Epiphany 1997 | Matthew 2:1-16

I have a confession to make: I was a weird teenager. I mean WEIRD. I don't suppose that comes as much of a surprise to anyone here, actually, but there it is. I didn't date or go to rock concerts or smoke cigarettes in the bathroom at school or do any of the other, normal, healthy behaviors one expects from teenagers. No, I was like a little adult running around in a 3-piece suit and tie. What's more, I was a little PREACHER adult.

I would walk around the halls of my high-school carrying a huge red Bible, sitting down with folks I didn't know at lunch and asking them if they knew whether or not they were going to hell. I used to climb on top of the roof of our high-school radio station with a long microphone cord and waving my huge red Bible at the passing cars, would preach the Sunday afternoon away on WDGC-FM, "the radio voice of Downers Grove."

Now, as wonderfully eccentric as this sounds to me now, at the time I was a very lonely, and not a very happy person. You see, all of my friends at church went to the church's own high school. My parents, either because of their wisdom or their poverty, made me go to public high school, where I was the ultimate social pariah. "Baiting the preacher-boy" was favorite pastime at my school, and of course guileless as I was, I always fell for their pranks hook-line-and-sinker. More than once I was locked in the control booth at the radio station and pelted with pictures clipped from Playboy magazine. Tapes of my show would mysteriously be erased, and my records could often be found being used as frizbees on the radio station lawn.

I was one pitiful puppy in high school, folks. I knew what it was like to be the outcast, in a big way. But the ironic part was that in my own head, THEY, the other kids who were tormenting me, THEY were the outcasts. My faith told me that I was one of the elect, one of the chosen ones who would spend eternity in everlasting light, and the other kids, well, unless they wanted to be social pariahs and do their body building with huge red volumes of scripture, they'd better just suit up and get ready for hell!

Believe it or not, this situation was very like the one Israel found itself in nearly 2,000 years ago. Picture it: here's this WEIRD little religion in the middle of nowhere that worships a god that can't be seen. They have no military power to speak of; they follow their own bizarre little customs; they are assaulted on all sides by countries with normal gods whose statues you CAN see; and yet here's this little country full of people insisting THEIR invisible God is the only one worthy of worship and that on their God's day of wrath, every country on earth, even the great Roman empire will be knee deep in blood and that only weird little Israel will be saved.

That, at least, was the party line, and in book after book of the Apocalyptic literature that passed for bestsellers in their day, this Day of wrath is described in appalling detail. The trouble was, that wasn't what God had in mind at all. And although I'm sure the Almighty appreciates a good page turner as well as the next deity, these Apocalypses were NOT on the divine agenda.

Time and again in Israel's history God had told them to take the Law of Moses to the gentiles. And Israel resolutely refused. God inspired edifying literature such as the books of Jonah and Ruth to send the message that the Law was for all nations, but like Jonah in this story, the people of Israel would rather be eaten by giant fish than to actually give their most precious gift--the Law--to the stinking heathen goyim across the river. What? Give the Law and miss the chance of seeing God make the rivers run red with their blood? Never!

I've said before, God relies on our help to get things done. But what happens when people refuse to cooperate with God? Not surprisingly, God takes matters into God's own hands. A baby is born in Bethleham, and a strange star that doesn't appear on any of the wise astrologers' charts suddenly burns brightly in the Western sky. And the learned men of the stinking heathen--and I want to point out that the stinking heathen spoken about here are the ancestors of you and me, Mr. and Mrs. Northern-European-Gentile-types--the learned men of the stinking heathen mount their even more odiferous camels and begin to follow the mysterious sign in the heavens.

And follow it they do, right into Bethlehem. And to Mary and Joseph's undisguised confusion, these learned leaders of the heathen, bow in adoration to their Jewish peasant baby, who doesn't seem to be paying any attention to them and who has an all-too-familiar and none-too-pleasant odor coming from his swaddling clothes. When the astrologers leave, Mary and Joseph are left shaking their heads, saying "What the heck just happened here?"

What happened there was the marvelous mystery that people of faith have the toughest time grasping: that the special people are not the only special people. That God seeks to embrace not just the elect, but also the heathen, the outcast, the misfit, the despised and rejected of the world. These are God's people, too.

The Jews tell a wonderful story about crossing the Red Sea. As the children of Israel fled through the Red Sea on dry land, they sang a song of triumph. They landed safely on the opposite shore, and the waves crashed down upon the pursuing Egyptians. The legend says that just then the song of triumph shifted to a minor key. When Moses asked God why, God wearily replied, "Because my other people have just perished."

I wish that as a teenager I had been able to see the other kids at my high school as "God's other people" instead of as unredeemed and degenerate souls bound only for hell. Because I reckon they could have taught me something about the Gospel. Something that I was sorely lacking. But like Jonah I would have rather been swallowed by a fish than have allowed myself to imagine for a second that these people had a relationship with God that was not on MY terms.

This morning I would like to put to you the question: Who are the "outsiders" for us? Is it the Jews, the Russians, the homeless, the welfare mothers, the crack users, the hippies, the Democrats, the Republicans, the Jehovah's Witnesses? When we think about "US"--the good people vs. "THEM"--the bad people, who do we think of as THEM?

And is it not possible that Jesus comes to them as well, setting a table in the midst of his enemies, and inviting the prostitute and the tax collector, the religious zealot and the Pharisee, the stinking heathen and anyone else who will eat with him to sit, to dine, to be refreshed and renewed and redeemed. Who are the other people in our imaginations who are not worthy to sit at Christs' table? For these are the very people whom YOU need to reach out to, to extend this dinner invitation, and to break bread with.

The wise men came from afar bearing precious gifts. But we, we have wise men in our own backyards, and the value of their gifts is beyond telling. Reach out to them, folks. Invite them to dine with Christ. Perhaps they will invite you to dine with the Buddha. And perhaps we will find ourselves seated at the same grand table at the end of the ages; all of God's people, Jew and Gentile, man and woman, slave and free. The Gospel is for all. Amen.

Let us pray.

Lord, you now have set your servants free,
to go in peace as you have promised.
For these eyes of ours have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see.
A light to inspire the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.
Glory be to God, Creator, Liberator, and Comforter. Amen.