Jack McKinney

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

January 7, 2007 – Epiphany Sunday

Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

A Tale of Two Cities

Childhood is a time for questions and wondering. “Why is the sky blue and the grass green instead of the sky being green and the grass blue?” “Why does ice cream melt but broccoli doesn’t?” “Why does that big man in church who wears the black dress with a scarf talk so loud sometimes?”

As a child I can remember there was much I didn’t understand about the world. Adult ways and thinking were confusing to me, and I couldn’t figure out why some things were so important to my parents. Take church, for instance. As a child going to church felt like punishment. It was terribly long and boring, though I learned as I got older that my church’s worship services were the shortest in town. The preacher seemed so long-winded, though I discovered later his sermons were actually quite short. And while there was much I didn’t understand about life at that age, and I felt uncertain about most things, one thing was crystal clear to me. When I got old enough to make my own decisions I would not being going to church. Ever. Alas, my career as a failed prophet started at a very early age.

On Epiphany Sunday we hear a familiar story with a familiar cast of characters and a completely predictable ending. The three wise men come to Bethlehem to bring their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the young Jewish king, Jesus. The magi have come from the East following a star that leads them to the right spot. Well, as a matter of fact, no. That’s not exactly what happens. This predictable story that we hear every year in church is actually full of surprises. Let’s let Walter Brueggermann, perhaps the best biblical scholar in this country today, explain what I mean:

Matthew is not the first one to imagine three rich wise guys from the East coming to Jerusalem. His story line and plot come from Isaiah 60, a poem recited to Jews in Jerusalem about 580 B.C.E. These Jews had been in exile in Iraq for a couple of generations and had come back to the bombed-out city of Jerusalem. They were in despair. Who wants to live in a city where the towers are torn down and the economy has failed, and nobody knows what to do about it?

In the middle of the mess, an amazing poet invites his depressed, discouraged contemporaries to look up, to hope and to expect everything to change. "Rise, shine, for your light has come." The poet anticipates that Jerusalem will become a beehive of productivity and prosperity, a new center of international trade. "Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. . ." Caravans loaded with trade goods will come from Asia and bring prosperity. This is cause for celebration. God has promised to make the city work effectively in peace, and a promise from God is very sure.

Like Matthew, the wise men know about Isaiah 60. They know they are to go to Jerusalem and to take rare spices, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Most important, they know that they will find the new king of all peace and prosperity. But when Herod (the current king in Jerusalem) hears of these plans, he is frightened. A new king is a threat to the old king and the old order.

Then a strange thing happens. In his panic, Herod arranges a consultation with the leading Old Testament scholars, and says to them, "Tell me about Isaiah 60. What is all this business about camels and gold and frankincense and myrrh?" The scholars tell him: You have the wrong text. And the wise men outside your window are using the wrong text. Isaiah 60 will mislead you because it suggests that Jerusalem will prosper and have great urban wealth and be restored as the center of the global economy. In that scenario, the urban elites can recover their former power and prestige and nothing will really change.

Herod does not like that verdict and asks, defiantly, "Well, do you have a better text?" The scholars are afraid of the angry king, but tell him, with much trepidation, that the right text is Micah 5:2-4:

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah . . . from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old . . . (Walter Brueggermann, “Off by Nine Miles,” The Christian Century, December 19, 2001.)

And, so, this predictable story of the wise men and their gifts turns out to be anything but predictable. The wise men started with the wrong prophecy, which led them to the wrong city, and gave them the exactly wrong impression of what God’s restoration would look like. It was Micah, not Isaiah, they should have followed. It was Bethlehem, a backwater village nine miles south of Jerusalem that they were looking for, not the famous city itself. And it was a king who would reject political and economic power, and side with the poor and oppressed, who they eventually found, not the king of Isaiah 60 who would restore Jerusalem to all her glory and power. All the assumptions the wise men set out with prove to be false, but to their credit, they are more than willing to adjust their thinking and follow a new path. If only that could be said for all of us.

We lead our lives with a certainty about what will make us happy and whole that may be as misdirected as the wise men who show up in Jerusalem certain they are in the right spot. We just know that if we get into the right school or find the right job or achieve a certain income or get married, have children, and secure a lovely home we will be happy and fulfilled. We know this because everyone knows this. It’s the American dream. Economic security undergirded by educational achievement and domestic tranquility is what we all want for ourselves and our kids. It’s what I want for me and my family. But I wonder if I am missing something in my assumptions about my private life.

And on a larger scale we see how these assumptions get us in trouble all of the time. We had to go to war in Iraq because there were weapons of mass destruction there. How did the government know? Well, they just knew, everyone knew, and they even had suspicious pictures of trucks to back it up. And now 3,000 American soldiers are dead, and many more thousands are permanently injured, and tens of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives. And there never was any WMD. And I take no pleasure in the Bush administration being wrong about the war because people need to have faith in their government. We need to trust that our leaders are speaking the truth to us. We need to believe that our sons and daughters will not be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice based on hunches and assumptions.

And what is the common thread that ties together these private and societal assumptions that will result in our security and happiness? It’s simply this. We believe that wealth and power are the keys to guaranteeing the good life. I don’t mean wealth like Bill Gates. I mean we believe there is a certain economic status we must achieve to be satisfied. Only that figure always remains poorly defined, so we keep seeking a little more, and the pursuit never ends. And the power we seek is not an absolute power, but the power to control our destiny, and secure our loved ones’ future, and if that means fighting for our kids educational needs over other kids, or if that means our government has to flex its muscle over other nations, well, we don’t like to admit it, but we will live with those displays of power.

And my point is not to say that these assumptions about what leads to a happy and whole life are illogical. The whole world operates out of these assumptions, so there must be something to it. I’m simply pointing out that we are in the wrong place to give credence to the ideas that wealth and power will guarantee you a good life. We are in church. This is the place we teach about the humility of Bethlehem, not the glory of Jerusalem. We follow not a man focused on the accumulation of wealth and power, but a man devoted to social justice and service. His life, the life of Jesus, is our model. And if we try to follow him in his ways of giving, serving, loving, and sacrificing, I don’t know if you will be happy. I certainly can’t guarantee you will be secure. I will simply suggest you will be pleasing to God, and that’s a completely different kind of good life.

In the end, the wise men are heroic to me because even though they set off knowing where they were headed and what they were likely to find, when they realized how wrong they had been they immediately adjusted course. They needed to head nine miles south, to a different town, where there was no palace or crown or glory to speak of. Just a simple child, with his simple family, “and he shall be the one of peace.” (Micah 5:5) And if we wish to follow this man of peace, and his strange ways, then we, like the wise men, may have to give up some of our assumptions and head in a new direction.

Because sometimes, even when you are certain about something, God laughs and the boy who was never going to be in church ends up wearing the black dress with the scarf.