1-5-20 Readings & Sermon

A reading from Isaiah.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples.

But the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.

Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Lift up your eyes and look around.

They all gather together, they come to you.

Your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses' arms.

Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.

A multitude of camels shall cover you.

The young camels of Midian and Ethere, all those from Sheba shall come.

They shall bring gold and frankincense and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord, the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

This is the reason that I, Paul, am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles.

For surely you have already heard of the commission of God's grace that was given me for you, and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ.

In former generations, this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

That is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Of this gospel, I have become a servant according to the gift of God's grace that was given me by the working of his power.

Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

So that through the Church, the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that He has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.

The word of the Lord.

They told him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet, and you, Bethlehem, and the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah.

For from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.

And then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared.

Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, Go and search diligently for the child, and when you found him, bring me word, so that I may also go and pay him homage.

When they'd heard the king, they set out, and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.

And when they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.

On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage.

Then opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Today we're celebrating something that maybe you've already done a long time at time.

If you put out your crash and activity set, we're celebrating the arrival of the magi.

Now you heard the scripture this morning, it says wise men, but it's really important to hear that the Greek word is magi.

That's a plural form, and it's not gender determinant.

Now, since the story was written, we've got lots of neat factoids and legends, if you didn't mind me saying, that uh do not appear in our Bible that tell us more about these people.

So you can read that their names are Kaspar and Meltjar and Balthazar.

You can see their tombs in the Kulner Dome in Cologne, Germany.

Those are the bodies of the three kings.

And of course, most of us have, if you've been to church before, you kind of know that there's this symbolic thing that they do.

There's gold for Jesus being the king, and there's frankincense for him being a priest, and there's myrrh to preserve him after he dies, so that the magi are really sort of, well, an allegory for the life that he's going to live.

That's neat.

But remember that the day and the feast and the season are called Epiphany.

An epiphany is not about neat things.

An epiphany is a moment of change.

It's not sort of like you learn something new that's great.

An epiphany is an irreversible change in your whole mindset.

So if I can offer you two examples of this, one is when you learn to read.

When you learn to read, it's really hard to walk by letters and not pay attention to them.

Before reading, it doesn't matter, it's all squiggles.

But once you can read, there's interest in what's on there.

The other, and this is maybe a little more innocent, but I actually hope it gets to where we're going.

My daughter, until she was about four or five, and I wish I could tell you why it changed, when she saw people, she would categorize them by color according to the clothing that they wore.

So we would walk by Joy O'Neill, and she would say, Look at that black lady.

And we would walk by, I don't know, any member of the choir, and she'd say, Look at the red man.

Look at the red woman.

It was so beautiful, you know.

I mean, really, it was a really helpful way to go.

And then she had an epiphany, and I don't know the source of it.

If you've been around children, you know this.

She started categorizing people according to their skin color.

And so now all of you are white.

We learn something and it changes our whole categories, categorization shift.

So, to tell you a little bit about Magi.

Originally, it seems like there were lots of them.

In fact, you can read the gift of the Magi, which is an early Christian source, and there's 12 of them, one for each tribe of Israel, and they're mixed gender.

Like there's women along the way.

Why did we get three?

It seems like because they were three gifts, we picked three, and we picked kings to show what they're doing is important.

Um, but the word magi is at the root of our word magic or magician.

So please hear a bunch of magicians show up.

Now, maybe they're going to do parlor tricks, but in your mind, most scholars would tell you these people came from at least Iran, if not further east.

So you should imagine people with gold curly-toed shoes and tassels and turbans.

That would be helpful.

You should imagine strange-looking folks.

Now, you've probably heard me say this before if you've been hearing me past, but it's worth just a second about the gifts they bring.

For the longest time, again, the way I grew up is gold is given as a king, and frankincense is incense to show he's this offering to God and myrrh is to preserve his body.

That could be true, but I want you to consider if they brought Jesus gold, they didn't bring him a lot.

Because he grew up a day laborer.

So please do not think that they brought Fort Knox with them and they had a cart of oxen pulling a bunch of gold.

Gold can mean a lot of things.

I mean, the currency was made out of real silver and gold.

So it's very possible that in addition to this having some allegorical meaning, it could be one of the wise people reached into their pocket and pulled down a hundred dollar bill.

