Sermon "Light of the World...or Only One
Corner?"
Rev. Dr. Steven A. Peay
Sunday, January 3, 1999
Light of the World. . . .Or Only One Corner?
"Arise, shine; for you light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you."
I have fond memories of a snowy cold day in Pennsylvania. I was in seminary and was not able to head home for the Christmas holidays. Right after Christmas a group of us went on retreat up to a large farmstead on the Chestnut Ridge of the Alleghenies owned by the community. It was a place during my years there I spent much time and I loved that old stone house, with a spring in the basement, and the little church just next door.
One day several of us went for a walk in the middle of the afternoon. We got into a discussion and, before we knew it, it was getting dark and snow was falling. We started the long walk back to the 'ridge house,' talking about how much we missed being with our families, how lonely it seemed to be doing what we were doing. Crunching through the woods, we were struck by the beauty of the dark, silent forest and the brilliant early evening sky. The stars were, as the carol goes, "brightly shining."After what seemed a long time, we saw the warm glow of lights penetrating the deepening darkness. The lights of the house reached out and invited us to the warmth, the comfort, the presence of friends that it offered.
To this day, I am deeply affected by the sight of light shining through windows. It speaks to me of all that is good, and safe, and helpful in human life together. Oddly enough, I wonder if maybe those three wanderers "from the East" might have felt the same way as they followed the star to Bethlehem? What a difference, though; I found a house full of rowdy theological students on a holiday. They found the Christ child. I think, however, that all of us experienced the Light of the World who doesn't just shine in one corner only, but wherever the darkness needs to be brightened.
The Epiphany -- God's self manifestation -- like Christmas is an event which is both time-bound and timeless. What Matthew is trying to tell us today is not a newspaper account of the story, but is a very carefully edited and constructed exercise in theology. Matthew wants to set off bells and whistles in the minds of his listeners. He wants the person hearing the story to understand that God's salvation is marked, for both Jew and Gentile, "this is for you."
I don't think Matthew's thought on the Magi was what has happened in our experience. For most of us, the Magi are the three cute little kids in the Christmas pageant dressed in drapery or upholstery remnants, sporting cockeyed crowns. Or, they're the stately figurines with their glittering presents, and don't forget the camel, in the Nativity set. We sing of "three kings of orient," but it's very likely that the notion has derived from Matthew's veiled reference to Psalm 72 ("all kings shall pay him homage"), Isaiah's prophecy, and a great deal of pious Christian tradition. So who were these Magi, what do they represent for the Gospel writer, and what do they have to do with the Light shining into our corner of the world?
The late Raymond Brown, one of the country's foremost Biblical scholars, did a masterful book, The Birth of the Messiah. Brown's work is an exhaustive study of the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke -- those narratives brought together and romanticized a bit became the "Christmas story." His commentary on this section of Matthew's Gospel notes that 'magi' is a term applied by the Roman historian Herodotus to Zoroastrian priests from Persia. It could also be used for those involved both in astronomy/astrology and any secret knowledge or interpretation of dreams. Thus Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, knew of both scientific magi and those who were charlatans and magicians.
Brown notes that the Magi figure prominently in early Christian piety and tradition. They show up in one of the apocryphal accounts of the infancy narratives called The Protoevangelium of James. They show up on the walls of the catacombs in Rome and of the church in Ravenna. Their supposed relics have traveled more widely than they probably did, finding their way to Milan and then ending up in a magnificently enameled shrine in the cathedral at Cologne.
The number of Magi and their names are nowhere listed in Matthew. It's assumed there were three because there are three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. The earliest attempt in the East to name them identified them as: Hormizdah, king of Persia, Yazdegerd, king of Saba; and Perozadh, king of Sheba. The names we have come to know in the West come down to us through a sixth century translation of a Greek document and those names are over their mosaics in the church of Saint Apollinaris at Ravenna. Here's a classical description of them which has been attributed to the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede the Venerable:
The magi were the ones who gave gifts to the Lord. The first is said to have been Melchior, an old man with white hair and a long beard. . . who offered gold to the Lord as to a king. The second, Gaspar by name, young and beardless and ruddy complexioned. . . honored him by his gift of incense, an oblation worthy of divinity. The third, black-skinned and heavily bearded named Balthasar. . . by his gift of myrrh testified to the Son of Man who was to die. (Excepta et Collectanea [PL 94:541CD] quoted in Brown, p. 109.)
While Matthew tells us nothing of what happened to them "after they returned home by a different route," the calendar of saints at Cologne says that they all got together to celebrate Christmas in 54 AD and each died on a succeeding day. All of them past the age of one hundred!
The charming stuff of legend just tells us how important these figures are.
