Tag Archives: Epiphany

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a Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany C
Text: Luke 9:28-36

woods
The Set-Up

There was GOD. And GOD found a man who was special. A man who would make the world new. So GOD invited the man to go on a journey. The man did. This man was named Abram and would be the source a new humanity. Though he didn’t know that yet.

Abram, his wife, Sarai, and his nephew, Lot traveled to Canaan.

Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. (Genesis 12:6-7)

Abram’s response to this moment is natural.

This place is special: GOD is giving it to me.
This moment is special: GOD is speaking to me.
I will mark it and keep it.

He builds a marker. Then he leaves.

In today’s gospel, we have one of the most important moments in Scripture. We call it the Transfiguration. Perhaps most important is that GOD the Father speaks. Not a common occurance in the gospels. And it occurs in the three Synoptic gospels: Mark, Matthew, and Luke. In each, Jesus takes three disciples with him up a mountain, there is a blinding light, they see Moses and Elijah, and Peter, overwhelmed by the moment, wants to build something. He wants to mark this site as holy, that they might stay and worship.

But GOD has other plans.

You want us to listen?

When dealing with the Transfiguration, I am always struck by how Jesus doesn’t want a big response for this big moment. Here they are, having a literal mountain top experience and GOD shuts it down. If this moment isn’t the time to worship, then when is?

One difference between what Abram did and what Peter wants to do is that Abram marked the spot and moved on. Humans are responsible for naming things, after all. But Peter is looking to stay. He wants to stick around on the mountain top. GOD says listen. To do that, Peter has to stop talking.

We don’t have much patience for listening. Not real listening, any way. We want it packaged, easy. Prepared for us, wrapped in wax paper so we can ingest it while we drive through. We like our listening like our fast food.

Mostly it is that we don’t like silence. Silence is uncomfortable. It is inefficient. Our culture pushes and demands multitasking (what an evil word) and timeliness.

To us, listening is so passive. We want to do. We have much to fix. We have to move! we think. But GOD speaks and says “listen to him.”

Taking the time

GOD shows up in the old way—in a cloud. The booming voice, the statement about Jesus reminds us of the Baptism. In that story, the Holy Spirit comes down “in bodily form like a dove.” (Luke 3:22) An experience of the divine so new, so different, it marks the path Jesus will follow. This moment with the divine is markedly different. It is of the past, with figures from the past. And GOD tells the three witnesses that Jesus was chosen; “listen to him.”

In this backward-looking moment, we are moved to listen. Not replicate. Not pause for three seconds and then keep moving. Listen. To hear from the chosen one, the one who was with GOD in the past, present, and future.

It is also not a place in which we stay. Always listening, worshiping, or doing. But it is important to do. To set aside the time.

GOD says to listen. Let’s take time now to listen. All of us. To do that, I’ll need to shut up. Let us be quiet. Let us sit and listen.

GOD is here

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a Sermon for Epiphany 4C
Text: Luke 4:21-30

brick wallThe teacher is kicked out of school

Jesus approaches the front of the synagogue, is given one of the scrolls of Isaiah and Jesus reads out:

“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.”

He hands the scroll back to the attendant and sits down. Then he tells the people that

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

It appears that more is said. Jesus no doubt “opened the Scripture to them”. And their response to this is amazement. Clearly Jesus is charismatic. He is intelligent. He is thoughtful. He connects with them where they are at. They hear in Jesus the very voice of GOD.

What amazes them, however, is not GOD. It is that Jesus is a carpenter’s son. That Jesus used to run around here in diapers. Now look at him! That education really did him well. They tell him so. They tell him how amazing this is!

Jesus responds by telling them how the conversation is going to go: You are going to quote scripture at me that is supposed to make me feel a certain way and then ask me for the same blessings others have received. Well, you know how a prophet isn’t welcome in his hometown? You know how GOD ignored the Hebrews during Elijah’s time and Elisha’s? And the people drive Him out of town and try to kill Him, but Jesus walks away.

Walking out

Jesus walks out on them. He has infuriated them, caused so much rage to well up in them that they are looking to kill him. What makes them mad enough to actually try to kill him?

I have a few ideas. Notice, though, that nothing He says should cause their extreme reaction. Their response isn’t justified. Nor is it exclusive to Jesus’s hometown. I think there are two different reasons: Jesus has too accurately described them—showing how far from GOD they are and by highlighting that GOD will withhold grace from some. Therefore Jesus will withhold from them.