Frankincense is something you use in temples, you swing it.

It's actually a resin, it's sort of like amber.

If you want to know whether it's real or not, you can chew it.

If it's hard, like if it's like rock candy, it's not frankincense.

Real frankincense will always give if you bite it.

And you can eat it.

Turns out, even today, people chew it like gum.

It's very aromatic.

It is nothing like winter fresh.

Um in flavor or in texture, but it'll give.

What else do you do with frankincense?

You can see it today if you go to Oman or Dubai or Qatar.

Um, and you've got to think back then, people stunk.

They did not have cologne, they did not have deodorant, and you'll see this in the marketplace today.

Little tiny altars with frankincense or with a hot coal, and they'll put that resin on there, and of course, it smokes.

And you'll see people take there.

Men and women both wear these kinds of dresses I'm wearing, and they'll waft that smoke up in there, and then they don't stink so much.

Frankincense might just be deodorant.

I gotta tell you, it's a practical gift to give a baby, or to give a house that's gonna have a baby, just to waft that through.

It's Febreze.

These people reach into their pocket or their carry-on luggage and they pull out something they've got that's useful.

Myrrr is also sap from a rather prickly thorny vine.

You do embalm people with it, but then as now, people use myrrh for a couple other reasons.

It turns out it's actually very antimicrobial, antibacterial.

So you can use it as a mouthwash, you can use it to clean a wound, and now is then people, particularly in Oman and Dubai and Iran, will pulverize it and drink it because it's supposed to increase your digestion.

It's supposed to strengthen your immune system.

Now, listen, do not try this at home with myrrh oil.

Do not drink that.

You will vomit.

But if you have real myrrh, you can in fact pound it up.

So it's like zip fizz.

It's something that you take when you're going to be exposed to vectors, little children, and uh it strengthens your immune system, reaches into his carry-on luggage, her purse, and pulls out a gift.

Now, gift giving is different in the East.

Now is then.

In fact, I was recently in Croatia, and most Croatian people have a closet full of gifts.

Many of them are secondhand.

They may never keep or use a gift you give, but it's important you always bring one.

It goes in the closet and it may come out when they visit somebody else.

Gift giving is a critical thing in social customs.

So it could be that these people give extravagant gifts that you can never afford to give yourself.

But it could be that these people give what is ordinary to them.

They give what's in their pockets.

They give money, which is in their pocket, they give deodorant from their travel bag, they give zip fizz.

I want to suggest to you, no matter how you read it, whether it's high holy gifts or regular ones, boy, there's something to be said for giving God what you have instead of what you don't have.

What do you have?

Well, you may have a hundred dollar bill, but you may also have the ability that all churches need to say no to somebody.

That is a rare gift, but churches need it.

You may have fancy spices, you may also have volunteer hours.

You may have academic biblical knowledge.

You may also have hospitality.

Instead of wishing we had gifts we don't have, I am positive it is true to say God asks us to give what's in our pockets.

Another interesting opportunity here as we think about Epiphany, because Matthew's gospel, in the positive, is written to primarily Jewish folks.

But please notice that King Herod, who's Jewish, is looking for Jesus so that he can kill him.

The people who are looking for Jesus in order to pay him homage are Zoroastrians, Hindus, not Jewish people, foreigners.

Please notice, they don't go home and build churches and become Christian either.

There's no reason to think they go back any different from where they came.

What they do, that I sure think the world could use a whole lot more of, is they come and appreciate Jesus for who he is.

Now that's an epiphany I want to tell you, especially given this week, that we might need to grow into a little bit more, particularly because most scholars think these people came from Iraq.

Most scholars think these people are Zoroastrian priests.

How can we appreciate the Christ child?

Particularly because, as wise as these people are, they went to the wrong place.

Do you notice that?

They didn't go to Bethlehem.

They went to Jerusalem.

Why would they do that?

Jerusalem had the eighth wonder of the ancient world that had the temple that Herod built.

Herod took a temple that was the size of two basketball courts and turned it into three football fields.

He did it by extending a platform over a valley.

He made an arch.

The temple sits on an arch he built.

It's not solid.

Herod built a bridge over a valley so he could have a building on top of the bridge.

Eighth wonder of the ancient world.

Bethlehem was a village of about 150 people.

