught up with the business of holiness and acceptability before God. This comment needs some explanation:

In Jesus’ day, the Jews were deeply concerned with purity and with holiness. Consider the attitudes of the Pharisees, who were a lay group that took diligent steps to ensure that they – and everyone else – observed the Law of Moses down to its smallest detail. To do this was – in their eyes at least – to be pure and holy in God’s sight.

Attendant to this attitude was another attitude:  These Pharisees believed (along with many others in the Jewish culture of the time) that if a person was healthy or was wealthy, they were in that condition because of their spiritual purity before God. Put another way, the attitude of the Pharisees was:  A person is blessed because they’ve done all the right things.

So the flip side of the world view of many Jews in Jesus’ day is also important for us to remember:  If a person was sick or ill, or was poor, it was because of their impurity before God, which has brought down judgment on that person.

The Pharisees’ concern was not only to ensure ritual purity, but also to figure out who’s “in” and who’s “out” where God is concerned. These Pharisees were quite deterministic in their approach to sorting out who’s good and who’s bad, for a person who was impure, who was “out” as far as God was concerned, was – most likely – permanently impure and “out”.

Into this view of things, Jesus enters. He deliberately challenges these attitudes, declaring that it is to these outcasts that He has been sent. God’s anointing rests upon Him to do these things.

Implicit in Jesus’ challenge is the declaration that no one is outside of God’s power to love and to redeem. Just as God had liberated the ancient Israelites from bondage in Egypt, not because those ancient Israelites were so good that they deserved liberation, but simply because God loved His people and had decided to free them from slavery, now God – in Jesus – was going to do the same thing all over again.

So, guess what, all the stuff the pious Jews of Jesus’ day were doing to try to earn God’s favor didn’t amount to anything, for Jesus’ message was that everyone was important in God’s sight, and everyone deserved release from bondage and from oppression.

At this point, we need to make an important point:  Jesus’ message of freedom, of release, wasn’t just some social program to lift up those who were at the bottom of the social ladder. His wasn’t just a program to make life better for the poor, the blind, and the other outcasts of His day.

Jesus’ message of liberation carried with it a call to holiness, not just liberation. The background to the truth of this part of Jesus’ message can be seen in God’s previous liberations of His people. God had redeemed His people from slavery in Egypt, in order that they would make their way into the land which He had promised them ages before. The purpose of their release ensured that they would come back to the land He had set aside for them in order that they would worship the God who had led them and who had freed them. Likewise, the release from bondage in Babylon carried the same sort of message: God had used the Persian king Cyrus to proclaim the liberty of God’s people, in order that they might return to the land promised them, in order to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, that they might be a holy people to the Lord.

The human beings that God has created, down through time, have always had a need for God’s liberation. This is a liberation from sin and a call to holiness before God. It is a liberation from oppression, no matter what form that oppression might take (political, economic, military, etc.). To liberate from temporal oppression without declaring God’s liberation from sin is to achieve only part of the total liberation that God desires for everyone.

For no one is outside the bounds of God’s love. No one is beyond God’s reach of liberation. No one is undeserving of freedom.

Just as God has liberated us from the permanent estrangement from Him that sin brings about in the waters of baptism, so God continues to liberate each one of us from the hardened attitudes that we share with the ancient Pharisees, in order that we might see Jesus’ message of freedom and liberation is for all people everywhere, and in every time. To be created in the image and likeness of God (as Scripture tells us) is to be worthy of release from every form of slavery and bondage, for God’s deepest desire for everyone is that each one will come to know true freedom, a freedom that only God can provide.

AMEN.

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[1]   Luke gives us the version of  Isaiah 61: 1-2 and Isaiah 58:6 in the Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint. Most New Testament quotations from the Old Testament are in this version, for the Septuagint was more widely disseminated than the Hebrew version of the Old Testament was in this period.

Epiphany 2, Year C (2016)

Isaiah 62: 1-5; Psalm 36: 5-10; I Corinthians 12: 1-11;  John 2: 1-11

This is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, January 17, 2016.

