This is a revised version of a sermon I preached six years ago but which is not on the blog. The text that follows is how I preached it in 2019 and does not exactly conform to the video, because I paraphrased and added some material:
Rumour has it that the Nativity Play was cancelled at Parliament this Christmas.
Why? Apparently, they couldn’t find three wise men.
OK, that’s a silly Internet joke I saw during the festive season, along with the cartoon where three wise women bring practical gifts such as a casserole instead of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
But I love the story of the Magi, and with Covenant Sunday falling this year on Epiphany, the feast where the wider Christian Church throughout the world and down through history celebrates the appearing of the Messiah to the Gentiles, we have a story that also says much to the Covenant theme of commitment to Christ.
Here, then, are three aspects of the Magi and their coming that speak to the question of our commitment to Christ.
Firstly, the Magi were Gentiles.
Yes, I know that’s stating the obvious, but it’s important. Matthew is the most Jewish of all the four Gospels, but no Jew comes to worship the infant Christ in his Gospel, only the Magi from the east – perhaps modern-day Iraq.
The Magi represent all that is wrong in spiritual practice in the eyes of faithful Jews. They were astrologers, and astrology began in ancient Babylon. When Israel was taken captive to Babylon, astrology was a common habit of the surrounding culture. In the parts of Isaiah that relate to that part of Israel’s history, astrology is condemned and ridiculed. It is not the way to find truth and purpose in life. For the Jew, that could only be found by following the one true God – as it should for us, too, and which incidentally is why no Christian should devote time to their horoscope.
It is these unsound, unclean people that come in the highly Jewish Gospel according to Matthew and worship the infant Christ. Matthew is telling us that the Gospel, while originating with the Jews, is for the whole world. It’s no coincidence that Matthew ends his Gospel with the so-called Great Commission, where the risen Jesus sends his followers to the whole world with the call to discipleship.
Therefore the first challenge I want to bring from the story of the Magi this morning to us on Covenant Sunday is our call to be bearers of the Gospel to all people, including those who are not remotely like us. Who are the people who to us are unclean or unsound? Who are the people whose lifestyles we would instinctively condemn? Christ lived and died for them, too. Who are the people with whom we would not naturally associate, the people we wouldn’t mix with at a social gathering? Again, Christ lived and died for them.
I’ve noticed that one of the most contentious issues among residents of Byfleet has to do with what happens when travellers come and pitch up on land in the village. I understand some of that reaction, given the mess they often leave and the inconvenience they cause. But one of the great areas of numerical growth in Christianity in the UK these days is among travellers and gypsies. Largely, the Gospel was originally taken to them by our Pentecostal friends. Now there are indigenous gypsy congregations and Christian conventions. We might not want to have too much to do with them. But God loves them and has reached out to them through other Christians.
So I’d like us to consider this Covenant Sunday whether there are any people we might naturally think are unsavoury, but who need God’s love in Christ to be shown to them. Does anyone occur to you?
Secondly, the Magi decided to go.
The Magi go on their long and arduous journey, and when the biblical scholars tell them and Herod that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, they are still the only ones who go. Those who apparently know their Scriptures do nothing.
Christian commitment involves hearing the call of God and doing something about it. This the Magi demonstrate in spades. They don’t even know the Scriptures, but they follow the call as they have heard it the best they can. The strange sign of the star, the biblical reference from the prophet Micah to Bethlehem, and finally the warning in the dream not to return to Herod. In all these ways they show the characteristic of true disciples: they hear and they go.
I sometimes fear that we in the modern church are rather like the biblical scholars whom Herod called. We have heard and read the Christian message over and over again down years and decades, but do we always allow it to have a challenging or transforming effect on us? Do we hear the Bible read and then move on? Do we just read it and then close it?
I may have told you before the story of the Argentinean pastor who preached on the same text every week for a year.
‘Pastor, when you are you going to preach on something different?’ asked one church member.
‘When you start obeying this passage,’ replied the pastor.
Something like that can be our problem. We are fed a diet of weekly sermons, we think we know the Bible and our faith quite well, but how much have we let it change us?
