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WORSHIP THIS WEEK: How do we live as a healthy community at times when we’re being our most messy human selves? That’s a question we’ll explore in Sunday’s readings as Jesus and Moses challenge us to imagine new ways of being community. Join us on Sunday, September 29 at 10:00 in our physical sanctuary at 300 Shunpike Road or in our digital sanctuary for worship: https://www.youtube.com/live/FX2zs-mj0L8?si=WcNUp9AtCdx8BIRE
BLESSING OF THE ANIMALS: Bring your beloved creatures – furry, feathered, scaly, slithery, or stuffed – to the front lawn of the church on Sunday, September 29, at 1:00 for a Blessing of the Animals. We’ll celebrate the ways that these animals embody the love of God in our lives.
Gloria Dei Welcome Statement (adopted June 2024) - Gloria Dei Lutheran Church celebrates that each person is created in the image of God, and God’s wide embrace holds all of us. We trust in a living God who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, continually renews and transforms us. That Spirit holds us in relationship with God and with each other. We invite you to share in ministry here, bringing all of who you are, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, race and ethnicity, age, marital status, faith journey, economic circumstance, immigration path, physical and mental health, and any other identity God has given you to shine your light in the world. We believe that we are called to follow Jesus in serving our world and our community: welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, loving our neighbors, and working for justice. We are a Reconciling in Christ congregation, committed to the full inclusion and affirmation of LGBTQIA+ people and to the ongoing work of racial equity. There is a place for you at Gloria Dei. We welcome you – your identities, your histories, your stories. We celebrate your unique and holy gifts as we grow together in faith: created by God, saved by Christ, and nurtured by the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 2:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
I recently took a walk in my neighborhood, and I noticed that a lot of the decorations were looking a little rough at this point in the season. There was the snowman whose head was flopped sideways as if its neck were broken. Two shiny reindeer had fallen over on the grass like they had passed out. There was a tree growing beside someone’s front door, and it was decorated with red bows and shiny silver garland, but the tree itself was half dead. There were more brown patches than green. I’m not sure it’s going to make it.
The most striking example was the large nativity set on someone’s porch. It looked like it had been quite beautiful at one time, featuring large plaster figures of each character in the scene, each one brightly painted. But today it’s in pretty bad shape, with much of the paint chipped off of each figure. Even the camel had so many bare spots that he looked mangy.
And while it somehow seemed appropriate to the story of Jesus’ birth that Mary and Joseph and the shepherds would look a little shabby, it was a bit jarring to see the wise men looking so beaten up. They’re supposed to be the fancy people in the story, the ones with a certain amount of wealth and status. But in this version, they looked as beaten up as the rest.
At first I found all these sights a bit depressing. At the very least they seemed like a metaphor for how we might be feeling as a new year begins without so far seeming much different than the old year. But I stopped and took a breath and remembered that Jesus is not born because things are perfect and shiny. He’s born because we, like the lopsided snowman and the passed-out-reindeer and the half-dead tree and the beaten-up nativity set, are in need of new life. And new life is precisely what Jesus brings.
To visit Jesus the wise men travel through a world that is far from perfect. At that time travel of any kind was perilous, with thieves waiting to assault you at any point along the road. As the wise men follow the star to find this new king, they make a pit stop with a king who is both insecure and tyrannical – a dangerous combination. King Herod pretends that he, too, wants to pay homage to the child, but of course he only wants to find Jesus in order to kill him.
I was reminded by Pastor James Howell this week that it’s easy to mix up all the Herods in the Bible. It’s King Herod the Great who ruled when Jesus was born. His son, Herod Antipas, reigned when Jesus was crucified. In other places there’s a Herod Archaelaus, Herod Philip, and a couple of Herod Agrippas. But, as Pastor Howell points out, all these Herods are really different versions of the same guy. In his words, “all were egotistical, petty potentates, in bed with the Romans, and clueless about God.”[i]
In spite of the dangers, the wise men show up, and they bring what they have to offer. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Extravagant gifts that could easily have been stolen on the journey. They’re funny gifts for a baby, though appropriate for a king.