So, these wise men of the East observed "his star." The appearance of a star -- very likely astronomers tell us a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn -- was the sign of an important, a royal birth. Just as a comet portended an important death ( the story is told of Nero's observing a comet and then having several notables of his empire put to death as a prudential precaution!). The Magi come to "pay homage" -- not just a romantic notion, but an historical fact in both Palestine and Rome. So you can imagine Herod, whose claim to the throne was loose, was more than a bit disturbed by their arrival and the confirmation of the prophecy. Interestingly, however, even though Bethlehem is only five miles from Jerusalem, Herod doesn't go himself nor does he send along any of the Sanhedrin, but asks the Magi to come back. Ah, it starts to come together.
The Magi from the East represent the Gentiles. The Jews have received the revelation of God's love through Moses, the Law, and the prophets. The Magi receive the revelation through nature -- the star -- and come to confirm it. Those who have the revelation don't bother in following through on it. It's the outsiders, the Gentiles, the Pagans who are drawn to go and discover, as Paul tells the Effusions, "the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things." What the Magi discover by the light of the Star is the One who is the Light of the World. Here in a manger, like Moses in the bulrushes, is a new Moses who, ironically enough will escape a king who wants to kill him (again like Moses) but by going to Egypt. And this new Moses will then lead ALL of God's people from the bondage of selfishness and self-centeredness and death to the freedom of selflessness and new, resurrected life.
As I said earlier, this is more than the mere recitation of facts. Matthew's story is full of holes, but it has to be looked at in a deeper way than some piece of fiction or a news article. As the French Biblical scholar J. Dupont writes:
The way Matthew presents these events "is colored by the faith which enlightened the evangelist when he wrote his work; it expresses and clarifies the faith of the Church at the time; he intended it to be an aid to the faith of those Christians for whom he wrote. But faith is not simply a matter of acknowledging that Jesus is the Messiah, Lord and Son of God. It involves obedience to him, now. The Gospel is not only 'kerygma,' that is to say, proclamation of faith; it is also 'catechesis,' instruction on how to unify one's faith and life. This part of the message is especially stressed in Matthew.
It becomes clear that "this part of the message" in Matthew comes out at the end of the story of the Epiphany. The Magi are ordered by God, in a dream, to return to their country "by another road" which actually suggests that there must be a change in our ways after we encounter the Lord in faith, after the Light of the World has shone in our corner. To really get hold of this message we have to move beyond all of the charming stories and legends and get to the heart of what's being presented. The Magi, as I pointed out, are gone as mysteriously as they came. What they tell us is that every encounter with the Lord, to whom we give homage, to whom we offer presents -- in the sense of what we do in worship, prayer, and trying to live as Christian people -- involves taking "another road" back to our own "country," back to our daily occupations. When we come to encounter God in Christ through worship, or in any other way, we have to leave different from the way we came.
The light of the world doesn't just shine on the nativity set at Christmas, but every day. We Christians, too, must be careful not to limit how God chooses to draw people to Himself (always remember Pastor Robinson's words, "The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from His holy Word."). Nor can we grow complacent thinking that we have the truth all locked up for ourselves.
As never before we have to offer the Light to those who are seeking and following various lights. We live in a country where we are as likely to encounter Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, or practitioners of Wicca (witchcraft -- now approved as a proper worship form by the Unitarian Universalist Association) or even Druidism. Paul's task is ours "to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ."
Long ago Peter Chrysologus -- the name means 'golden words' -- preached:
In choosing to be born for us, God chose to be known by us. He therefore reveals himself in this way, in order that this great sacrament of his love may not be an occasion for us of great misunderstanding. Today the magi find, crying in a manger, the one they have followed as he shone in the sky. Today the magi see clearly, in swaddling clothes, the one they have long awaited as he lay hidden among the stars. Today the magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, humanity in God, God in humanity, one whom the whole universe cannot contain is now enclosed in a tiny body. As they look, they believe and do not question, as their symbolic gifts bear witness: incense for God; gold for a king, myrrh for one who is to die. . .
The light of Christ, let there be no misunderstanding, the message of "humanity in God and God in humanity," our being partakers of divine nature, is not just for our little corner of the world. Nor is it just the task of ministers and missionaries to bring the Light. No, that task belongs to all of us who are "in the light as he is in the light."
The light should spill out of each one of us, just as it flows through a window on a dark night. Our lives, God's love in us, should be every bit as inviting, welcoming, embracing, warming, as that which makes a dark night bright and a lonely wanderer welcome. And while we must always be looking to see if we're on "the different road" growing and becoming more like Christ, I think if we look closely we can see that the light is already shining.
Arise . . . shine . . . for your light has come!