Yet along come the Magi and for all their learning in other areas they are simple when it comes to matters of faith. God shows them what to do, and off they go.
I believe that sometimes it’s the newer and spiritually younger Christians who come along, get hold of something basic about the faith, and run with it in ways that really the experienced Christians might have done.
One example of this would be the Addlestone (now Runnymede) Food Bank. The person who had the vision for this was a middle-aged woman who had only recently found faith through an Alpha Course, but she quickly grasped that following Jesus meant caring about the poor. Her professional background was as a stockbroker. She was used to managing accounts containing many millions of pounds. She used her managerial and entrepreneurial skills in the service of God’s kingdom to sell the vision of the food bank to the churches, to start it up, organise, and run it, before being snapped up by the Trussell Trust for a national rôle with them. As I say, she was young in the faith, but she heard the voice of God and ran with it.
What more might we do if we allowed ourselves to be that bit less jaded about all the things we have heard over and over again in the Scriptures and in the preaching of the word?
More specifically, is there one particular thing where you know God has been giving you a little poke for a long time? Wouldn’t the Covenant Service be a great time finally to say ‘yes’ to him, ‘I’ll do it’?
Thirdly and finally, the Magi decided to give.
So yes, here we’re onto the gold, frankincense and myrrh. Not a casserole dish in sight.
The popular idea is that gold is for a king, frankincense for a priest, and myrrh to mark death. It’s very appealing, it fits with what comes later in Jesus’ ministry, but Matthew makes no such connections. This interpretation first arose in the second century AD, courtesy of the church leader Irenaeus.
As the New Testament scholar Dr Ian Paul says [in the article linked above],
In the narrative, they are simply extravagant gifts fit for the true ‘king of the Jews’.
And it’s as simple as that. The ‘king of the Jews’ who will come to be seen in Matthew as the king of all creation is worthy of extravagant giving. The gifts presented are worth a lot of money and come on the back of the immense giving of time and energy the magi have put in to come this great distance and pay homage to Jesus.
I wonder whether as experienced Christians our whole approach to giving becomes jaded. The giving of our time and energy can feel no different from a job or from involvement in a social activity or a hobby. The giving of our money can seem like little more than a subscription to a favourite cause, like just another standing order or direct debit from our current account.
Does it take the passion of newer Christians to get us in touch again with what giving could be for disciples of Jesus? Younger Christians are often passionate and inelegant in their worship and their giving. We may look down on their uncouth offering. We may give them a withering look or damn them with faint praise. We may do something similar not just with new Christians but with new churches.
But rather than resort to dressing up cynicism in spiritual language, we might better ask how the giving aspect of our own discipleship might be freshened up. Maybe in our spiritual lives we are tired and worn out. So perhaps that means we need a renewed encounter with Jesus himself.
And surely the God of love and mercy wants to refresh our dry Christian lives. He would love to give us a new vision of his Son through the work of his Holy Spirit in our lives. He would love to bring us to the feet of Jesus again. For there we encounter the One whose whole existence is of self-giving love. He loved us enough to give up heaven for human life – and humble, poor, obscure human life at that. He loved us enough to walk the way of the Cross so that our woundedness might be healed, our sins forgiven, and the power of dark forces broken. He loves us even now so much that he longs to give eternal life and spiritual gifts and blessings.
Yes, when we encounter God the Giver in Jesus Christ, we shall surely be inspired into a renewal of our own giving.
What I’d like to note as we conclude is that in twelve short verses where Matthew tells the story vividly but concisely, the Magi who leave by dodging Herod are men who have been changed from how they were at the beginning of the account. They arrived through the dubious offices of astrology. But they left, having listened to Scripture, having met Jesus, and having listened to God in a dream.
So are we open on this Covenant Sunday to being changed, too? Who are our Gentiles who need the Good News? Are we just sermon-tasters of theoretical Bible students, or are we like the Magi ‘going’ – that is, putting what we have heard into action? And have we encountered Jesus the Giver, who stirs up the extravagant giving of our hearts?
Friends, we too need to be changed. May we be open this Covenant Service and this New Year to the transforming power of Christ through his Holy Spirit.
Big Circumstance 