This is the sermon delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of Unfinished Community on Sunday, January 7, 2024, drawing from Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12
Expectations are a funny thing, particularly when they come to authority.
We expect people in authority to act in a certain way; to do certain things, say certain things, look a certain way, and things like that. When we imagine a king, there’s an image in our mind that forms immediately, complete with behavior patterns, the things one might say and do, and the things one might not say and do as well. And the same goes for CEOs, wealthy people, your boss at work, parents,
…even pastors, if we’re being honest.
I’ve actually made a good part of my career on this very idea, truth be told. I know what the expectations are for a white, male, pastor, and I am not above using - or breaking - those expectations in service of God’s greater work here in the community or in the world at large. ]
But whatever the position is, those expectations we have all come from roughly the same place in our hearts and minds; our shared understanding of what authority looks like. Authority is part and partial to power, or so we think, Authority is what is held by those who act with command, who speak with the weight of presumption, every word leaving their moth with firm and confident certainty that it will be heard, prioritized, and made real by the world and people around them. A person with authority is someone who is unquestionably the boss, someone who tells rather than asks, who dismisses rather than debates, and who is in all possible ways visible.
Authority, to many of us, is unquestioned and unearned arrogance of a CEO - or worse, a petulant middle-manager - who fully believes that everything they have is theirs by divine right and blessing, rather than the corrupt gift of privilege or the whimsy of uneven chance.
So when we read todays passages, both of which are full of expressions of authority both divine and human, this is what we imagine we’re looking for, don’t we? When we read about the glory of the Lord being risen upon you, we imagine that glory as being a luminescent explosion of this exact kind of authority. We imagine nations gathering to our light and kingdoms coming to the brightness of our dawn because God’s glory gifts us with this sense of authority, this expectation that “…the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.”
Authority, in our minds, goes hand-in-hand with entitlement.
So when we turn to the gospel of Matthew, it’s very easy for us to answer just who, exactly, has authority here.
Well, it’s Herod, clearly.
Herod is the one who acts with the presumption of divine favor, the one who speaks with the sense of entitled presumption, knowing that his words will be made manifest and his desires fulfilled by right. Every line of dialogue he speaks is just dripping with that sense of control. He calls the wise men to him, receives from them information that he wants, and commands them on their way with the instruction to return with the results of their search, confident that they will do as he commands because he is king. He has authority.
The systems of the entire world are at his command, after all.
These wisemen on the other hand, they’re operating on a totally different level. We often use the term “magi” when referring to them, but that right there is a severely loaded term. If you know your English well, you know that it comes from the same root as “magic” or “mage.” Wizards, basically, is what the term might seem to suggest. That’s not really what they were, of course, and they weren’t really kings either. They were learned men certainly, but calling them “wise men” is a term that’s so generic as to be basically meaningless. They weren't Jewish, obviously, since they came from lands further east, And though they were men of education and a sort of status, they weren't politicians or members of the ruling caste from their nations of origin.
They were religious leaders.
In particular, they were a combination of religious leaders for an ancient practice of faith that combined the worship of the divine with a sort of sort of primitive stellar cartography. It wouldn’t be accurate to call them astronomers exactly, since they weren’t entirely scientific about things, but it wouldn’t really be appropriate to call them astrologers either, and for the same reason; what they did, while religious, did have a firm grounding in the observational sciences of the time.
No, the honest-to-God appropriate term, as much as it tickles my Final Fantasy-loving heart, is Astrologians: those who watch the stars with scientific precision, religious reverence, and a knack for discernment that borders on the mystical.
Now there is an entirely different sermon to be had here, by the way, on the fact that these non-Jewish astrologians with absolutely no real concept of Jewish tradition or practices, with no grounding in the history or stories of God’s people in this context, and absolutely no direct connection to the Biblical narrative whatsoever, are able to just look at the skies and see that Jesus is coming. These guys didn’t know God the way that we do, never learned our history, never heard our stories, and they certainly had no idea what a messiah was, but when God actually stepped into this world they were the first ones to realize it. There were no angels popping up to tell them what was going on, no divine birth announcements…
…just a star, and a few guys with hearts open enough to realize what that meant.
Now I don’t know about you, but that sounds more like what it means to listen to the voice of God than anything I’ve heard from any human preacher, teacher, counselor or king I’ve ever come across!
But here we are, at the beginning of today’s gospel reading, with these two very different expressions of authority: Herod, and our Astrologians from the east. Herod gets first mention of course, as men of power often do, but it takes us only 14 words to realize that this is not Herod’s story. For all his power, he hasn’t the slightest idea that the Messiah’s been born until these three wise guys stroll into town and start asking questions. Only then does he call together all his own religious advisors - the full array of Israel’s best and brightest, the most educated scholars, the ones who really ought to have known that their own messiah had arrived - and ask them just what in the heck actually happened.
Take notice, by the way, that Herod is terrified here. The story has only just started, and his agency has completely disappeared. Our Astrologians here haven’t got a care in the world, they’ve just walked into town, falloff excitement and curiosity, and started asking questions.
