Matthew 2:1-12
The Second Sunday in Christmastide
1.
 |
| "Epiphany" (www.janetmckenzie.com) |
Henry’s lost a lot of weight. Eating’s become a chore. And his neck is unstable, and sore all the time. All this is startling. But, instead, what struck me yesterday was this. How fully—even in his diminished condition—how fully Henry trusts in the God who brought him here to you. Many years ago. When he hears me say your names—Diane, Gretchen, Dennis, Donna, Antony—his tired eyes brighten like stars over Bethlehem. You are everything to him. Maybe I can say that in a different way. In his own wonderfully circumspect way, Henry notes that a strange combination of relationships and needs and hunger and hope brought him to this congregation two decades ago. “And I have never been the same,” he said to me yesterday, “because of all the love, and all the friendship I’ve found in this congregation.” And then this: “God has shown me a better way,” he said to me. “Through my friends at church.” “God has shown me a better way.” In his season of tiring, grinding, physical concern, Henry doesn’t have to guess at who God is. He knows who God is. Because of you.
There’s a star, inlaid and polished, in the flooring beneath the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem now. Pilgrims travel to the West Bank from all over the world to kneel before that star, to touch it, as it represents the place, the actual place where Jesus was born more than two centuries ago. While that kind of devotion can be a beautiful and touching thing, it misses the more important point, the more dynamic truth—that the God of Love and Compassion is embodied in ordinary, run of the mill, weirdly composed communities (like this one) where wise guys like Henry Smith meet the mercy and the love they’ve needed all along. And in that meeting, we’re all changed. Every one of us. Changed, redirected and set on a whole new course. Like Henry. Who lies now in a Dover hospital bed. Knowing who God is. And trusting that he will be OK.
You see, this is about the baby born in a Bethlehem cave, and the old man lying in a Dover hospital, and it’s about all of you and what happens here day by day, week after week. You see, your love—and God’s love in you—has revealed in Henry’s life the joy and the wonder at the heart of his own journey, the goodness in his own soul, the grace that will never leave him and walks gladly beside him in good and bad times alike. Like those magi, you see, Henry will never again need the dark, brooding, meanness of Herod in his life. Like those magi, he’s walking a different route. He’s going home by another way. And I’ve got to tell you. It’s a beautiful thing, as tender and vulnerable as he is right now. It's a beautiful thing to see.
2.
What an amazing story, this epiphany story. And how oddly composed, its details and plot twists. How is it—for example—that a Child who comes only to unite, only to bless, inspires such fear in a King like Herod? And how is it that a Child whose ways will feed the hungry and heal the broken and forgive betrayal incites rage and rancor in the halls of power?
Just as it is with the magi.
As they appear on stage in Matthew’s second chapter, these magi are ready for adventure, open to all manner of signs and portents, excited even by the scriptures of other traditions. They come from afar with dreams and hopes for a better world. “Show us the way.” “Where is the newborn king?” And when King Herod invites their counsel and begs their assistance, initially they are more than willing to collaborate. For how can it be that Love threatens anybody? And how can it be that such a Child would move any monarch to rage and rancor?
But these magi, their spirits are lifted so delightfully by the star shining above the Child’s cave, and their hearts are turned so radically inside out by Mary’s boundless love and the Child’s ordinary beauty, that these magi see in their new dreams the counsel of God, the wisdom of truth. They are changed in community. As we are by the little Christ’s Gospel of peace. And Christ moves now in their minds and in their hearts to send them home by another route. Not through the same tired ways and habits of Herod and Hegseth, Johnson and Trump. Not through the deceptive, duplicitous promises Herod makes, over and over again, to the wise and kind. This Gospel will change the way we travel. This Gospel will shake up our prayers and priorities. This Gospel will turn our hearts inside out. “Because they were warned in [that] dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another route.”
By another route. By another route.
3.
