Isaiah 60:1-6; Matt: 2:1-12
Good morning and Welcome to the New Year.
I wonder how it was for you – the holidays?
Was it frantic or quiet, leisurely and relaxed, or intense? Did you spend much of the time alone or did your friends and/or family surround you?
Maybe the last couple of weeks included some kind of balance of all or some of those things. I hope that however it was for you …. the presence or Spirit of God may have found its way into or been central somehow to some of these moments.
However it was for you – here we are.
In the church year and calendar, during the season called Epiphany, we are being invited to continue to ponder the meaning of the entry of the Christ child into the world. We have entered a new year, as we do every year, carrying with us “the old, old story of Jesus and his love”.
And each year we seek to discover somewhere, someway, somehow what impact that story might have on our lives, both individually and corporately. A question that I ask over and over again is how does that story form and transform us as individuals and a community? How and where does that story intersect with the world we woke up to on January 1st 2010?
The specific stories that will help us to do that this morning come from Isaiah Chapter 60:1-6 and Matthew chapter 2:1-12.
Starting with words from Isaiah,
Arise; shine for your light has come! We’re familiar with these words from the NRSV version of the Isaiah passage. We may not be so familiar with the Message version. It says:
Get out of bed Jerusalem! Wake up. Put your face in the sunlight. God’s bright glory has risen for you.
The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,
All people sunk in deep darkness,
But God rises on you; his sunrise glory breaks over you.
Nations will come to your light, kings to your sunburst brightness.
The Israelites, who have experienced their own share of darkness, the deep darkness of refugee status and exile in the context of Isaiah, are being told that the sun is shining on their faces. God’s light has broken out upon them and this news and this light and this glory is so significant that others will be attracted to this brightness – nations and kings.
Our entire advent series has been about the cosmic significance of the light. It’s shining, it’s brightness, it’s bursting in upon our reality is meant to be so significant that we will not be able to hide it’s attractiveness. But in our reality how does this happen?
To reiterate, our worship resources have encouraged us to maintain a kind of “bifocal” vision; to see both the big picture of God’s purpose and action and the immediacy and locality of the path just ahead of us. Both the macro and micro contexts are filled with cosmic significance.
The four Sundays of Advent and the Sundays of Christmas, of which this one is still a part, have “explored and celebrated the unexpected ways God ‘bursts in’ and ‘breaks out’ in our experience and in the world. This is a huge agenda with cosmic significance; yet it takes form in the most humble and local and intimate of events, the birth of a child in Bethlehem.
Today, the story of the three kings, or wise men or magi, or magicians, or astrologers (all of these titles are legitimate attempts to describe who these people were) give us one more powerful glimpse into the macro and micro contexts into which the birth of Jesus, Immanuel, or God with us, was and can be experienced. In this sermon I want to let this story of the three astrologers or wise men dance with another story – a CBC documentary entitled – the philosophy of pig which is a documentary about a woman who made a shift from being an environmental policy advisor in Ottawa to being a farmer who now raises a heritage breed of pig known as the large black pig. At first glance there may seem to be no connection between these two stories, but I invite you to let the two stories dance in your imagination and let’s see where they take us.
The first story – the one we know well– is the story of the three wise men or astrologers or kings and their successful search for the newborn King of the Jews. During the politically brutal reign of King Herod, these three men travel from a distant Eastern country, we don’t know from where exactly, led by the appearance of a star – a cosmic sign – and their own desire to confirm their astrological knowledge that a special King of the Jews has been born. In an article I read by D. Mark Davis in the Journal “Interpretation” he reminds us that the plain reading of this story is that the magi found the Christ by way of a star. With that simple story line, Matthew makes one declaration clearly and leaves another set of questions unanswered. The child Jesus is the one who is born king of the Jews. How that kingship is inaugurated and exercised is answered in the next twenty-seven chapters [of Matthew], but this initial story proclaims the message of Jesus as the promised one.”
Whatever one thinks of the source of their knowledge, astrology, it did lead them to the Christ child and the story of their encounter with the current ruler of Israel, King Herod, unfolds a bit like the storyline in a dramatic film. Their innocent inquiry of the notoriously brutal and narcissistic King Herod incites such anxiety in him that he slaughters innocent children in response. The macro context of this story is the larger violent policies of a tyrant. The micro context of the story is the influence of these politics and policies on the lives of families in Bethlehem.
The macro context of this story is also the message that was
written in the stars for the astrologers to read, the micro context is the moment they fell on their knees in adoration and worship before the child and his mother Mary. On Christmas Eve, Ratnam Kanakaratnam told us this portion of the Christmas story, and in his telling of it when he literally fell on his knees before the Christ child he brought me into the core of this story. The “light” cut through the darkness for me in a new way in that moment. Thank you Ratnam.