“MIRACLES OF CREATION AND RE-CREATION”

(Homily text:  John 2: 1-11)

This morning, we hear John’s account of Jesus’ first miracle, on the occasion when He changed water into wine at a wedding in the town of Cana, in Galilee.

John takes care to tell us that this event was “the first of his signs, and that this event “revealed his glory,” so that His disciples “believed in him.”

John relates this first miracle to His final miracle, His rising from the dead on Easter Sunday morning. John gives us a hint of this connection in our text this morning. (More on that in a moment.)

Before we look at the implications of Jesus’ act in changing water into wine, let’s take a moment to remind ourselves of the setting for this miracle. Then, we ought to consider just what constitutes a miracle.

We are told that this wedding took place in a town called Cana. If we travel to the Holy Land today, we can go to a town called Cana, and there we will find numerous reminders of this wedding and of the Lord’s generosity in supplying a large amount of very fine wine. But the Cana of today isn’t the same as the Cana in New Testament times, for the original Cana is located about six miles or so to the northwest. Cana was located north of Nazareth, and west of the Sea of Galilee.

Next, let’s remind ourselves of the importance of weddings in the first century. Wedding customs differed significantly from our practices today. When a couple gets married today, there is usually a rehearsal for the wedding the day before, and then the ceremony itself, which is followed by a reception. But in Jesus’ day a wedding and the attendant celebration would last nearly a whole week. So it was imperative that the host of the celebration be prepared by having plenty of food and plenty of wine on hand. Failure to supply these (and other) necessities brought shame on the host, who was the bridegroom. But, we might ask, why was the celebration a week long? Two answers arise in connection with this question:  For one thing, weddings offered one of perhaps very few opportunities for celebration in that day and time. We forget how difficult life was in those days, due to poverty, oppressive Roman occupation, and the dishonesty of the leaders of God’s people. Hope was in short supply. The second reason for the celebration was the significance of marriage itself, for marriage carried with it a hope for the future, as the married couple shared with God in the miracle of the creation of new life. So the prospect of children offered the hope that God had not abandoned His people, and that God’s promise, made to Abraham, that Abraham’s descendents would be as numerous as the sands of the seashore.

Another feature of this event is the Lord’s puzzling response to His mother’s confidence in His ability to bring about a solution to the problem of having no wine. To contemporary ears, His response, saying, “Woman, what concern is that to you and me?” sounds harsh and disrespectful. But in the culture of the day, a man would address a woman, any woman (even his mother), in public in such a fashion. So Jesus’ response fits the practices of the day, even though it strikes us in an entirely different fashion.

Now, let’s turn our attention to miracles themselves.

In a very basic sense, a miracle is something that happens which falls outside our normal human expectations. Some examples from the Bible will illustrate this point: The creation of the world by the will of God is, in itself, a miracle. How could the world we live in be created out of nothing?  Genesis tells us that God created it by an act if His will, speaking things into being. (See Genesis, chapters one and two, for the account of creation.) The parting of the Red Sea so that God’s people could pass through the waters on their way out of Egypt is another miracle. (Exodus, chapter fourteen.) God’s provision of the manna and of water in the wilderness is another example of a miracle in the Bible.  In each of these cases, God does something that isn’t a normal event. Often, God makes something happen out of nothing, simply by an act of His will.

Each of Jesus’ miracles falls into this pattern:  Jesus makes something out of nothing. He creates (or re-creates) where human expectations don’t allow us to think those sorts of things can happen: He changes water into wine; He heals the man born blind (John chapter nine), He raises Lazarus from the dead (John, chapter eleven). And then, in His greatest miracle, He rises from the dead on Easter Sunday morning.

John links Jesus final miracle, His resurrection, to this first miracle by recording Jesus’ comment to His mother…He says, “My hour is not yet come.” Whenever we read the word “hour” in the Fourth Gospel, it is a reference to Jesus’ death and resurrection. So here, the Lord gives us a glimpse of the totality of His miracle working, for His first miracle and His last miracles and closely linked. Both create and re-create.