The wise men go home by another road, we hear. They’re trying to avoid the unhinged Herod, and they certainly don’t want to be responsible for endangering Jesus. So they go home by another road. I don’t know if they had starlight for this part of the journey, but I hope so. We all need some extra guidance when we follow a new pathway.
A little after midnight as the new year began, I stepped outside and looked up at the sky and saw a gorgeous moon, bright and round. I saw not just one star but a sky full of them. I breathed in the cold air, and I thought about all that had happened in 2020 that none of us imagined when it was just beginning.
And then I thought: What if we all try a different road this year?
There’s a lot over which we have no control. The wise men couldn’t change the distance or the danger of the journey. They couldn’t change Herod’s instability or vengeance. We can’t wave a magic wand and make everything better at once.
But in many ways we can choose a different road.
We can do more listening than yelling.
We can stay curious. We can be open to learning something we may not have understood before.
We can commit to making the road safe for everybody who travels it, especially those for whom the road has been dangerous for far too long.
We can trust that God is always with us on the road, however lonely it can feel sometimes.
We can trust that God’s promise of new life meets us in our battered brokenness and says, “You don’t have to be polished and perfect. Just be faithful.”
I don’t know if those count as resolutions, but I do know this. If we are able to follow this new road, it is only because God is leading the way, bathing us in light and love for the journey ahead, willing to die for us.
I’ve mentioned Sarah Bessey before, a Christian writer I enjoy following online. She has this to say about the new year, and I offer it to you as part prayer, part blessing[ii]:
May the God of compassion and open doors be with us this coming year.
Everything sad won’t come untrue this year and this year will hold its own tragedies and sorrows. We’ll relearn lament and fight for joy. May we show up with courage and faithfulness for our lives and our callings and our people. May we be restored and renewed even in exile. May the wilderness become our cathedral and our altar.
May we say good-bye to the things that do not serve us – the selfishness, the fear, the illusions of control, the bitterness, the doomscrolling, the self-pity, the martyr complex, the us-and-them fire stokers – and say hello to wisdom, to kindness, to justice, curiosity, wonder, goodness, generosity, possibility, peace making.
May we throw open the doors of our lives to the disruptive, wild, healing Holy Spirit. May this be a year of unclenched hands and new songs, of vaccines and reunions, of good food and some laughter, of kind endings and new beginnings. May we be given a mustard seed of faith; it will be enough to notice and name what you love in particular about your life as it stands.
May 2021 bring you goodness and courage, hope and love, resilience and a hand to hold even on the nights with no stars.
Amen.
S.D.G. – The Rev. Dr. Christa M. Compton, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Chatham, NJ
[i] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/epiphany-of-our-lord/commentary-on-matthew-21-12-10
[ii] https://sarahbessey.substack.com/p/i-dont-have-a-word-for-2021-but-i?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozMTQzNjc5LCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMDQwNTEyMSwiXyI6IldJbWJZIiwiaWF0IjoxNjA5Njc4NDY1LCJleHAiOjE2MDk2ODIwNjUsImlzcyI6InB1Yi00NDIwIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.v8FrsYb9kkO_r0S3z9TsHPfwUuePrSiKnOZHlCIi0pE
“We observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage…” Matthew 2:2
It’s the tyrant versus the toddler. It doesn’t really seem like a fair match-up – the fully grown adult ruler of this corner of the Roman Empire lashing out against a little kid who by this point in our story had probably taken his first steps and was forming complete sentences. (We don’t have any biblical confirmation of those moments, but I’ve always suspected that Jesus was an early walker and talker. I mean, you don’t eventually walk on water without a head start on land first, right?)
But King Herod was not known for being rational or benevolent. History tells us that he had one of his wives and three of his sons killed because he thought they were a threat to his reign. So when our gospel today opens with “In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,” it’s not just giving us a chronology. It’s setting up two ways of understanding power. There’s King Herod’s way, rooted in ego and violence and political manipulation, a power that is fraught with the kind of insecurity that would sooner murder you than talk to you. And there is Jesus’ way – not yet fully known by the world but growing day by day in that backwoods town of Bethlehem. Humble beginnings to signify that this kid would be a different kind of king.