The movement between the Macro and the micro contexts of a story is one of the links to the next story I wish to share – the CBC documentary entitled “the Philosophy of Pig.
In this story a woman named Barbara Schaeffer who worked as an environmental policy advisor for the government in Ottawa, one day found herself without a job. She was laid off. She had strongly believed in the value of her job and at a macro level – government policy and advisement – there is no question that her job and others like hers is valuable. But when this job loss occurred she took an unexpected leap. She decided to apply her 25 years of training and employment in environmental concerns and apply them to farming a rare and endangered breed of pig – the one simply called the large Black Pig. This type of pig is both rare and endangered because it no longer fits into the categories of the lean, fast growing and cheaper hogs that can be produced for food in North America.
The documentary was first aired on CBC’s Radio 1 in October and you could look it up online and listen to it if you wish. Maybe you’ve already heard it.
In any case, the reporter Neil Morrison, interviews her on her farm. You can hear the pigs in the background. As Barbara tells Neil her story, she often interjects her storyline by addressing the pigs and the piglets in her care with words of endearment or reassurance. You can hear the pigs snorting and grunting and when Neil tries to get close to the piglets, you can hear without question the anxious reaction of the sow (or mother pig). Barbara cautions Neil about getting any closer by saying – she’s not sure – and Neil who is clearly getting it (you can hear the slight anxiety in his voice), agrees. Barbara proceeds to calm the pig in question. Neil notes that the moment between Barbara and the pig is touching to be sure, but not sentimental because Barbara does need to sell these pigs for meat – to ensure the livelihood of her family and to preserve the breed.
So what’s going on here? Why tell this story? What does it matter that Barbara is doing her tiny bit to preserve a rare domesticated animal? What is going on here at a micro level? Neil asks these questions directly in the documentary? Why does it matter? An excel spread sheet can tell us the usefulness or uselessness of a certain breed of animal, and it can tell us in cost analysis terms the cost savings involved in feeding people with breeds that are leaner, faster growing and cheaper.
But can an excel spread sheet tell us about all the valuable things that go on in the connection between humans and animals and humans with each other as they care for these animals and as they care for other parts of the earth. On the micro level of daily interaction where Barbara gets her hands dirty she is connected both to the animals and to her neighbours. She learned many of her skills of animal husbandry from her farming neighbour, friend and teacher, a man named John Ashby who was also part of the documentary. And it is on the micro level that Barbara daily carries on centuries of an entwined heritage and complex partnership between humans and domesticated animals. I can tell you about the value of these things but you’d probably have to spend a day with Barbara and her neighbour John to truly appreciate the value of what they do. It defies explanation on a spreadsheet. It might even defy rational logic, but the sounds and the interactions on the radio documentary – began to give me a glimpse – just a glimpse of the light that many strands of our current economic trajectory threaten to plunge into darkness.
In Isaiah – a darkness covers the earth and thick darkness the peoples.
The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,
All people sunk in deep darkness,
But God rises on you; his sunrise glory breaks over you.
Nations will come to your light, kings to your sunburst brightness.
And if you continue to read on in Isaiah it says, “Look up! Look around! Watch as they approach you.”
And then the list of all who approach – sons, daughters, exiles, streams of camel caravans from Midian and Ephah and Sheba loaded with gold and frankincense, large herds of flocks from Kedar and Nebaioth, all bearing gifts for the altar in Jerusalem.
Nations will come to your light and Kings to your sunburst brightness.
All coming to worship – attracted to the light of the glory of God – the manifestation of God’s presence among people.
Today I’ve shared two stories, a biblical story and a modern story that I hope will dance in your imagination because they point to the micro stories of light in our lives. Astrologers or wise men who looked to the stars for their knowledge were brought to their knees before the true object of their search – a child born in Bethlehem who was evidence of the light and glory of God in the world – destined for the rise and fall of many. The macro significance of this micro event the birth and life of Jesus in a poor family in Bethlehem, was not lost on the wise men, the woman Mary who gave him birth, or the kings or rulers of his day.
What are the micro stories in your life that threaten to have that kind of macro significance? What tiny part of your story casts so much light, you won’t be able to hide its attractiveness? As I ask this question, I remember a quote by Nelson Mandela:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel unsure around you. We were born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in eve
ryone. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
It’s not likely that any of us will become pig farmers of rare endangered breeds, but you never know. Where has the light of Christ broken into and threatens to burst out of your life in a way that is only possible here at the beginning of 2010? As you think about this question, I encourage you to consider sharing your response to it during our sharing and prayer time. The light and Glory of God actually is all around. When we recognize it and are drawn to it we may find that we need to fall on our knees and worship.