Sermon Archive

The time of Jesus’s birth.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.…” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, p. 1)

There was a king with a large jaw on the throne in Jerusalem; there was a king with the soft chin of a child in a crib in Bethlehem. (cf. Dickens, p. 1)

Jerusalem—the seat of the power of King Herod, a vassal of Rome, a town grandly rebuilt by Herod into a city of architectural glory. It features a magnificently refurbished and expanded temple for the Jewish people, a monumental fort dedicated to Marc Antony for the Roman legion, a royal palace on the Western hill, a theatre for Greek and Roman drama, a hippodrome for chariot racing, a number of Greek gymnasiums for athletic contests, lavish homes for the aristocracy — with large, airy central courts, colorful frescoes, and mosaic flooring — several broad streets designed in a Roman style, and a large colonnaded marketplace. Jerusalem, the Golden.

And Bethlehem—a sleepy, rural town some six miles south-southwest of Jerusalem, famous more for being the birthplace of King David a full millennium earlier than for anything in its present or recent past, but imagined by some people to be the place where, sometime in the future, the Messiah, a descendant of King David, will be born.

And so it is that the Gospel of Matthew narrates a story of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, a tale of two towns, and that story unfolds like this.

To the city of Jerusalem, the domain of old King Herod, there come from the east sages in search of a newborn monarch, of one whose birth has been heralded in the sky by a blazing star. As that star guides them westward to the land of the Jews, these sages also consult the holy scriptures of that people.

And there, in the 60th chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah, they find these words addressed to the city of Jerusalem (vss. 1–3, 6):

“Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the LORD shall arise upon you,
and [God’s] glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.…
A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.”

Now, the prophet is speaking here of the city of Jerusalem. He is envisioning a Jerusalem of some future era, a time when Jerusalem shall be bathed in the light of God’s glory and shall receive caravans from the east bearing treasures of gold and frankincense.

And so it comes about that, guided both by a star ablaze with God’s glory and by words found in the book of the prophet Isaiah,the sages direct themselves to Jerusalem and arrive there bearing gold and the precious spices of frankincense and myrrh. And it’s there in Jerusalem that they inquire of its citizenry, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”

Now, when King Herod hears that visitors from afar have arrived and that they are inquiring about some newborn king, he becomes alarmed—and all Jerusalem with him. For a new king from outside of Herod’s family would pose a threat not just to the old king himself but to all of the old order with him.

In panic, Herod consults the leading biblical scholars of his time, saying to them something like, “Tell me about Isaiah 60. What is all this business about a glorious light and camels, about frankincense and gold?”

And the scholars reply something like, “Well, if it’s the birth of a new and rival king that has brought these foreign sages to Jerusalem, they’ve come to the wrong town, for they’ve consulted the wrong scripture passage. Oh, to be sure, Isaiah 60 speaks of the shining glory of God and foretells a Jerusalem that has been restored to wealth and prestige and that has become the center of a flourishing international economy, as all of us know Jerusalem now is, but Isaiah 60 says absolutely nothing about the birth of a new king or of a new world order.

“The text that promises the birth of a new king who will usher in a world order of peace is found instead in the 5th chapter of the book of the prophet Micah, where God says (vs. 2):

‘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.’

“Now, according to this text, the one who is to come, the Messiah, will bring peace not by fulfilling great political ambition but by tending to the needs of even the simplest people. And this one will be born not amidst the pomp and circumstance of Jerusalem but some six miles from here, in the dusty, unpretentious, rural kind of place that is the little town of Bethlehem.”

This is the scholars’ message to Herod, and Herod, in response, devises a cunning scheme for countering any messianic expectations that may be raised among his people by the ravings of these misguided pilgrims from the east. Says Herod to himself, “Let them take this six-mile detour to Bethlehem, and let them identify some poor boy there as the would-be pretender to my throne. Then let them identify that child to me so that after they’ve left I may kill him. For haven’t I already executed three of my own sons for wanting to ascend to my throne too soon?”

Thus does Herod plot. And to further his design, he summons the strangers, tells them what he has learned from the scholars, and sends them on their way from Jerusalem to Bethlehem—from Jerusalem, with his magnificent buildings and great wealth and royal power, to Bethlehem, with its modest promise of newborn innocence and with its infinitesimally small odds of having actually played host to some messianic birth.

