Isaiah 60.1-6 / Matthew 2.1-12
Lydford, 8 Jan 2012
For ten months in the year 7BC, Jupiter and Saturn travelled very close to each other in the night sky. The giant planet Jupiter, thick with liquid gasses, circled by moons larger than the planet earth, to the ancients represented the highest god and ruler of the universe: to the Greeks that was Zeus; to the Babylonians, Marduk; to the Romans Jupiter. Saturn with its colourful rings was deemed to be the shield of Palestine.
In May, September and December of the following year, 6BC, Jupiter and Saturn met in the constellation Pisces, which was also associated with Syria and Palestine, and was thought to signify momentous events. To those who followed such stars, the meaning of this heavenly conjunction was clear: a divine and cosmic ruler was to appear in Palestine.
To those who shared this star-gazing wisdom, it was clear how they should respond to this revelation: they must set out to find this cosmic ruler, to pay homage, to bring gifts.
All we know for sure about these visitors to the infant Jesus was that they were foreigners who were deemed to be wise.
We don’t know how many there were: tradition says three because they brought three gifts, but you know this doesn’t necessarily add up if, like me, you received multiple presents off the same people this Christmas, like a pair of socks packaged together with a Boots gift token.
Tradition says they were men, but their party could have included women. This week a female friend sent me an email which asked, What would have happened if it had been the three Wise Women instead of three Wise Men ? She said that:
They would have asked directions…
arrived on time …
helped deliver the baby …
cleaned the stable …
brought practical gifts …
and made a casserole
But, joking apart. women have always been the bearers of ancient and practical wisdom, as scripture shows when we look closely. There’s every reason to suggest that some of these magi may have been female….
And we’re in the habit of calling them kings, which they weren’t. There’s a slender chance that they may have been Persian ambassadors, but essentially they were astrologers, soothsayers, divines.
It’s important to challenge the kingship notion because who these visitors were reflects on who we think Jesus was and is. The story of the coming of the magi establishes the credibility of Jesus. The magi offered an endorsement of the baby Jesus, showing that they believed that he was indeed the expected divine and cosmic ruler.
If Jesus’ birth had been accredited by kings, representatives of the military state, his divine rule would seem to be like theirs, a society in which kingship overrules kin-ship and credibility comes through the use of force. Theology embraced the notion of the three kings in later centuries as the church aligned itself with the state, and ceased to be a network of peaceable communities, and started playing power games.
We know how kings behaved around the birth of Jesus because we have the account of King Herod, who, sensing that this child threatened his position, consulted, connived, plotted and executed a brutal act of slaughter to rid himself of this perceived challenge to his throne. Like all such kingly acts right up to today, it didn’t hit the target and didn’t make Herod any more secure than he had been before. And dozens of innocent children died.
But these visitors, the magi, carried a different view of the world. A different sort of wisdom. And surrounded Jesus with it at his birth.
The main reason Matthew involves these strange travellers in the story of Jesus’ birth was because they were foreigners: they came from outside, they followed a strange religion, they probably looked different, dressed differently, thought differently, sang different songs, dreamed different dreams from those whom they visited.
But Matthew included them for our sake. Because we are foreigners, too, included in the new world order which Jesus brought out of Israel when he came. And the sort of wisdom which surrounded Jesus at his birth is part of that new world order. It can be ours, it can enrich us, today.
The wisdom of the magi came two ways:
They found significance in the stars;
They found guidance through their dreams.
There are two kinds of stargazers today: we call them astronomers and astrologers. We think of them perhaps as scientists, on the one hand, and quacks on the other. We make no connection between them. One belongs in the realm of space research and the other in the realm of horoscopes and superstition. We’re not very generous to stargazers today.
But in ancient times stargazing embraced both science and, if you like, superstition, but it would be more appropriate to call it faith. In the time of Jesus and the magi people connected the physical world easily to the unseen world. And they believed deeply in a God who was at the heart of all things, a creator, an originator, one who kept life growing and who, if you praised him, would bless your crops, bring beneficial weather, make you fertile so your family would flourish. This is why Herod took their words seriously, as presidents and prime ministers also take seriously the words of various spiritual advisers today.