If this story doesn’t hit too close to home with us, then we aren’t actually listening. Jesus tells us that our merciful GOD withholds grace from people. That GOD did it with the Hebrews and Jesus does the same with his childhood neighbors and friends.

No doubt many of us know what it is like to live without feeling the nearness of Christ. Or that we have done something to reject GOD—to send GOD away from us. We have hurt our relationship with GOD and worry that GOD will write us off—that Jesus will just walk away.

For others, the suggestion that GOD doesn’t match the vision they have carried since childhood is cause for outrage, even violence. How dare we make these claims about an unchanging, distant GOD of the 1950s!

Fulfilled in hearing

Jesus says in response to the Scripture he read from Isaiah:

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

He doesn’t say Today this scripture has been fulfilled in my birth or Today this scripture has been fulfilled in my magic powers. He says that it is fulfilled in your hearing.
What is lost in the confusion of this story is that Jesus is present with them. Jesus is there. His proclaiming the Good News “to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” and their presence with Him is the big deal. Their marveling about Jesus’s skill matches with their ignorance to Jesus’s presence. They worry that GOD is far from them or that GOD can ignore them, but GOD is right in front of them!

Jesus tells the parable later in Luke that we often call “The Prodigal Son” (or what I call “The Lost Sons”). In it we have a young man leaving his family behind and then coming back, destitute, to be reunited with his father. This is often told to highlight the great forgiving and merciful nature of GOD. The elder son, however, is just as lost. But he isn’t lost out there somewhere, he is lost right here, at home. He feels abandoned and far from his father; even going so far as to calling their relationship one of slavery. But the father was there the whole time. He was with him, working alongside him. The elder son didn’t understand the relationship. His distance from his father is self-induced.

The problem for these people in the story then, is not that Jesus walks away, it is that they walk out on Him.

The presence of GOD

Headlines were made more than a decade ago when Mother Teresa’s personal journals were published. Millions wanted a glimpse of the innermost thoughts of one so devoted, so publicly faithful, so representative a Christian life and service. The biggest story in them was the revelation that most of Teresa’s adult life was spent without the intimate presence of Christ she had earlier on. She even lamented the feeling of distance she felt from her Lord. And yet, this great epiphany was lost on the multitudes: that her service wasn’t based on constant presence or the reward of divine intimacy in exchange for good behavior, but that GOD was up to something good in her. Her belief in the Triune GOD supported her and drove her, not because of constant affirmation from the divine source, but in the trust that Jesus was right.

The struggle with faith in Jesus is that we have been promised His presence, and yet that promise goes first to the needy. Not when we feel needy or when we want the status quo to be maintained. His presence is most felt when we hear Him from a place of need. A need for repentance, a need to be drawn back to GOD, a need to be moved. To hear the call to transformation, not as an invitation, but salvation, rescue. When what we need is to be saved from our surroundings or from our current lives. To be changed from our earthly selves into people of a different way. Jesus doesn’t come to preserve the status quo, but rescue us from it!

Indeed GOD is here.

 

[see also my video response to the text]

Walking Out (Eating Scripture)

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This week’s Eating Scripture was derailed by my birthday and a funeral. Hopefully your appetite is insatiable! This week, we get the second half of the Jesus preaching in the synagogue story. The first half was all sunshine and butterflies and the second is all violence and horror.There are some incredible pieces to chew on this time. After watching, head over to The Hardest Question because Mike Stavlund nailed it this week.

Eating Scripture is a short video series in which we explore the juicy and the crunchy in this week’s gospel in four minutes or fewer.

Sitting Down (Eating Scripture)

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Throughout Epiphany, we get these tasty hors d’oeuvres of Jesus going about fulfilling His mission. In this week’s reading from Luke, Jesus reads a pointed piece of Scripture, hands it back, and sits down. What do you think this has to do with the Jesus’s mission? A lot.

Eating Scripture is a short video series in which we explore the juicy and the crunchy in this week’s gospel in four minutes or fewer.

Drink Up!

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a Sermon for Epiphany 2C
Text: John 2:1-11

wine

first things first

Jesus has been baptized by John in the Jordan. GOD has spoken. The Spirit has descended like a dove. Last week, we got the kickoff to Jesus’s ministry in the world with a big show. All three parts of the Trinity showing up in a single passage. A moment so important to Christians throughout the early church that it was the first big day celebrated. Jesus is not simply baptized with that little silver shell, sprinkled with droplets of water over His head, but he is submerged in the river and a booming voice announces that in this moment, this person, this man is the beloved they have been waiting for. This is serious, big time theological stuff.