Amazingly, the sages do not resist Herod’s diverting of them from the grandeur of Jerusalem, a glorious city surely fit for a king, to the dark and ill-kept byways of Bethlehem, a small and decrepit town in no way fit for a king.

Yes, the sages accept the scholars’ advice passed on to them through the king and gladly reorient their journey to this new and surpassingly humble destination. And it is precisely there, in Bethlehem, that they do indeed find the infant for whom they’ve so long searched—a baby with no obvious royal credentials, a child living not in a palace amidst aristocracy but in a simple house (vs. 11) with working-class parents.

Matthew’s tale of two towns frames a choice of destinations—a choice that of old was placed before sages from the east and that today is placed before us. A choice of destinations.

And I suspect that most of us, like those sages, would prefer to find our Savior in the grander of the two settings. We too, I think, would initially choose the Jerusalem-centered vision of Isaiah 60, with its promise of security and wealth for the people of God, choose it over the Bethlehem-focused vision of Micah 5, with its promise only of life given in vulnerability. Aren’t the wealth and glory of Jerusalem far more alluring to us than the vulnerability and poverty of Bethlehem?

But let us be reminded that today is the first Day of Epiphany that we’ve observed since September 11, 2001. And I suggest that it’s somehow particularly appropriate for us to be reminded today by Matthew’s tale of two towns that our journey to God is not one about acquiring security and prosperity. Rather, our journey to God is one about reincarnating the vulnerability of a Savior who was born amidst poverty and about reincarnating the spirit of surrender and generosity that was displayed by those who came from the east to pay homage to the Christ-child.

Some 500 years ago (1481), Leonardo da Vinci created the painting Adoration of the Magi. In it, he has, I think, captured correctly, the spirit of Matthew’s tale of two towns with its twin themes of, on the one hand, surrender and generosity and, on the other hand, vulnerability.

Leonardo portrays the first theme—that of surrender and generosity—by depicting the sages’ kneeling in adoration before a Christ-child who holds in his hand one of the precious gifts they are offering.

And Leonardo portrays the second theme—that of vulnerability—by painting as the background for his rural “Bethlehem” a kind of “Jerusalem,” if you will—that is, a place with splendid buildings, but in ruin and with aristocratic horsemen at joust—the Christ-child born amidst chaos and calamity.

This same theme of vulnerability is powerfully conveyed in a nativity scene displayed each Christmas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In many ways, the elements of this crèche scene are quite familiar. The unusual thing about it is, however, that the manger, with its Christ-child, is placed amidst the fallen and ruined columns of a once-proud Roman building.

Somehow this crèche scene at the Metropolitan Museum strikes me this Christmas and Epiphany season as being particularly poignant, and I would ask you to join me in re-imagining the setting for the visit of the sages to Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus—to reimagine the setting certainly not as the Jerusalem of the Twin Towers but rather as the Bethlehem of Ground Zero.

That Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and not Jerusalem, should instruct us, I believe, that Christ is more likely to be born anew in our hearts amidst the rubble and vulnerability of Ground Zero than amidst the security and wealth of high towers.

You see, Matthew’s story of the sages asks us to set as the goal for our journey to God not security, nor wealth, nor self-sufficient complacency, but rather to set as the goal for our journey to God an experience of vulnerability that can enable us to identify with the plight of the poor and the oppressed of our world. The foreign sages were willing to make the journey from the Jerusalem of security and wealth to the Bethlehem of vulnerability and poverty. How ironic it would be if we who count ourselves not among the strangers from the east but as part of God’s own people—how ironic it would be if we should resist making such a journey and resist finding Christ instead at Ground Zero.

A tale of two towns, but today—Epiphany—does not belong to Jerusalem; it belongs to Bethlehem.

For today—Epiphany—is the day when we are to proclaim that Christ appears anew in all the Bethlehems of this world, that is, that Christ is particularly present wherever the vulnerability of human existence is most keenly felt.

When next you or I journey to one of the observation points now overlooking Ground Zero, I invite us to imagine in the very midst of that place a manger scene of Bethlehem, much like the one in the Metropolitan Museum—the glorious Christ found amidst the fallen towers, yet radiating grace and wisdom and light and hope and healing to all.

Let us pray: