| January 6, 2002 Isaiah 60: 1-6 + Ephesians 3:2-6 + Matthew 2:1 12 |
| In the Old Testament prophetic literature, the return from Exile and the end of the captivity in Babylon was the historic saving event. Today’s prophet in poetic images and musical verses captures the sense of that time and records for all time the mood and the hope while he chronicles the transformation of these people who once so proudly ruled and worshiped from Jerusalem. |
| In the New Testament literature, the birth of Christ, is the historic saving event that ends the exile from Paradise, and in equally poetic images and musical verses, the sense of that time is recorded for us with no less hope than before, and the transformation of these people who again proudly worshiped and ruled from Jerusalem is recorded for us. |
| A people rooted in that living tradition then, continue to see, feel, and understand their lives in the same way In lower Manhattan, a heap of smoking ruins is no less an opportunity to rise in faith than the smoking ruins of the Temple the Romans left in about the year 70 still very powerfully set in the memory of Matthew and his Church. But it isn’t always that dramatic, and that obvious. There can be just as well, the smoking ruins of a relationship gone down, the smoking ruins of a life and a dream drowned in alcohol or drugs, the mess of a business venture in which everything has been risked pulled down by an economy that collapses in profit taking and greed, or the smoking ruins of an automobile that has snuffed out the life of a young person at the threshold of greatness. |
| “Faith” was once defined as the capacity to remember in the dark what we once saw in the light. As a child, when frightened or alone, I would sometimes hum familiar tunes to just make some sound to build up courage and ward off the evil I imagined and feared. I believe we pick up Isaiah the prophet these days to let his poetic images and the sounds of his words hum for us in the background as we face darkness uncertainty and fear Things were disintegrating for Matthew and his Church. Something new was coming, something new had happened, something new was unavoidable, so Matthew picked up the Prophet and in a sense, began to hum, because he knew from being in the light that someday, when the forces that rule now within the mysterious mix of good, evil and human freedom have run their course, God’s gracious plan for us will prevail. We will be one human family revealed as God’s chosen people, destined for an eternity of communion. |
| The story we tell from the ancient text of Matthew is the story of people moving from darkness to light, and doing so is to t_ake up a life long discipleship. God disturbs our comfort, challenges our prejudices, forces us to consider the demands |
| of love by taking his place among the poor as he did in Bethlehem. In Jesus again, God challenges disciples and goes before them, waiting again for disciples to find him. He waits, but not in shrines or in doctrines, but among the hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, sick and alien, and we walk there in darkness now remembering what we have seen in the light. |
| It is the hope of our faith that we live now in the dawn time with the light coming, and far enough along for us to know which way to look. It will be light again, says the faith affirmed by Matthew’s Gospel, and we shall know it is light when we can see well enough to recognize the divine presence in the face of another not someone who looks like us, but someone who is alien and different from us. If we have expected God to look like us, we have been fools looking into a mirror The God whose coming Matthew heralds is a God Herod and people like him cannot see, for they are unwilling to abandon their power, their control, their expectations and be swallowed up in darkness. |
| Today what Isaiah hoped for as a future blessing, Matthew proclaims as a present reality; in Jesus, all humankind is drawn together from the darkness of whatever has isolated us and kept us from seeing Today what Isaiah hoped for and Matthew proclaimed we shall live and celebrate in as much as we can welcome th Light and all that reveals about us and for us. Today we stand beside the Magi, or they stand among us and we gaze in wonder at what we see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the whole universe cannot contain now enclosed in a baby’s body They brought gifts: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for someone who was to die. We can’t stand here empty handed and claim to be disciples. It is time to gather our gifts, and in them and through them reveal what we believe and what we have become as we move from the darkness into the light. |