Why would anything special happen there?

And of course, don't you see, our invitation is that we often miss Jesus because we're either looking for him to do something he's not interested in doing, we're looking to use him for our own purposes, or we're looking in the wrong places.

Listen, Jesus is super easy to see in beautiful stained glass windows.

Our challenge is to see him and the guy underneath the bridge with the cardboard sign.

In the little lowly places, and the magi invite us to look for him.

There.

Now, just because we don't have this in our church, I think it's really important.

If you've ever seen this, this is called the Chai Rho.

Legend says this is what the star looks like that they followed.

The X is the Greek letter chi, and the P is the Greek letter ρho, and it's the beginning of the word Christ.

Legend says what that's what they do.

It's interesting how these stories take on a life in some ways greater than what we get out of the Bible.

Isn't that great?

I mean that affirmatively.

They can take on something greater.

And I think that's gonna be our invitation this whole season is listen, we've got the facts.

If you've been to church a couple of years, most of you know all of these stories.

The question is, how can they take on something greater in our lives?

And I want to put to you, one of the ways they take on something greater is by being really plain.

I mean really extraordinary.

Paul's letter today says the mystery of the gospel is that God includes the Gentiles, the Zoroastrians, the Magi.

In some ways that's unbelievable, but listen, we live in Houston, which is the most cosmopolitan city in the United States.

It's ordinary to go to the grocery store and see people wearing hijabs and burkas.

That's not strange.

It happens at my local HEB.

It's ordinary to see applications in multiple languages.

God's extraordinary gift is that ordinary cosmopolitan world is just fine with God.

And that Jesus is laying in mangers, not only in churches, but in synagogues and temples.

And even, this may be hard to hear, but even in mosques.

And if we can't see him, then maybe we need to pray that God will open our eyes.

Like the eyes of the Magi.

Now, that may all be too controversial.

So let me say what I think is maybe hopefully a little easier to hear.

We just had New Year's, and I know the church New Year was in December, and many of us make resolutions.

Some of us say that's silly, I'll live my best life now.

Whatever you do, it's fine.

But I was recently exposed to the movie Aladdin because my daughter watched it seven times in a row.

And there's this great scene in Aladdin, you know, he gets three wishes, and he says to the genie, like, geez, I want them to be good.

What would you wish for?

And the genie says, Nobody's ever asked me that, but I would ask for my freedom.

And I realized, and I've known this in my head a long time, but you know, I don't want to be too sappy, but my New Year's resolution is to try to take this a little more seriously.

If I only had one wish in my life, if I had one thing I could have, I'm pretty sure if I were doing my best thinking, it would be to be absolutely content with the life that I have.

To be content with what I have, because no one could ever take that away.

Right?

To be full of the extraordinary and the ordinary mind.

To be perfectly satisfied to share what's in my pocket instead of in of all that I don't.

We get to hear Isaiah, which is in some ways one of the most beautiful poetic books of the scriptures for me.

And today we're hearing to people who have just come home from New York City to High Texas, population 17, and it's in ruins, both buildings.

That's right.

We get to hear that God is going to rise above them, and they will be a light to the nations.

And I am extremely confident that what we need is for the light that the Christ child has been born into us to provide to shine.

And that if we keep looking for someone else to give it to us, we might pray against the psalm.

God let the king have his way and all his enemies defeated.

But that isn't how the psalm reads.

The psalm says, God, let the king provide justice for the poor, let the king raise up the lowly.

The psalm does not pray for our political candidate to win, but the psalm prays for the king to pursue justice.

And then over us the Lord will rise.

Brighter than the sun, inviting into the nations.

No matter the cognitive dissonance that it looks like high Texas when you're used to New York City, God's light is there in high Texas and rubble and would shine in such a way that it invites your neighbor.

And I hope you'll put up with me saying one more thing.

When I was a young boy, I used to go and evangelize people in laundry mats and try to trick them into believing the same fact pattern I thought was really important.

And I wondered why they wouldn't accept what I had to say.

And the truth is there was nothing compelling about my life.

I just believed stuff they didn't believe, and I knew I was right and they were wrong.

And the world doesn't need that.

The world needs people who shine God's light into the nations.

Wherever you are, this epiphany.

I pray that the light of the Lord will shine brighter in you this season.