Matthew 2:1-12; January 7, 2024; Epiphany Sunday
Change is hard.
Change is so hard that we will do some crazy stuff just to avoid it.
Like, we will keep wearing those socks even if they have holes. Or worse, we will keep wearing those underdrawers even if they have holes. And we might even drive around in old beat-up cars with missing hub-cabs and wiper blades (yup, that’s me), because… change is hard.
We hand-pluck grays from our beards and eyebrows, or we color them in with sharpies. We get facelifts and surgeries, or take pills with crazy side-effects, because you see, we want to remain young forever, and, change is hard.
We will stay in jobs that stifle our souls. We will repeat relationships knowing full-well their likely disastrous outcomes. And, we will even continue to root for deplorable organizations like the Pittsburgh baseball Pirates (yup, me, again) who have exactly zero aspirations of ever fielding a competitive team. Because yes… change is hard.
Change is hard. For all of us. And often, when we feel and see that change coming, we do everything we can to run from it. Or even, everything we can to stop it.
Which was Herod’s exact thought when he heard about a change of order coming into the world.
“In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.” – Matthew 2:1-3
Frightened! We learn in the verses that follow our text that Herod was so frightened by this epiphany that he ordered for the death of all newborns up to the age of two, hoping to kill Jesus before he ever got started. It’s called “the slaughter of the innocents.” And though there is no real historical record of it happening, Matthew’s gospel is clear in the point it is trying to make: that power doesn’t take kindly to change. Because change is hard.
You see, often in our broken, sinful, and selfish world, when those in power – the gatekeepers of order and tradition — see change approaching, they get afraid. Their epiphany comes, not with excitement and wonder, but with a sudden dose of fear, saying, oh no, everything that we’ve come to know, accept, and enjoy, might soon be no more, or, God forbid, different.
And so, they don’t want change. Rather, they defend the status quo. And they keep the poor hungry. And the masses uniformed or misinformed, such that even crazier things like insurrections on Epiphany Day can happen.
Yes, change is hard.
And King Herod, he rejects change, and in doing so, he rejects Christ. While on the other hand, simple, gentile, non-powerful magi-folk, are all too ready to do the opposite and accept him.
It should be noted here that these wise magi, as we often remember and call them, were, at least in some circles, thought to be anything but that. To some, they were considered to be more like fools. Fools. For they were astrologists after all. Men who wasted their time looking for meaning in the stars. Certain ancient Jewish texts remember these three, and those like them, as time-wasting peons, who put their God-given energies and gifts to waste. And yet, it is these fools, these magicians/astronomers/dreamers/magi who end up encountering the greatest revelation and epiphany of them all: the Incarnation.
One of my favorite theologians, John Dominic Crossan writes of this incredible event, saying: “Moses escapes from Pharaoh’s massacre and eventually leads his people from Egypt to the Promised Land, but here Matthew introduces a terrible irony: Jesus escapes from Herod, but now it is to, rather than from, pagan Egypt that he must flee. This underlines a core Matthean theme: one of ironic reversal – such that it is pagan wisdom from abroad, not civil power at home, that accepts and worships the newborn Jesus. […] that while Herod reads the Jewish scriptures, he yet seeks to kill him; and that while the magi read the stars, they yet come from afar to accept him.” – J.D. Crossan’s “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
To accept him. And, to embrace change.
So, today, my friends, on this Epiphany Sunday, we are meant to find ourselves in these foolish magi, and less in the frightened and vengeful Herods who just want to hold onto everything they’ve known and had.
We are to be hopeful today, not fearful, of the change of order that has come into our world. Such that we too should want to leave all that we once knew behind, and travel by another road, so to follow a star even if it leads us to surprising scenes and strange revelations.
Such as, a little child born in humility, who would yet grow to teach us to break bread with sinners, and even, to upset religious and political authorities if it meant that kindness, mercy, and charity would win out.
A true epiphany then, my friends, confronts us and challenges all of our thoughts and ideas, and it corrects us so that we might become better versions of ourselves, and better neighbors in our changing communities.
And so let it be.
Amen.