Immediately, Jesus gets moving. He collects some disciples. First Andrew and his brother Peter, James and John, and the rest join Him on the journey. Then he and his Mom and these student followers are invited, of all things, to a wedding.

A wedding seems to be an odd place for Jesus to be, particularly now. He’s full of the Spirit. He’s collected his people. It’s time to get moving! It’s time to get out there and do! It’s time to transform the world! And yet here he is, the adult son, sitting with his Mom at a wedding reception.

It is an odd inauguration, isn’t it? The end of the story even names the significance of the moment as Jesus’s first miracle. Not feeding 5,000 hungry people, but turning water into wine so that drunk people can keep drinking!

Hello, Party People!

It’s probably safe to say that we’ve all been to a wedding before. And we know what is expected at them. It begins with an invitation and it is expected that we reply, letting the couple know whether or not we will be attending so that they can count heads. As guests, we expect a lot: directions, a good show in the liturgy, a reminder in a sermon about the true meaning of love, a reception and free food, some music, and perhaps dancing and alcohol. In some situations, plenty of alcohol. But not always. I was once in a wedding party in which the groom and the groomsmen were all under 21 and the bride and her attendants were all over 21. Only half the wedding party was served the champagne!

As participants in a wedding, we have a lot of expectations on how we are going to be treated: the invitations, the food, the opportunity to share a personal moment with the couple. Part of what the couple is obsessed with going into the big day is managing Aunt Ethel’s expectations. It is kind of weird if you think about it. What is even more weird, however, is that this story isn’t about Jesus and His Mom at a wedding, but Jesus, Mary, and the disciples. Did Jesus write the family back and ask “I know the invite said +1, but can I add a 2 on the end? Make that a+12?” Can you imagine bringing your whole crew to this shindig? I don’t know. Seems presumptuous.

I used to assume that they ran out of wine in the story because the host was cheap; that he didn’t order enough for the gathering. That the point was that Jesus saves his butt. But now I’m thinking it is the other reason: that the party was just getting started.

about the Big Reveal

Let’s go back to that great exchange between Jesus and his Mother. So much of what is really being communicated is happening below the surface.

Mary: “They have no wine.”
Jesus (irritated): “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

Mary doesn’t say to Jesus, Hey, do something! Or Get off your butt and help them out. She simply observes that they are out of drink. It is Jesus who seems to think that He is supposed to do something about it.

It is also interesting because “the hour” is often a reference to Jesus’s death and resurrection, that it isn’t His time to die. But perhaps it is better to say it is not His time to be revealed. It is not His moment to be seen by everyone. That’s future Jesus.

And yet, what happens?

Mary does seem to know what Jesus is capable of. She tells the servants “Do whatever he tells you.” Despite Jesus’s grumblings, she knows He’ll fix things. Then when the steward is served the new wine, it says that he didn’t know where it came from “(though the servants who had drawn the water knew)”. As is the case throughout all the gospels, Jesus is revealed to some, but not all. The big reveal hasn’t happened yet.

attending the party, or working it?

What’s telling for us is who does get to see this are the servants. We normally read this as Jesus supporting the good Jewish tradition of hospitality and not wanting the host to look the fool. But I am moved by the fact that the text points out that the servants get to see what is really going on. Perhaps the disciples are, too. Since someone has to record the event, right? Those attending this big party don’t see who Jesus really is. Just the servants. Just those not enjoying themselves. Those not invited to the party, but those making the party happen.

Therefore, Jesus’s first miracle, His first bit of ministry in the world after gathering his student followers: the disciples: is witnessed by the servants; the underclass. Jesus makes Himself known first to His immediate followers and now to the people that are the working poor.

For us, then, this first moment of ministry is a conflicting vision. In this story, Jesus isn’t ready to reveal Himself to the upper and middle classes. He is focused on the poor and under-served. And yet this expression of generosity, to transform water into wine—and not just any wine, but the really good stuff—comes to us as something of an invitation. An invitation to drink, to gather, to dance, and to revel in the beauty that comes in gathering around two people, called by GOD to become one flesh. To celebrate and be intoxicated by the joyous cup of community. For it will be soon; all too soon; that we will be called to do something more. Something that requires that joy be there already. When Jesus is revealed to all. And our mission is made clear. We’ll need that joy. That celebratory spirit.