But for a day, for an afternoon at least, New York gave us something else, something very, very different. I was, in particular, moved (and nearly to tears) by the invocation delivered—before the inauguration itself—by Imam Khalid Latif, who serves as University Chaplain at NYU in the city. His was no paean to American exceptionalism, no cry of redemption for white Christian nationalism or the triumph of one religion over all others. Instead, it was a stunning prayer for solidarity and courage, and a thrilling call to leadership shared across cultures and grounded in justice not privilege. And standing before a crowd of young, visionary democrats (small d, of course) from every culture imaginable, the imam delivered his prayer as a Jewish rabbi, a Hindu teacher, two Black pastors, and a Sikh elder nodded behind him, with an occasional ‘amen’ or ‘that’s right’ thrown in for support and encouragement. Diversity, pluralism, multicultural leadership—not as an idea or an ad campaign, but an embodied reality. Shoulder to shoulder.
I want to take a few moments—as I finish today—to read a portion of that prayer. And I thought initially I’d just read a short paragraph or two—but I just couldn’t pare it all down to a few sentences. So maybe, just maybe, as I read this portion of Imam Khalid’s prayer, maybe you can close your eyes and pray it with me, and let us take this prayer to heart, as did the rabbi, and the pastors, and the elders who prayed it together on Thursday afternoon in New York:
So let us pray.
Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, Ya Arham Ar-Rahimeen - Most Merciful of Those Who Show Mercy - we turn to You on this day from our city with hopeful hearts. Thank you for this moment. Thank you for the amazing individuals You have gathered here, diverse in color, language, journey and name, but united in purpose, stitched together by shared hopes, all yearning to build something meaningful, lasting, and rooted in love, dignity, respect and justice no longer for the few, but for all.I have to imagine, friends, that this is the prayer of the magi on their way home. “Teach us,” they pray, and we pray together, “that the city we pray for, the country we pray for, the world we pray for—is the world we must also build.” “Help us,” they pray, and we pray together, “to show up for one another not just in moments of crisis, but in the long, patient work of care.” I have to imagine that this is the prayer of the magi today. On their way home “by another route.” On the path that’s been transformed, reimagined by their encounter with the Child of Peace, the Mother of Grace, and the star that bathed them both in light.
We come before You mindful that moments like this do not arrive on their own. They are carried forward by sacrifice, by organizing, by courage, by people who refused to accept that the way things were was the way they had to remain.
We come knowing that this day stands on the shoulders of so many who were told to wait their turn, to quiet their demands, to lower their expectations, but instead chose to believe that another [world] was possible.
We recognize that belief is not abstract. It was practiced by tenants organizing against displacement, by workers demanding fair wages, by parents advocating for their children’s futures, by communities who kept showing up even when the odds said they should not.
We gather today with hearts shaped by this city - by its noise and its neighborhoods, by its subways and sanctuaries, by the dreams carried in many languages and the prayers whispered on crowded blocks.
We thank You for New York City. For a place that has taught the world how difference can become strength, how survival can become solidarity, how strangers can become neighbors. And for being a place that taught us that a young, immigrant, democratic socialist, Muslim can be bold enough to run and brave enough to win. Not by abandoning conviction, but by standing firmly within it; not by shrinking who he is, but by trusting that authenticity can move a city, [a country] toward justice.
Remind all New Yorkers - those born here and those who arrived yesterday - that this city belongs to all of us, and that our liberation is bound together.
[And so] Help us show up for one another not just in moments of crisis, but in the long, patient work of care. Teach us that the city we pray for is the city we must also build.
There was—in the imam’s delivery that day—something so profoundly restless, even a bit unsettling, but also somehow healing and merciful and gracious, all at the same time. As if he believes, really believes, we can do hard things together in this country, we can challenge corruption and greed and colonialism in systems that betray us, and we can do it all with love and affection and respect for one another. Because, as he says, this country belongs to all of us, and our liberation is bound together. And again, behind him, broadly smiling, a choir of children from all over the world, and a New York rabbi nodding in delight, and two black pastors calling out “that’s right,” and a Sikh elder and a Hindu teacher. All of them shoulder to shoulder. Alleluias on their lips. The magi going home by another route.
Amen and Ashe!
