Home By Another Road
One of the benefits of growing up in a particular setting is that you tend to have a pretty good grasp of the ins and outs of that time and place. For those who grew up Methodist, or in Methodist churches, the Covenant Prayer that I read this morning may have sounded familiar. Or it might not have. While Methodist services can vary drastically from place to place, hopefully there are some things that feel familiar. And surely there are rituals and general feelings that resonate across Christian traditions, things that aren’t unique to the United Methodist Church. Although, that can also be a trap, like how the eucharistic liturgy that they use in Catholic Mass is almost the same as our liturgy but not quite. So the first time I went to Mass with my fiancee, Anna, who grew up Catholic, the priest started the Great Thanksgiving by saying, “The Lord be with you,” and the congregation responded with “And with your spirit.” And I thought, ok, a little different but I think I know how this goes. And the priest said, “Lift up your hearts,” which was met with “we lift them up to the Lord.” And I thought, alright, I definitely know how this goes. So when the priest came back with, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” I hit him with the most confident “It is right to give our thanks and praise” while everyone around me shared in the “It is right and just” line. To be fair, that’s what we Methodists used to say, too, so really we’re the odd ones. But either way, it was a good lesson for me in cultural humility.
There are parts of other cultures that aren’t always as accessible as a mostly common communion liturgy. I’ve lived in Western New York for just over six months now, and I’m still not really any closer to understanding the Wegmans hype. And that’s ok. We can’t expect those from other places to have the same relationship with rituals, stores, or stories that we have had opportunities to encounter our entire lives. Which is why it’s understandable when these non-Jewish astrologers arrive at the court of a Jewish ruler having read the wrong Jewish prophecy. They arrive reflecting the words of the prophet Isaiah, the words that we heard read this morning, about the gathering of the nation back and the increase of wealth. This is a prophecy about the restoration of the Jewish people following their exile to Babylon. This section of the Book of Isaiah was written after the Jewish people had returned from their exile, and sought to convey a message of hope for some sort of renewal following the traumatic experience of having their most important city, Jerusalem, levelled. The author of this portion of the prophecy was envisioning a time when Jerusalem would be rebuilt to its former glory, when its population would bounce back and the economy would see investment from all sorts of outside backers. People from all over the world would go to Jerusalem to spend their money, and the city would be as big, as powerful, and as wealthy as it had been before—and more so.
The magi, the central figures in today’s gospel reading, observed the signs of the times, signs they took to reveal the birth of a Jewish messiah, and read those signs through the lens of the restoration of power. That’s what makes sense. Even for outsiders, it only makes sense that the one who is prophesied to lead a people group out of oppression and into a new kingdom would seek to restore the political and economic prestige of the most important city for that people group. There were many insiders, many of the Jewish people, who would have agreed that this was the leader they were waiting for: the one who would restore the wealth and power they had once known. That’s what made sense, that was their idea of success and security. And today, this remains the prevailing vision we cast for ourselves of wealth and prosperity. We seek out leaders and rulers who are strong, who preach guarantees of the return of the old economy, the old patterns of influence. We rest in the comfort of hoping for a turn around, a shift in the ways things have been. Even when the same old patterns of despair come creeping into the corners of our vision. Even when the rulers who make these promises turn around and invade other nations, violating sovereignty and risking escalation. Even when the economic leaders seek to build wealth on shaky ground, risking economic collapse.
The magi arrive on the scene having travelled this road, the road of Isaiah 60. The road of power and might, the road of wealth and economic restoration, the road of traditional, institutional, normal power. But this is not the road they will take back home. The road they first travelled, the one that led them to Herod, to the imperial puppet, to the one profiting from the occupation of his own people, to the seat of political and religious power—that road did not lead them to the Christ child. Because the Christ child doesn’t live on that road. Instead, they had to reorient themselves, looking not to the leader described in Isaiah, but to the one pictured in Micah chapter 5.
“But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be the one of peace.”
This is the road down which they find the messiah. The road that leads to Bethlehem, a city nine miles from Jerusalem. Bethlehem was not a capital city in any sense. It is not where the king or governor ruled from, not where the high priest prayed, not where the markets were most bustling. Not the home of the scholarly elites or the wealthiest merchants. It was average, plain, somewhat rural. It was a city in the same way that places like Batavia and Canandaigua are technically cities. No shade on Batavia and Canandaigua, I’m sure they are lovely places and have a lot going for them. But they’re not the kinds of places where multitudes of camels would be found carrying heaps of gold and expensive incense. The road that the prophet Micah maps out for us takes us away from all that. It takes us away from the center—the center of power, the center of wealth, the center of religion. And it leads us towards the margins, towards the people and places where power is not. This is the road travelled by the shepherds, the outcasts barely getting by, and by the magi, the foreigners seeking an encounter with the messiah for reasons honestly unknown.
This is the road we are called to travel. This is the road on which we will encounter the Christ, as we seek to match our step with his. It’s a wide road—not wide so as to accommodate another lane of traffic or more street parking. But wide enough for all of us to travel together, finding strength, finding community, and finding hope along the way. As this season of Christmas comes to an end, as we continue down this road once more, of telling the story of the way that Christ walked, let this be our call: to travel home by another road. Not by the road of power, that bars the stranger and the poor. Not the road of kings and elites and pulpits and princes. Let us travel home together down the road of the shepherd, the one who feeds the flock, distributing justice and leading in peace. Let us travel this road, finding our home along the way, not in the center of it all, but at the margins. This is the work of Christmas. May it begin. Amen.