God’s miraculous acts allow us to see a glimpse of God’s power. The unseen power of God is seen in the physical world. The unseen and the spiritual enter the world of the things that can be seen and the physical. They give us hope that God has not abandoned us, and that God’s love continues to be seen in the world. They show us that God has the power to overcome hopelessness, as when the wine had run out at the wedding in Cana, as when the man born blind was able to see again, as when Lazarus, who had been dead for four days, was raised to life again. The last and greatest miracle, the resurrection of the Lord, is the foundation and basis for our Christian hope of new and re-created life in this world, and in the guarantee of everlasting life of the world to come.

Basically, miracles are sacramental acts, for miracles have an outer and visible quality which affirms the spiritual and inner reality of God’s power and presence. (A sacrament is defined as “A visible and outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”)

As Christian believers and disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to live a sacramental life. That is, we are called to be outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace of God that has been given to us in our baptisms. By the ways we think, by the ways we talk, by the ways we act, we are to show the signs of God’s indwelling presence in the person of Jesus Christ, through the continuing power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

We are called to be walking miracles, by which we allow God to remake us, more and more, into the image of Christ. By this process, we die to our old natures and are raised to a new nature. We are re-created, remade and remolded, defying the odds of normal human experience which would try to tell us that we are incapable of changing into the likeness of God’s love.

By this process, we are able to work miracles for others in the world, for people who have been created by the miraculous power of God, people who are dearly loved by God, people for whom there seems to be little reason for the hope of a better life. In so doing, we set our own agendas aside and recall with joy the miracles that God has done in our own lives. We set out in service to God and to others in gratitude to re-create and renew the world God has made.

May the power of the Holy Spirit enable us to see the work which God has set before us, that we may be co-creators with God, miracle-workers in bringing a new and better world into being, working against all human expectations that would dissuade us.

AMEN.

Epiphany 1, Year C (2016)

Isaiah 43: 1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8: 14–17; Luke 3: 15–17, 21–22

This is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s Church, in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, January 10, 2016.

“SELF-EMPTYING:  THE LORD’S AND OURS”

(Homily text:  Luke 3: 15–17, 21–22)

This Sunday marks the beginning of the season of Epiphany, a word that means “appearing” or “manifestation”. Throughout this season, we will be hearing and studying the ways in which Jesus Christ is made known to the world.

This morning then, on the First Sunday after the Epiphany,[1] we hear the account of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. The Baptism of the Lord is the theme for this Sunday in the Church Year every year at this time. Since there are three years in our cycle of readings, we hear Matthew’s account, then Mark’s account, and then, this year, Luke’s account.

Jesus’ baptism marks the beginning of His earthly ministry. It marks the start of a new phase in His life.

But if John the Baptist’s baptism was a baptism for the forgiveness of sins, then why is Jesus – who is the One without sin – coming to John for baptism? (It’s worth noting that our final hymn this morning is entitled “The Sinless One to Jordan Came," a highly appropriate ending to our worship.)

We would do well to examine this important question a bit further.

The first thing we might do is to look at the background of John’s baptism by looking at Jewish practices in John’s day. The Law of Moses laid great emphasis on purity, the sort of purity that would allow a person to enter into God’s presence.  Involved here was the question of what was clean and what was unclean. Involved in the personal purification process was the ritual bath (known in Hebrew as the mikvah) which a person was required to do before going to the temple in Jerusalem.[2] The final step in the purification process was entering into God’s presence, where atonement for sin was made, and where God’s wrath for sin was done away with. And just to be sure that everyone in the temple was aware of the need for purity, a laver bowl stood near the entrance in the temple, as a reminder that one must be clean and pure to enter God’s presence.

The second thing we might notice is that this ritual bath was something that a person did themselves -- they were the ones who decided to undergo the bath.