So for those with eyes to see: watch. And for the rest, drink up.

Who He Will Be

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a Sermon for Epiphany

Text: Matthew 2:1-12

Mixed Origins

Today we celebrate The Epiphany: a church holiday with two origin stories. A day that we know is important, but have trouble with understanding why. A day that pales in comparison to Christmas, and yet the church has historically understood as greater. In the Epiphany, we have a holiday that is confused, but may serve as a blank slate. A day to celebrate GOD in inspiring ways.

One of the first feast days, the Epiphany began in the East to mark the Baptism of Jesus. Adopted more than a century later in the West, the subject was changed from baptism to the Wise Men, giving the day a far different character.

In the East, the focus was placed on Jesus and His ministry, while in the West, that focus was obscured with other characters: the Wise Man, the Holy Parents, the Star, even GOD’s providence are placed in front of Jesus and His mission.

And yet, historically, the emphasis has been about Jesus: that this feast day is supposed to be about Jesus’s reach beyond Jerusalem and the Hebrew people. That Jesus was born to save everybody.

The Wise Men show up to my office

The Wise Men show up to my office

We don’t treat it that way. We treat it as the capstone of the Christmas story. Even those of us that are liturgical snobs about it are aiding in that interpretation. Don’t let the Wise Men near the manger scene before the 6th! We shout. Keep them isolated! They haven’t arrived yet! And now that they have arrived, perhaps taking the long journey from the back of the nave to the front, we can breathe a sigh of relief. Ah! It is finished! And shortly we will pack the whole set up and put it away and we can move on, because the story is over.

Mixing Up the Story

This is a testament to the power of the story. The story of a baby born in the manger because there was no room in the inn. The mild mother, the stoic father, the animals, the shepherds, the angels. The Christmas story as we receive it every year is one of the most evocative stories in the canon, as we feel it every year. We even feel our hairs bristle when Linus reads it at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas. And because it is so powerful, when the Wise Men finally arrive, bringing those strangely adult gifts to such a little baby, we understandably close the book. We feel as if this is a natural ending. It is, aside from that strange story in Luke of a 12 year-old Jesus visiting the Temple, the last word on Jesus before He begins His ministry.

But seeing The Epiphany as the end of a different story obscures that very understanding the church has maintained about the day from the beginning: that the day has less to do with who Jesus is and more to do with what Jesus has come to do. And I think we do that on purpose. Not truly intentionally. We just get caught up in Christmas and so we sing “We three kings from orient are” alongside “Joy to the World”. We also take that visit from the Wise Men out of its scriptural context. We pay attention to the visit, rather than the drama that surrounds it.

How They See Jesus

The evangelist we call Matthew has given us a great way to see this afresh. The Holy Family has returned home and time has passed since the dramatic birth. Some fortune tellers arrive in Jerusalem, looking for the subject of the signs revealed to them. Herod is frightened and tries to get more information about this baby. He sends the fortune tellers out and secretly plots to have killed all the boys born during a certain window of time. This, of course, is a not-so-subtle reference back to the time in which Moses was born, casting Herod as the villain, Pharoah.

This story is really nothing like the Christmas story. It involves an unlikely triad of foreigners coming to pay homage to a future king and a terrible earthly king, who gained power over the Jewish people by force and is directly aligned with Rome. It has a star that is able to move in the sky and stop through only the metaphysical power of GOD.

Even these crazy gifts: not a rattle, blanket, or package of Huggies, but money, incense, and perfume: are fit not for a baby, but for a king. When these foreigners arrive at the humble home of this messed up family, they don’t walk in to a tear-jerking soundtrack, with a Hollywood starlit holding an adorable infant; this isn’t a scene from a movie that warms our hearts in that way. They come in and they behold the future king. They bow down and give Him kingly gifts. And then they sneak away, trying to avoid the treachery of King Herod.

How We See Jesus

We know the word, epiphany in a different context. We know it as a word for revelation. “I just had an epiphany!” is a way of saying truth has been revealed to me. That understanding should color the way we are to see this day. After all, this is not Three Wise Men Day, but The Epiphany, The revelation. The day in which we commemorate who Jesus is revealed to be. The day we celebrate, not a cute, little baby, born in difficult circumstances, but the One who will transform the world. The One who has come to free us from bondage. The One who walks a different path—and calls us to follow.