The magi – or wise men, as we’ve come to know them – really should have known better than to show up on Herod’s doorstep. They were outsiders, magicians and priests from another ancient religion who may not have heard the tales of Herod’s bloodthirsty power grabs. Had they realized how unstable Herod was, perhaps they would have avoided that stop. They were probably just following protocol. You check in with one local king when you are searching for another.
They could not have known how badly Herod would take the news.
They could not have known what we know when we keep reading in this chapter of Matthew – how immediately and desperately Herod would want to destroy Jesus, forcing Mary and Joseph and the child to flee to the relative safety of Egypt.
They could not have known that Herod would then order the massacre of all the children ages two years or younger living in or near Bethlehem. When an insecure ruler like Herod feels threatened, things always turn deadly.
Herod is twisted and turned in on himself. Everything is about his need for power. Get too close to his torment, and your life will be at stake.
But the wise men are looking for something different. They’re seeking the child who has been born king of the Jews. A child. A child who comes to bring hope to a fractured, fallen world. To bring peace in the midst of violence.
In their quest the wise men give us some ways to think about living in a fractured, fallen world. Notice what they do.
First, they look up. They have come to find the child because they saw a star rising in the east, and they knew it pointed to something – or someone – special. They paid attention to the natural world enough to notice this bright light shining in the sky. They recognized it as something new, a beacon that called to them and summoned them to take a surprising journey. Had they stayed hunched over their desks with worry and fear, they might have missed it.
How often we miss the signs around us, the ones calling us to new possibilities. How often we hunch over our desks – or our phones – and fail to see what is begging for our attention.
The wise men also travel together. Tradition has assumed there were three of them because there are three gifts mentioned – gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But I’ve often wondered if it was more than a small group, perhaps even a caravan that included women and children and animals and a whole messy community making its way from the East. In any case it was not just one guy finding his way to Bethlehem, searching all alone. They stuck together – even when they had to go home by another way to avoid Herod’s wrath.
How often we try to travel alone. And how quickly we learn that it doesn’t work well. It’s not just lonely; it’s dangerous.
When the wise men finally get to Jesus, they kneel and pay him homage. The verb that’s used here indicates that they either got down on their knees or flattened themselves on the ground in the way one honors a superior. These men of wealth and status have the humility to see that this child is more important and more powerful than they are.
How often we prefer to keep Jesus at a distance. We’d rather think of him as a wise teacher from long ago than someone who might change us, who might urge us to surrender our pride.
As we begin a new year, it’s a good time to remember that we are not the center of our own lives. It’s time to look up and wonder what God might be calling us to do. It’s time to look around and see who our companions are for the journey. It’s time for humility, for recognizing that we cannot save ourselves, however desperately we wish we could.
My sister Claire and I got our two nieces a telescope for Christmas. They’ve developed a keen interest in space, so we picked out a good telescope for beginners. Like any telescope, it needed to be aligned. During the daylight hours it needed to be pointed at distant object and adjusted with precision so that at night it would be easier to find and focus on the object that we were looking for, like the moon. It’s even more necessary because everything is moving all the time – the earth, the moon, the planets. When it’s aligned, the telescope can stay focused on what’s worth seeing.
All of us need a way to fix our gaze on what will keep us moving forward in faith. The world may feel like it’s spinning out of control, and in many ways that’s true. Herod’s power is always going to bring death and destruction. The power of the Christ child? That power brings life and salvation. That’s where we focus our attention when we are afraid or uncertain.
We look up. We travel together. We live with humility.
There are always more stars rising, more journeys to take.
Epiphany marks the official end of the Christmas season, but as Christians, we live as Christmas people always – people who know that the road opens up before us with new ways to share God’s love embodied in the Christ child.
Theologian Howard Thurman reminds us that Christmas continues when he writes[i]:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
Amen.
S.D.G. – The Rev. Dr. Christa M. Compton, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Chatham, NJ
[i] https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/now-the-work-of-christmas-begins/
Chatham, NJ 07928-1659
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