Next, we might take notice of what we might call the “spiritual health” of God’s people in John the Baptist’s day. The record presented to us in the gospel accounts isn’t a very flattering one: For example, great emphasis was laid on outward observance of the Mosaic Law, even down to the smallest detail, such as being careful not to walk too far on the Sabbath day, or to avoid doing things (like Jesus did) of walking through a wheat field and plucking off heads of grain. But there seems to have been a great disconnect between outward observance of the Law’s requirements and an inner disposition which allowed outward purity and cleanliness to permeate into one’s heart, mind and soul. Applied to the matter of bathing and being clean and pure, one gets the idea that people did this as a matter of ritual only, not for any other reason other than “going through the motions” required by the Law. (I can’t resist saying that the clearest evidence of this disconnect can be seen in the actions of the Chief Priests and other members of the Sandhedrin who plotted to murder Jesus, while being sure not to enter Pilate’s presence because to do so would have made them unclean and would have rendered them unable to observe the Passover.) At the root of these attitudes and behaviors is the matter of pride: God’s people regarded their status as children of Abraham as a ticket to automatically conferred favorable status with God. John addresses this attitude by saying to God’s people, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’”

By contrast, John the Baptist’s baptism involves several factors that differ significantly from contemporary Jewish practices of his day:

John’s baptism is taking place outside of the normal religious channels:  No wonder the leaders from Jerusalem come to check John out, to see just what it is he’s doing. He’s not working within the confines of acceptable Jewish practice, for he is calling people to repentance and to a new way of being spiritually healthy not in the temple in Jerusalem, nor in any of the synagogues, but in the wilderness. 

John’s baptism connects inner and outer purity: Notice that John requires the confession of sin as those being baptized enter the waters of the Jordan River. (I can just imagine that this confession involved an aural, out loud, recitation of the sins being confessed!). There was no “going through the motions” involved in John’s baptism. 

God’s judgment and the need for purity are closely connected:  John tells those who are coming for baptism that the one who will come after him will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with “fire.”  “Already,” John says, “(Jesus's) “winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
We might pause for a moment at this juncture and reflect on the matter of fire in the Scriptures…..Fire serves some important purposes, including: 

• Purification: Just as a precious metal is extracted from the rocks or the ore from which it is taken, so fire separates and refines out the impurities in the person who comes for baptism;  

• Destruction of undesirable elements: Fire consumes – as John tells us – the “chaff” that is present in everyone of us;  

• Tempering: Fire strengthens and hardens the individual in desirable ways (in contrast to the hardened attitudes of God’s people in John’s day)….fire tempers and hardens the individual by an external process, not by an internal hardening of the heart toward God. 

The baptized person is the receiver, not the initiator, of the purification process: As the person comes for baptism, they come empty handed, essentially. They come, admitting to God, that they are powerless to help themselves in the purifying process. This is – in its most basic understanding – a self-emptying process.

Now, we should return to the matter of Jesus’ coming for baptism.

Jesus comes to – as He does in every case – to lead by example. He never asks us to do anything He Himself has not already done. He comes, emptying Himself at the beginning of His earthly ministry. Everything else that will follow in that earthly ministry will be of the self-emptying character and quality: His concern for the poor and the downtrodden, His love for and attention given to the unclean of His day (tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners, e.g.), and especially His self-emptying death on the cross.

And so Jesus’ baptism not only marks the beginning of a new chapter in His earthly life, but it also marks for us the importance of an inner and outer disposition toward God that are totally and completely integrated. Baptism marks for us a self-emptying of the sort we see in Jesus’ ministry, and especially in His death on the cross. Baptism gives God permission to begin the purifying and refining process in us, a process we cannot do ourselves …. we need God’s purifying fire to come upon us.

So come, Holy Spirit, come with purifying fire, driving out of us the impurities of sin and of self-conceit. Empty our hearts of pride, self-importance and conceit, and then refill us with God’s holy love and power.

AMEN.

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[1]   The Feast of  the Epiphany always falls on January 6th, and its arrival marks the end of the twelve days of the Christmas season.