And the stars were worth studying for all sorts of related reasons – for their beauty, which strengthened your appreciation of God, for their movements which gave you good insights into the movements of God, and also told you when you ought to plant and when you ought to reap, when you ought to move on and when you ought to sleep. Those who studied them studied life – and knew themselves to have a place in God’s ordered universe. The psalmisty wrote:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. (Psalm 19.1-3)
Such wisdom is hidden today, but not obsolete. And indeed, it is being rediscovered by many people whose unease is growing about the destruction we’re bringing to the planet, and who are looking for gentler ways to live. Those who still appreciate the worth and lasting significance of occasions like Plough Sunday hold this wisdom deeply.
Some years back plans were launched to construct a ‘superquarry’ on Mount Roineabhal on the Hebridean Isle of Harris. It would extract anything up to 20 million tons of stone, fifty times bigger than other large quarries currently in existence. The road-building industry would be well served but the mountain would be virtually destroyed. The hole created but the quarry would be the equivalent of the impact of six Hiroshima bombs.
When it emerged that Britain already had a superquarry, which has never operated much beyond half-capacity, it became clear to the people of Harris that this application was driven not by real need, but by corporate competition, and they opposed it.
The case they made to the Scottish Executive was astonishing because the witnesses argued not just economics and politics, but they used some of the ancient wisdom, the language of the magi, to state their case. People spoke of the specialness of the mountains, not that they are necessarily sacred, but that they are places where life is lived and encountered, where God lives and is present. Places of memory and deep value.
A Presbyterian minister talked about the bible’s injunction to us to guard and protect the ground, and asked the inquiry to reflect on whether the superquarry was to the glory of God.
And Stone Eagle, a North American Indian chief who had fought similar cases in his home country, spoke eloquently of the connections between the Creator and creation, about the land which should be shown reverence because the work of the Creator is sacred.
After a long and protracted inquiry, the Scottish Executive rejected the superquarry proposal in November 2000. The kind of ancient wisdom which affirmed Jesus at his birth had found a valid voice in a secular court of today. [1]
Such wisdom is cultivated by dreams. We remember that the magi found guidance through their dreams, avoiding Herod and returning by a different route.
And elsewhere in the nativity story, dreams featured large: God appeared to Joseph in a dream, telling him not to fear taking Mary as his wife, as the baby she had conceived was from the Holy Spirit. After the magi had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, telling him to take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt, to avoid the slaughter of Herod, and in two later dreams God guided Joseph back home.
I suggest that dreaming is rather close to praying. Indeed, if we take the example of people like Joseph the husband of Mary and Joseph the son of Jacob we see that God speaks most clearly and most often through dreams. Perhaps our anxieties about prayer may be relieved by this: we don’t have to do anything except to have an attitude of openness to God so that we’re ready to hear the divine voice, anytime, even, and perhaps especially, when we’re asleep!
Our dreams deal with our fears – like the magi’s fears of their journey home and Joseph’s fears about the future of Mary’s child. God meets us in them if we’re open to that.
And our dreams are the places where our hopes take shape. We talk about our ambitions and expectations in this way: what are your dreams for the New Year?
The magi help us here, too, because in their ancient but deeply relevant wisdom they held on to their dreams despite the pressure that the king put on them to do things his way.
So may our prayer for 2012 be that we will increasingly learn to see the world the way the magi did, finding God at the heart of that world, and living in that wisdom; finding God at the heart of our dreams, and holding on to them….. A poem by Paul Cookson:
Let no one steal your dreams
Let no one tear apart
The burning of ambition
That fires the drive inside your heart
Let no one steal your dreams
Let no one tell you that you can’t
Let no one hold you back
let no one tell you that you won’t
Set your sights and keep them fixed
Set your sights on high
Let no one steal your dreams
Your only limit is the sky.
Let no one steal your dreams
Follow your heart
Follow your soul
For only when you follow them
Will you feel truly whole
Set your sights and keep them fixed
Set your sights on high
Let no one steal your dreams
Your only limit is the sky [2]
Notes
Sermon originally preached at Holy Trinity, Wavertree, on Epiphany – 6 Jan 2002. Some of the reference sources I’m afraid have been lost and forgotten in the intervening times.
[1] Alastair McIntosh, Soil and Soul, tells the full story
[2] Paul Cookson, Ordinary Words, p.55
The TV programme Big Brother isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. The prospect of watching a house full of strangers thrown together for a few weeks with very little to do except eat, sleep, do their make-up and talk, doesn’t appeal to all. And the characters, chosen for their quirkiness or likelihood to create tabloid headlines, aren’t always the most endearing, more often instead self-promoting, self-serving, not the easiest people to live with in a confined and highly-controlled space, for any length of time.