On this day, the scope of GOD’s work in the world through Jesus is made plain. We can see that anything short of being different from the empire that controls us and walking a path that rejects that domination and violence is not discipleship. Jesus, the anti-king is revealed as liberator and savior. The powerful fear Him and take drastic action to prevent his ascension to power. It is a shocking and challenging vision that calls attention to not who Jesus is, but who Jesus will be; not who is emotionally affected by a little baby, but transformed by the Incarnate Word.

May we carry with us this vision of Jesus revealed by three unlikely foreigners: a vision that challenges us to see past our own comfort and to instead see who we are to be. And may we constantly seek what it means to follow the path Jesus continues to set for us.

The Three Wise Guys (Eating Scripture)

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Eating Scripture took a holiday to fast for a few weeks, but returns today with a serious hunger, eager to devour Epiphany!

In Epiphany, we are challenged by the fact that what the holiday is intending to deal with is nothing like what people feel on that day. It began as a celebration of Jesus’s ministry, was changed to be about the scope of that ministry and now exists as a bookend to Christmas: a completion of the nativity scene.

Perhaps a bigger question is raised by Epiphany than the gifts and the dudes with the crowns. Who are we in relation to Jesus?

Eating Scripture is a short video series in which we explore the juicy and the crunchy in this week’s gospel in four minutes or fewer.

Inside the Cacophony

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a Homily for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, B

Text:Mark 9:2-9

I walked into my poetry class completely unprepared for what was about to happen. This was years ago, back when I dreamed of becoming a writer, a playwright or poet, actually. Or at the very least the teacher of writers. It was our second class and we were to bring in a new poem we had written in the last two days, already heavily edited and prepared for harsh criticism. Apparently, I was ready for neither. The poem I brought was a bit cliché and trite, but worse, I had violated the first rule of creative writing and was called on it.

What I did was this: I used music language to describe a scene rather than write the scene musical. In other words, I told, rather than showed. And no, I will not show it to you.

As a creative writer, the evangelist we know as Mark is terrible. He violates that first rule repeatedly. And he does so this morning. He doesn’t record Jesus’s words, he simply reports that:

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen

Of course, this would seem like no big deal if it were any other gospel passage. But he did it in this one: The Transfiguration. A passage so visual, so full of engagement, the screen adaptation would need a $200 million budget and Michael Bay directing it. Huge. Explosions. Incredible visual effects. This is as big a “show” passage as it gets and Mark turns it into a “tell”. Even his big miracles with a cast of thousands are intimate, one-cut scenes compared to this one. And notice that we don’t get any Jesus dialogue at all.

The irony, of course, is that this is one of the most important passages in the Greek Scriptures. We get two times in which GOD tells the people who Jesus is: at the baptism and here. GOD speaks from a cloud.

Such an important passage would certainly deserve pages and pages of script, with lots of effects and weighty dialogue. We get 8 verses with two lines of dialogue: Peter’s ridiculous assertion and, you know, GOD, who says listen to this guy.

Wait a second, did you notice that? What did GOD say?

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

Listen! GOD shows then tells. I’m starting to think there’s something intentional in Mark’s writing.

He has this big visual gospel, with blinding light, the presence of two dead men that somehow Peter is able to identify on sight (I’m not sure how since there are no pictures and they preceded him by, like, 1,000 years), and a talking cloud that has descended upon them. And GOD says “listen.” He’s conjured up these big visuals, like the Spirit descending like a dove at Jesus’s baptism, but his message isn’t “watch,” but “listen.”

It is no mistake that this gospel is so visual and then speaks of listening and Jesus orders his people to tell no one. GOD needs us to hear in the midst of other stimulation! But I think it also has to do with something else.

This passage occurs right after the primary pivot point in Mark’s gospel. All the way up through the first half of chapter 8, Jesus is leading his disciples all over the place, then he turns his face to Jerusalem. We get this important passage in two parts in the lectionary and they must be taken together. He begins by asking the disciples who the people say he is: John the Baptizer, Elijah, one of the prophets. Then he asks, “but who do you say that I am?” and Peter jumps up “The Messiah!” Which, of course, is right. But that excitement is short-lived because Jesus proceeds to tell his disciples all about the trip to Jerusalem, with his coming execution! Peter jumps up again “We won’t let it happen!” to which Jesus rebukes him with the famous line: “Get behind me, Satan!” Today’s passage occurs six days after this. This is what they’ve just covered. Jesus has turned all of his attention toward the cross and told his people this and they have refused to hear him. Then he takes a few of them up a mountain and GOD tells the three to listen to Jesus.