[2]   General instructions about cleanliness and purity in the Law of Moses can be found in chapter fifteen of the Book of Leviticus.  Concerning cleansing rituals for the priests, see, Leviticus 16: 4b and 16: 24a.  Additional instructions about bathing are also found in Leviticus 16: 28.

Christmas 2, Year C (2016)

Jeremiah 31: 7–14; Psalm 84: 1–8; Ephesians 1: 3–6, 15–19a; Matthew 2: 1–12

This is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s Church, in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, January 3, 2016.

“WHAT ABOUT THESE MAGI?”

(Homily text:  Matthew 2: 1–12)

This morning, we get a bit of a jump start on the season of Epiphany, which begins this coming Wednesday, January 6th, by hearing and considering the visit of the Magi to the Christ child.  One of the major themes of the Epiphany season is the coming of non-Jews, that is, Gentiles, to Christ.  The Feast of the Epiphany carries a subtitle which highlights this theme:  “The Manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentiles”.

So, this morning, we hear Matthew’s account of the visit of these mysterious visitors from the east to Jerusalem, and then, guided by the star that they had seen, on to Bethlehem itself.  (It is worth noting that it is Matthew alone who passes along this information to us.)

But who were these people?

The short answer to that question is:  We can’t be totally sure, we can only ascertain with certainty some aspects of their identity…..there remains – and will remain – a good bit about these visitors that we cannot know this side of heaven.

When we consider the visit of the Magi, we have to use words like “maybe”, “perhaps”, “if” and “might”.

It’s worth saying, right up front, that trying to talk about the Magi probably involves a fair degree of speculation.  Hopefully, what is said in this homily will be speculation of the sort that is related to the text that Matthew provides us, for faithful preaching always holds the text in view.

But before we begin by looking at those aspects of their visit that we can be reasonably sure of, let’s dispel some misconceptions about these visitors:

1. There were three of them:  In truth, we can’t know the exact number of the Magi.  It’s possible (maybe) that popular ideas about the number stem from the number of gifts that were given to the Christ child.  This very popular idea of the number of the Magi is underscored by the Epiphany carol, “We Three Kings”.
   
2. Their visit came shortly after (or perhaps during) the visit of the shepherds:  This idea is underscored by the depictions of the crèche scenes (including our own here at St. John’s), which show the shepherds and the Magi gathered around the baby Jesus.  But, if we read Matthew’s account carefully, we see two facts that would lead us away from such an understanding:  First of all, Matthew tells us that, upon finding Joseph and Mary, they enter the “house” where the Holy Family was staying, and they present gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the “child”.  Notice that Matthew tells us that the Holy Family was found in a “house”, not in a manger, and that the gifts were presented to the Christ “child”, not a baby.  Furthermore, if we read Matthew’s account a little further on from the passage we heard this morning, we see that King Herod (the Great) ordered the slaughter of all the male children in Bethlehem who were two years old and under[1], leading us to believe there had been some passage of time from the time when Jesus was born and when the Magi made their way to Bethlehem.
   
3. The identity of the Magi:  Various titles have been assigned to these visitors, including “Kings” and “Wise Men”.  The first title is wholly inaccurate, but may stem from a passage in Psalm 72: 10, which reads, “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute, and the kings of Arabia and Saba offer gifts.”  Connecting the idea of the gifts that were offered to this passage is one from Isaiah 60: 6, which reads (in part), “All those from Sheba shall come, they shall bring gold and frankincense.”  As for the idea that the Magi were “wise men”, that description is – to some extent – probably true (see the note which advances the idea that they were students of different disciplines, below).

Now that we’ve dispelled some of the notions surrounding the arrival of these visitors from the east, let’s explore what we can know with some certainty:

1. 1.  The place(s) from which the Magi came:  The term “Magi” suggests that these visitors (at least some of them) came from Babylon, for this is an area where the term “Magi” denotes a court astrologer/astronomer.  The gifts that they brought suggest that they may over come (again, some of them, perhaps) from Arabia, for frankincense and myrrh are gum resins that originate in that area.
   
