The Scope of the Gospel
Matthew 2.1-12
Epiphany
January 5, 2025
Debra Blue has suggested some creative alterations to our traditional displays of the Christmas story, alterations that might just shock us out of our comfortable familiarity with the story and get us to notice some of the important details. She writes, “I’ve been thinking maybe someone should start a small group of guerilla activists whose task it would be to plant shocking figures in manger scenes. They could work both inside private homes as well as in the most visible places. Suburban housewives will shriek to find Batman figures on the roof of the manger on their mantle. Churches will be horrified to find Barbies and plastic dinosaurs on their altars. But people will pay attention. They will look twice. They may even stop their car. They may even get out when they see a garden troll or a pink flamingo or a big plastic Homer Simpson leaning over the baby Jesus on the Cathedral lawn. I actually wonder if I’m not the first to come up with that idea. It might have been some guerilla group that first placed the wise men in the manger scenes.” [Debra Blue, Sensual Orthodoxy, p. 17 (Cathedral Hill Press, 2004); emphasis added]
Blue makes an excellent point. We’ve become so used to seeing the wise men in our manger scenes and crèches, on our Christmas trees and Christmas cards, that we may very well have forgotten how shocking their presence in Matthew’s Christmas story really is (as well as forgetting that they don’t show up at the manger, but visit the Holy Family in a house when Jesus is a year or two old). They really are among the last folks you would expect to encounter in the Christmas story. This group of wise men, or magi, who come seeking the “King of the Jews,” are not Jews. They are gentiles. They come from the East, perhaps Babylon (modern day Baghdad), and are most likely pagan.
The wise men are identified in Greek as Magi. This is a broad term that was applied to a variety of practitioners of pagan religious arts: magicians, astrologers, fortune tellers, priests who “read” the entrails of sacrificed animals and the flight patterns of birds in order to discern the will of the gods. Matthew seems to be using the term in the sense of astrologers since the magi have come to Jerusalem because they have seen a star indicating the birth of a new Jewish king. [Raymond Brown, An Adult Christ at Christmas, 11] Our word magic is derived from magi. Not surprisingly, astrology, magic and all of these other practices associated with the term magi are harshly frowned upon in the Old Testament. Yet here they are, a group of magi come to Jerusalem from the pagan east, seeking the King of the Jews. The ultimate Gentile outsiders have come seeking Christ.
The first chapter of John’s Gospel is the assigned lectionary text for the Second Sunday of Christmas, which is technically today, as well as for Christmas day. In that familiar passage, John declares that Christ is the Word, the Wisdom of God, and as such, he is the light which enlightens every person. [John 1.4, 9] Here, in Matthew’s Gospel, we see that light guiding wise men from Persia to the Christ child, even though they are not Jews. To be sure, they only know in part what it is they seek; they have to stop in Jerusalem and ask for directions, directions which come from the Jewish scriptures. Nonetheless, they are being led on by the Divine light; they are being enlightened by God though they are from outside the chosen people. God, it seems, is at work everywhere, among all people, in ways we can only dimly understand.
Indeed, the wise men are being held up by Matthew as model disciples. They catch a faint glimmer of the light, a faint indication that God is at work, and they hurry to join in. They travel hundreds of miles and must have made great personal sacrifices so that they can give their gifts and their adoration to Jesus. Meanwhile, the good religious people, the experts in the scriptures, who ought to have been there, who one expects to have been there, stay put in Jerusalem. Somehow, for all their knowledge and belief, they fail to recognize the signs and to respond as good disciples. The wrong people show up at Jesus’ birthday party. According to the conventional wisdom of religious folks, the magi shouldn’t have even received an invitation, and yet, they did. They shouldn’t have been included in the story, shouldn’t have been in the manger scene, or, more accurately, at the Holy Family’s house, but there they are, not only in the story, but getting a moment in the spotlight, outshone only by the Holy Child himself. The citizenship of God’s kingdom, it seems, is broader, more diverse, more inclusive then we might imagine.
This isn’t the first indication in Matthew’s Gospel of the extensiveness of God’s love. The very first verse of Matthew declares, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Matthew then launches into a genealogy tracing Jesus’ ancestry beginning with Abraham. The genealogy is more concerned with theology than history—witness its neat organization into three sections of fourteen generations each and the fact that it at times skips several centuries between names. The theology is evident beginning with Abraham, who God called to travel to a foreign land, promising to bless him with many decedents. But this is a blessing with a larger purpose. God tells Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing….and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Gen 12.2-3] Matthew starts his Gospel with Abraham and God’s desire to bless all people, both Abraham’s direct decedents and everyone else. Gentiles have always been included in God’s plan. They have never been outside of God’s care. God’s love and God’s desire for human thriving embraces everyone. No one is excluded.
The genealogy then works its way through Israelite history, toward King David and beyond to Jesus. But along the way it takes a few unexpected turns. Such biblical genealogies are normal male centered affairs, having been produced in patriarchal cultures. But Matthew goes against expectations and includes 5 women. The inclusion of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is perhaps not too surprising. But the other 4 women are all outsiders—women of foreign birth or questionable morals.
First is Tamar, daughter-in-law of Judah. She was probably a Canaanite, and thus a Gentile. She is twice widowed without having given birth to an heir for Judah’s eldest son. When her father-in-law refuses to allow her to marry his third and youngest son, which was the accepted and expected practice, she takes matters into her own hands. She disguises herself as a prostitute. Judah solicits her and ends up fathering two sons by her, thus providing his deceased son with heirs and providing Tamar with the security of sons to care for her in her old age. When he learns what she has done, Judah, knowing he has shirked his duty by denying her marriage, declares Tamar to be more righteous than himself.
