Many Episcopalians find their way to the Episcopal Church from another way – another denomination or even no faith at all. One common theme among those making their way to the Episcopal Church is that they are fleeing a faith that is “black and white,” or “either/or.” They find comfort in the Episcopal Church because the Episcopal Church embraces the “gray,” or the “both/and.” The appeal of those other traditions is obvious – there is no ambiguity or need for discernment in a “black and white” faith. Something is either right or wrong. That kind of clarity is refreshing in a world that is always complex, complicated, and ambiguous. But our Episcopal tradition does not offer the comfort that comes from absolutes. Our tradition helps us find comfort within, not despite, the complexity and ambiguity of both our sacred and secular lives.
Take our gospel lesson today. We could easily read the Epiphany story, the story of the visitation of the Wise Men or Magi, and make easy, defendable categories: Herod is bad, the Magi are good. But before we dig in too deeply in that dichotomy, we are going to be good Episcopalians this morning and look into the gray. We start with the Magi. There is something quite magical about these wise people of thought. Their magic is not in how they used their mental capacities to track a star to find the Messiah. What is magical about the Magi is their response to finding Jesus. Matthew tells in the literal translation that the Magi “rejoiced with a really, really big joy.”[i] These Magi, who know very little about the life, death, and resurrection of the king of the Jews feel something, feel really, really big joy in the Christ Child because they, unlike most of us, have “mastered the art of hoping in God.”[ii]
Ellen Davis, Old Testament scholar, explains there is a Proverbs verse that helps us understand the Magi. Proverbs 10.28 says, “The hope of the righteous is gladness.” She goes on to explain, “Those who train their sights on the faithfulness of God, ‘the righteous’ – they already experience joy even before they see their hopes fulfilled, even if they never live to see (in this world, at least) the clear fulfillment of all that God has promised…That is the kind of joy that burst forth that night on the streets of Roman-occupied Bethlehem, like flowers springing suddenly out of stone pavement. It was joy that takes root in nothing more (or less) substantial than hope itself.”[iii]
The Magi’s hope does not teach us that because God is born in Jesus all is right in the world. I am not sure any of us would believe that anyway, given the current state of the world. Instead, as Davis explains, “Christian hope is something very different from the natural feeling of elation that comes when things are going our way. No, hope is not a feeling that ebbs and flows. Rather, it is a way of living that we choose; and gradually, day by day, we learn to be graceful in it. Hope is a way of living beyond our own limited vision and natural fears, a way of living into God’s faithfulness and there finding fullness of joy forevermore.”[iv]
Now, we could easily stop our interpretation there, and say, “Don’t be bad like Herod, be hopeful and righteous like the Magi, and all shall be well.” But remember how I told you about the ambiguity of the Episcopal Church? Let’s go back to Herod – the supposed “wrong” to the “right” of the Magi. We know Herod is a horrible, power-hungry, paranoid ruler. We are told that when these foreigners come out saying a new King of the Jews has been born, Herod is afraid. He’s not scared of a baby – he’s scared about the threat to his power. And so, he pulls together his own biblical scholars in secret, and then talks to the Magi in secret to get them to find this baby – not so that he can worship him, as Herod claims, but so that he can kill the threat to his power. And when that does not work because the Magi go home another way, we find out in the verses following our text today, that Herod has all the boys in Bethlehem under the age of two murdered – just to make super sure that his power is secure.
But the problem of making Herod out to be the villain is we skip over one key point. The text says, all of Jerusalem is frightened by this new king too. As Davis explains, “Herod could not have secured the deaths of all those children, if he were the only one who was afraid. Matthew is pointing to the clearly documented fact that fear is contagious, and [fear] readily crosses party lines…Fear spreads like plague through an unhealthy system, infecting not only those who are powerless to defend themselves – the Jewish families in Bethlehem – but also infecting the relatively powerful, the ruling elite in Jerusalem, who sensed (with that gut-gripping fear that comes in the middle of the night) the fragility of the base on which their power rested.”[v]
So, before we try to simplify again – Magi are good, Herod (and the people of faith in Jerusalem) are bad,” Ellen Davis encourages us to see another way. She says, “This is not a simple picture of them and us, as we would prefer to believe. Rather, if we read the story deeply and honestly, I think we will identify both with fearful Jerusalem and with hopeful Magi; for they both reveal aspects of our own situation that we have not seen clearly before…there is judgment for us in that picture of Herod and all Jerusalem. Matthew holds [that judgment] before us like a mirror, challenging us to acknowledge our fear, to recognize the violence that springs from fear and will doubtless perpetuate [violence]. Yet Matthew does not consign us to despair. For alongside that mirror is a second one – you might call [the second mirror] a glass of vision, for [the second mirror] show us something a little ahead of where we are now. [The mirror] shows what we as a church can and will look like if we stand against the tyranny of self-perpetuating fear. We will look like the Magi.”[vi]
I cannot think of a better time to read this “both/and” text, this “gray” text where everything is not so rigid as we might prefer. Many in our communities are full of fear right now – fear from what the changes of a new administration will do in power, fear of violence like the wonton killing of those in New Orleans this New Year’s, and even fear of financial instability in these volatile times. We do not honor the Magi today because their message is “Just have hope and all shall be well!” Instead, as Davis argues, Matthew, “challenges us to be the community of resistance that the church has been…from the beginning. [Matthew] challenges us as a church to examine and deepen our understanding of the systems that generate fear for ourselves and others. He challenges us as a church to find ways out of those systems – not to despair, though the systems are large and powerful, but to find and commit ourselves to the small steps by which we may depart from the country governed by fear and go by another road to our own country, that place we call the kingdom of God. Matthew’s Gospel challenges us to live boldly in the hope of the Magi, so that having rejoiced with them at the first coming of Christ, we may at his second coming know fullness of joy forevermore.”[vii] That may not be the “right/wrong” word you were looking for this morning. But I think the beauty of the gray of Holy Scripture today is exactly what we need. Amen.
[i] Ellen F. Davis, “Stargazers,” January 5, 2003, Sermons from Duke Chapel: Voices from “A Great Towering Church,” William H. Willimon, ed. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 337.
[ii] Davis, 338.
[iii] Davis 338.
[iv] Davis, 339.
[v] Davis, 340.
[vi] Davis, 341.
[vii] Davis, 341.
Seeking and Serving 