2. They are students of different disciplines:  From the comments the Magi make, it is clear that they’ve been watching the heavens, and that they notice the appearance of a star.  This observation and the importance they attach to the appearance of the star underscore the idea that they were astrologers/astronomers.  But beyond that, they also connect the appearance of this heavenly phenomenon to events in Judea, for the star seems to lead them westward.  Perhaps, as has been suggested by some biblical scholars, the Magi were the compilers and keepers of wisdom from a number of different sources.  Maybe they were the equivalent of the Wikipedia editors of their day, collecting information and wisdom from a number of different sources.  If this supposition is correct, then perhaps the Magi made a connection between the appearance of the star and a passage from the Book of Numbers (24:17a), which reads, “…a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.”  Since there had been a significant and continuing Jewish presence in Babylon since the days of the captivity of the Jews (from 586 – 538 BC), it’s possible that the Magi had a copy of the Book of Numbers.  It’s possible that they had access to the entire five books of Moses, the Torah, as well.  If the Magi were not only collectors of information and wisdom from a number of different sources, but if they were also learned scholars who sought to “connect the dots” between various sources of information and knowledge, then they may have been the “wise men” of their age.
   
3. They are highly placed members of their society:  The gifts that were presented to the Christ child suggest that these visitors were possessed of a considerable degree of wealth, denoting, perhaps, that they were among the upper echelons of their society (perhaps part of a royal court in Babylon or Arabia?).  Furthermore, they are possessed of the means to make a journey from wherever they came to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem.

Now what is the meaning of their visit?

As we attempt to make a judgment about the meaning of their visit, it’s important to remember that every passage of Holy Scripture seeks to impart some truth about God and about God’s interaction with human beings.

Approaching the visit of the Magi from this perspective, we can reasonably come to the following conclusions:

1. The Magi take notice, while others don’t:  I don’t have a better way of stating this truth, the truth that the Magi saw the star, and made a connection to a royal birth, perhaps relying on the passage from the Book of Numbers cited a moment ago.  So they come to Jerusalem and ask King Herod where the “King of the Jews” has been born.  This question is an entirely logical one, for the Magi come to the royal palace and ask – essentially – if the King Herod has become the father of a new child who will inherit the throne.  Of course, Herod’s reaction shows that he takes the Magi’s question to be an indication that perhaps there is an impostor who’s been born somewhere in his kingdom.  So he consults the Scribes and asks if there are any predictions about the birth of a rival to his place on the throne, and – perhaps – reflecting some of the messianic expectations that some in the Jewish community harbor, Herod asks the scribes if there is a specific prediction about the birth of the Messiah, the Christ.  They answer with a combination of a quote from Micah 5: 2 and II Samuel 5: 2, saying that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem.  Up to the point of the Magi’s question, no one in the official circles of the Jewish people had taken notice of the birth of one who would be proclaimed as king…it was these Gentile visitors who had taken notice.
   
2. The visit of the Magi prefigures the coming of the Gentiles to Christ:  As time went along, the Good News (Gospel) of Jesus Christ spread throughout the known world.  But in large measure, it was the Gentiles who noticed that Good News and who responded to it.  So the pattern begun by the Magi was to become the pattern of response by people generally.  Indeed, the Lord’s final comments to His eleven disciples who were gathered together with Him after the resurrection foretell this worldwide focus, as the Lord says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  (Matthew 28: 19–20, generally known as the Great Commission)

In the ancient world, religion was – to some extent at least – a matter of one’s cultural and ethnic identity.  The idea that God’s desire to be in relationship with peoples across cultural and ethnic identities was a fairly radical one.  But that was the message brought to people everywhere by the coming of Jesus Christ, for God’s Good News was meant for everyone, everywhere.

Praise to God, whose plan for all humankind includes Jews and non-Jews, Gentiles like you and me.

AMEN.

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[1]   This event is remembered in the commemoration of the Holy Innocents, observed on December 28th each year.