But Herod…wow. He has gone from the absolute seat of kingly authority, the bright shining light of the dawn and ruler of all he surveys to a scared, simpering child of a man, plotting and scheming in fear just because he overheard the questions asked by better men.
And we all know what happens next, don’t we? Herod summons the wise men to meet with him, plays nice, and tries to work them into his plans. He sends them to Bethlehem, and gives them that kingly command to come back when they’re done, to return and give him all the juicy details about where this tiny, cute and adorable threat to his throne happens to be.
Of course, our Astrologians do answer Herod’s inquiries about the star while they’re there, because why wouldn’t they? It’s a great shining star in the sky! If Herod only looked up for a minute he’d probably have noticed the silly thing himself, and surely it wouldn’t take him long to consult a few sky-watchers on the Israelite side of things to figure out when it had appeared. As slick as Herod was feeling in that moment, the truth is that the honesty of our wisemen here gave Herod no secret or unknowable knowledge, only something he could have figured out for himself if he’d taken the time to look for it.
But as Herod sends them away, their focus isn’t on all those things you’d expect from a group of foreign dignitaries who’d just been in the presence of royalty. They set out, with their eyes upon the star, and that takes them right to the place where Jesus lay.
They come into the presence of the Messiah, and they are overwhelmed with joy. They don’t have the faintest clue what a messiah is of course, nor do they really seem to care about prophecies, the Davidic line, angels which were heard on high, shepherds, or any of that other stuff. They just…knew…exactly what they were dealing with here.
God the Creator, looking upon the world through human eyes at last.
And having glimpsed the face of God, having gotten that moment of joy in their hearts, they leave their gifts and immediately exit stage right, walking directly out of the greatest story in history and completely ignoring absolutely everything Herod had commanded them to do.
Now that…that is what real authority looks like.
Not the pale, human imitation of authority that Herod was wearing like a synthetic fur coat as he cowered within it to mask his overwhelming fear, not the power of armies or the threat of force, not the risks and pressures of social conformity or the dark and looming fear of all the things that might happen.
No.
Just a couple of people looking for their Creator, following a star wherever it might go.
When we read this story we’re read to see Herod as an authority because we expect the king to be the agent of the story, we expect authority to issue commands, and expect people to follow. We expect authority to be controlling, fearfully attentive to potential threats and quick to respond to challenges.
But God’s authority comes from the surrendering of power rather than the firm grasping of it, and look what happens when you do that.
Our Astrologians listened for God, left their own countries behind, wandered into the capitol city of a distant foreign country where they didn’t know the customs and might not even have fully grasped the language and just started asking questions about God that were extremely threatening to entrenched power structures. And when their questions landed them in the court of those exact power structures, there was no deceit among them; no lying or scheming or tactical thinking.
Just honesty, and an eagerness to be back on their way, back on the road in search of the Almighty.
And when the king, the ultimate tip of these entrenched power structures, tried to exert authority over them, to bend their open hearts to his own political goals and to make them complicit in the genocide he was limbering up to commit, they did not meet his evil with conflict. There was no “how dare you;” no grand declarations of refusal or opposition, and never once did they ever stand boldly and proud, declaring their faith in the yet-unseen Christ for all the world to see.
They just…walked away. And when it came time to follow the commands of power, they just…didn’t. They put the intentions of evil men behind them, laid their gifts at the feet of Christ the King, and just walked away into history.
The true authority of the righteous and the good doesn’t come from power, it comes from humble submission to the path God has put before us. We can’t argue our way to righteousness, can’t scream our way towards grace, and we can’t fistfight our way to love.
Justice isn’t justice when it’s bought at the tip of the sword, and love isn’t love when it’s drawn from the blood of our enemies.
In loving and serving the Lord, we are given the divine authority to be reconcilers, to be healers of the world, repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to live in, and you can’t be that by setting the streets on fire and blowing that breach wide open.
We do it by following that star right out of the palace, turning your backs on the corrupt authority of Empire, laying your gifts before the king in humble service, and then walking out from the true King’s simple and lowly house into a world that will never be the same again.
Our wise men were no fools; it’s right in the name, of course. They knew, they had to know, that there was every possibility that the rage of King Herod would reach them in the end. This was a man whose very next move was to massacre as many infants as he could in the region, just to maintain his tenuous grip on power. Of course he could harm them too.
But with their simple embrace of God’s authority, by the simple prophetic act of walking away, these three foreign Astrologians are forever remembered as honorable and wise servants of the Creator. Thousands of years later, and we’re still singing songs about these three, while Herod King is only ever remembered for his fear, for the terror that drove him to murder, and the evil that lived and dwelled within his power-hungry heart.
This is our Epiphany, friends; the great realization that kingships can be destroyed by the quiet resistance of those who simply fix their eyes on Christ and refuse to follow the dictates of power. Our Epiphany is that simple realization that sometimes all that is asked of us to accomplish our part in the historic, world-changing work of God in our time is to turn our backs to the wealthy and the powerful, to turn aside from all those people and things we’re told we must pander to and play nice with in order to make our way through the world, lock arms with our friends, set one foot in front of the other, and just walk away.
So let’s take a stroll, shall we?
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