Next is Rahab. She was a Canaanite prostitute who assisted the Israelite spies sent by Joshua to scout out Jericho. She protected them so that they were able to safely return to Joshua with information that enabled the Israelites to capture Jericho. Rahab professed faith in Israel’s God and lived out her life among the Israelites.
Then comes Ruth. She is a widow from Moab, ancient enemy of Israel. Yet, displaying great faithfulness and love, she travels with her also widowed Israelite mother-in-law, Naomi, back to Bethlehem. There this immigrant woman works to provide for herself and Naomi before convincing (perhaps more accurately, seducing) a local landowner named Boaz to marry her, thus providing long term security for both herself and her elderly mother-in-law. Ruth, through this marriage, becomes the grandmother of King David.
Finally, there is Bathsheba. Matthew doesn’t give her name, instead referring to her as the “wife of Uriah”. [Matt 1.6] Perhaps Matthew does this to remind his readers that Bathsheba, though an Israelite herself, married a foreigner, Uriah the Hittite. By Matthew’s time, such a marriage to a foreigner would cause a woman to be considered a Gentile herself. The reference to Uriah also calls to mind King David’s spectacular abuse of his power by first committing adultery with Bathsheba and then having Uriah killed in an attempt to cover up the affair. Bathsheba’s second son was David’s heir, the wise King Solomon.
All four of these women were outsiders, in some cases outcasts, because of their gender, their nationality, or their actions. And yet here they are, crucial figures in the genealogy of Jesus. The Messiah, the Christ is descended from Gentile women, from foreigners, from prostitutes, from women who pushed the boundaries. As Cynthia Campbell observes, “These women demanded justice. They were courageous and loyal, and without them, the story does not go forward.” [Christmas in the Four Gospel Homes, 15] God worked through each of them to accomplish God’s purposes—purposes which eventually led to the birth of Jesus, the incarnate light that enlightens all people, the one in whom the promise to make Abraham a blessing to the world takes on a new and powerful meaning.
Here we see the same theme we discovered in the story of the wise men: God’s saving work is inclusive, extending to everyone: male and female, Jew and Gentile—the whole world. My New Testament Professor, Eugene Boring, who passed away last year, made the following observation in a commentary published way back in 1995: “Inclusiveness is not merely a contemporary buzzword. It is a deep note sounded in the first paragraph of the New Testament, a paragraph that sums up the story of the Old Testament, binding the two books of the covenant into one book of the story of God’s saving acts in history. God’s purpose is to include all.” [Boring, “Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreter’ s Bible, Vol. VIII: New Testament Articles, Matthew, Mark, (Abingdon Press, 1995), 132]
This theme of inclusiveness and welcome forms bookends on Matthew’s Gospel. Here at the beginning, Gentiles play prominent roles in Jesus’ ancestry and become the first people to recognize Jesus’ identity, the first to bring him gifts and worship him. At the end of Matthew, the resurrected Jesus, before ascending into heaven, gives his followers a mission: to go into all the world and share the good news, making disciples in every nation. [Matt 28.19-29] The scope of the Gospel is universal: God reaches out to all people in love. God’s purpose is to bless everyone with life abundant and eternal.
Herod and the religious leaders don’t understand this. Herod is obsessed with preserving his power through any means necessary, from lying to the wise men about his purposes to killing young children in hopes of taking out his perceived rival. The religious leaders, well, perhaps their vision is too narrow, too exclusive, to make room for a poor child born in a backwater town whose coming is announced by folks from the wrong country who practice the wrong religion. But the wise men, they respond to the light they are given: they recognize God is at work, they seek Jesus, they sacrifice and they worship.
So, the question for us is, will we react like Herod and the priests and scribes, or will we join with the wise men and celebrate God’s inclusive love and welcoming grace? Will we close our hearts to others or will we choose to participate in the diversity of the Beloved Community which Jesus is building?
A couple years back, during the height of the pandemic, Cass called my attention to a picture published in a National Geographic article. [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/the-resilience-of-the-human-spirit-captured-in-29-stunning-images; Dec. 7, 2021] It depicted masked congregants standing in the pews of a darkened church holding candles during an Easter vigil at St. Margaret of Scotland Catholic Church in Foley, Alabama. According to the caption, the priest, Rev. Paul Zohgby, conducted the service in both English and Spanish. A few years prior, Father Zohgby noticed the growth of the immigrant Latino population in his community. So, hoping to better minister to everyone, he learned Spanish. He explained, “We need a church with big fat open arms. I was born and raised in Mobile, AL. The core of Christ’s message is to welcome the stranger.” [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/got-trouble-have-faith-says-residents-america-most-religious-state-alabama; Father Zohgby is still at St. Margaret and their website shows a Mass in Spanish is held every Sunday at 12:30]
By welcoming the Latino strangers in his community, Father Zohgby is imitating the inclusive love of God which worked through foreign women like Tamar and Ruth, the love which led the Gentile wise men to Jesus, the love which Jesus commands us to share with all people. God has a vision of all people united in “one, new humanity.” [Eph 2.15] This is the good news of Epiphany: in Christ, God’s light has risen and it shines on the whole world. May we be like the wise men and welcome that light. May we be true disciples of Jesus and welcome others in God’s name, sharing the light with everyone we meet through words of hope, deeds of love and acts of compassion. Amen.