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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nBut, why does Matthew tell us about Magi from the East, with the power to access King Herod, impractical baby gifts, and only a fleeting encounter with Jesus?<\/p>\n
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Ironically, I believe that this was because Matthew was writing for a Jewish audience, and he was making the point he’d make again at the end of the gospel, \u201cGo therefore and make disciples of all nations,\u201d namely that the good news of Jesus expanded past even the community of the faithful Jews.<\/p>\n
The Magi from the east are outsiders, others, non-Jews. They have access to other wisdom, other traditions, other power. By having them perceive the spiritual earthquake of Jesus’s birth tells Matthew’s audience just how BIG this story is, and how profound it’s impact will be.<\/p>\n
I think \u201cthe east\u201d is particularly significant as well. To the east is the land Abraham left when God called him. Also, to the east is Babylonia, where the exiles had once been taken, and lived in captivity. That means to the east is where their release came, and like Abraham, the exiles returned home \u201cfrom the east.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time Jesus was born \u201cto the west\u201d was the power center of Rome, and the local power center of the Judea was also to the west. The powers to the west are the ones that Jesus will be organizing against in his life, and they are the ones with the power to end his life. So, it is from the east that Jesus is recognized for who he is, and that makes sense. This feels like a foreshadowing of Palm Sunday and Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem from the EASTERN gate too.<\/p>\n
So these EASTERN foreigners discern that there is something new and amazing happening and they come to see it for themselves. When they stop to ask for directions at the palace, the paranoid and power-hungry King Herod (who historically really was known for being incredibly bloodthirsty and insecure) decides to use them for his own purposes, to take out any threat to his kingship with haste.<\/p>\n
The Magi are being used as the King’s spies.<\/p>\n
But when they arrive and discover the humanity and vulnerability of Jesus, and of Mary, and (maybe) of Joseph, something shifts in them.<\/p>\n
That may sound minor, \u201csomething shifts in them\u201d but it is the best explanation I have for Easter too. Somehow, the very frightened disciples who were hidden away trying to save their lives had \u201csomething shift in them\u201d and they weren’t afraid anymore, and they lived as Jesus lived, and were even willing to die as Jesus died.<\/p>\n
A little shift inside can have HUGE consequences.<\/p>\n
Something shifts in the Magi, maybe at meeting Jesus, maybe in a dream, maybe both, \u201cand they left for their own country by another road.\u201d This suggests that even meeting Jesus as a baby\/toddler was significant enough to help people refuse the power of the Empire \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
They refuse the power of King Herod, and they change their plans and find another way.<\/p>\n
That does sound like an epiphany. Epiphany means a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being OR a moment of sudden revelation or insight.2 This sounds like both. They saw the divine in Jesus, or they experienced the Divine in a dream (or both) AND it was for them a moment of sudden insight leading to a shift within.<\/p>\n
They went to their own country by another road. They went home, but they went home changed.<\/p>\n
One of the fun parts of the Christian tradition is that we assume that the Magi showed up more than a year after Jesus’s birth. That is, this Epiphany celebrates the Magi showing up for last year’s Christmas. (Hmmm, given pandemic time warps, that sounds right, doesn’t it?) Given that, it is always a little bit the Christmas season, because the Magi are always journeying to Jesus \u2013 AND I think always journeying home by another route. The travel, and the change, are constant.<\/p>\n
It could be tempting, right about now, to give up hope. It is 2022, and COVID 19, named for 2019<\/b> is STILL sending shock-waves through our lives, despite vaccines, despite prior infections, despite all we’ve given up for nearly two years. We’re back at trying to protect the capacity to keep schools open and trying to keep hospitals from being overrun (and neither are going terribly well.) In my house this week, we heard about more people testing positive for COVID than any other week of this pandemic.<\/p>\n
It is scary.<\/p>\n
AND we have to make decisions all over again about what is safe and what isn’t and where to spend our risk tolerance and what impact it will have if we get it wrong.<\/p>\n
And it exhausting.<\/p>\n
And people are SICK, some of them really sick, some of them dying.<\/p>\n
And it is horrible.<\/p>\n
And I wonder where God is inviting us to take another road home. I wonder about epiphany, and God showing up and surprising us, and shifting things within us, and making new things possible. Because I believe that God is with us, and God shows us a new way when it seems there is no way, and God is able to bring life even out of death, and God is with those who are alone, and God is ultimately creative.<\/p>\n
There are \u201cother roads home.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nThey’re new to us, we haven’t chosen them before (maybe for good reason), they come without good maps, and there are unknown dangers along the way. That said, the roads we came by are now impassable to us, and the way home is by another way. (Fair warning, home will be changed when we get there too, but you already knew that.)<\/p>\n
May God help us to travel the roads we are now on, no matter how we got here, and may we find enough promise them to make it through another day, and another day, and another day. Amen<\/p>\n
\n1Borg and Crossan \u201cThe First Christmas\u201d, major theme.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n2Apple Dictionary 1\/6\/2022.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"