The disciples, of course, can’t. They hear parts, but they can’t get it all. They reject this important message because they don’t like the process. They liked the process when they thought Jesus was a conquering hero that would overthrow Rome with his sword, not the weak teacher executed for sedition. Even we have trouble addressing this message of Jesus’s transfiguring the world with love and mercy. We, so often, are those disciples, rejecting Jesus’s very words.

And yet, let’s take a minute to recognize that Jesus took these dimwits up a mountain to see and hear something. The message they heard was more important than any other:

“listen to him!”

This week, the season after Epiphany comes to a close. Tuesday night is the last hurrah. Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. The paczkis are in the stores. The following morning ushers in the next season. A season of penitence and introspection. But it is something else. It is a season of listening. Of quiet, or more precisely, of quieting the noise around us so that we can listen. Because it requires silence to hear that still, small voice, whose calls to us come most often in whispers and quiet moments. Moments that remind us of the mission.

As we live it up for a few more days before Wednesday, when we pack the Alleluiah’s away for a few weeks, let us get ready to quiet our lives just a little so that we might do the very thing GOD has asked of us: to listen.

Only then will we be forced to deal with an even more difficult question: what if we hear something?

Celebrating Fools

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Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, ...

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Epiphany.  It is one of those church holidays that has morphed over time to become what is known in some parts as “Three Kings Day”.  Originally something else, it is now the day we honor the “Wise Men” or “Three Kings”.  Unfortunately, we celebrate without the hint of irony that comes with getting the entire story backward.

The Birth Story

The place of the three wise guys is folded into the Christmas story in virtually every telling. In fact, the announcement of pregnancy, the travel to Bethlehem, the birth, and the arrival of three dudes with presents is all wrapped into a single story.  That story is then treated as simultaneously innocuous (as in “look at the cute little baby!”) and the only means for eternal salvation (as in Jesus’s time on earth is entirely irrelevant, as His death is all that matters).  The very real and grittiness is scrubbed out of this season to allow us to feel glossy and happy.

Epiphany is not about the birth.  In fact, it’s origins had nothing to do with the wise guys, but with the baptism of Jesus.  That’s right: we skipped from birth to Jesus getting dunked in just 12 days!  Now, we save that until we’re in the season of Epiphany.  The day itself has become about the Magi.

The Magi

Everyone who studies the Bible gets a very rude awakening when dealing with this story.  We are used to these religious images of kings, with crowns, expensive clothes, and riding camels, showing up at the stable (?) with these presents on the night Jesus was born.  The text reads nothing like that.  Neither does it infer anything like that.  What it says is quite the opposite.

These guys that show up are not kings or “wise” men, but astrologers.  Yes, those astrologers [and this is my kind]. Not philosophers, but people seen by and large as quacks and frauds.  These are the “wise men” sent to find Jesus.

Which begs the question of why we tell this story so wrong.  It has to be more than scrubbing away the grime and grit.  This is calling these people the very wrong thing.  Sort of.

The truth is that these astrologers truly are wise.  Wise to GOD, rather than to the world.  The world wouldn’t call them wise.  The world think they’re fools.  And, let’s be clear, the world includes the Jewish leadership.

Jester

Image by lokidude99 via Flickr

Think of Shakespeare’s plays and how the fool, the jester, and even the crazy, are the ones gifted with true vision.  Everyone else is corrupted and blind (sometimes literally), but the fools are given the gift of seeing things for how they truly are.

These fools are the people in the story that get it, and reject the majority and the authority.  They bring gifts, rather than weapons (to kill the baby boy).  The fools are the ones who are truly wise.

My trouble with our telling of the story is that this is so essential to their character.  It isn’t that even kings bow to Jesus (perhaps one reason we think of the fools as kings), but that the earthly kings were blinded from seeing Jesus; that fools and outcasts have real vision.

When we, instead, shortcut to call the fools wise, we skip the most essential step: the part in which we see what true wisdom involves.  It allows the earthly powerful to maintain their power and the earthly wise to be seen as wise, when this incredible moment reveals that to be totally false.

Today we celebrate fools.  For it is in fools that GOD entrusts the real Kingdom.

On the 12th Day of Christmas

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I love vigilantly keeping the Christmas decorations up through Christmas.  Take a look at what we did for the kids at my tumblr page.  My wife did the fireplace and I did the logs and fire.  We also had a great time counting down the days!

Tonight the Wise Guys show up.  What do you think they will bring?