January 5, 2025 at St. William and St. Peter Churches in Naples, FL
Isaiah 60: 1-6 + Psalm 72 + Ephesians 3: 2-3, 5-6 + Matthew 2: 1-12
The easy way to hear this story unique to Matthew’s Gospel is to focus on those visitors from the East. At the time Matthew wrote this Gospel, they were the message he wanted to give to the predominantly Jewish/Christians who were to receive this Gospel. The first Jewish people who accepted the Way of Christ were very uncomfortable when Gentiles began to seek Baptism and share in Communion. They thought anyone coming to Christ should first become a Jew, and Matthew’s story leads them to think otherwise by telling this story of foreigners coming to adore the Christ child.
While we might ponder Matthew’s message fruitfully with reflections about how we look upon immigrants who challenge our exclusive way of life, there is another piece of this story that we might well need to hear and embrace first. Herod and these visitors seem to be commanding center stage, but there is another set of characters who may cause us some discomfort, and I think Matthew intends it to be so.
It is those chief priests and scribes we might pay more attention to rather than those magi. They knew their scriptures. They knew exactly where and how the Messiah was to come, and they did nothing. So comfortable with their lives around Herod’s court, so sure of themselves and their privileged position, they were completely uninterested in joining those pilgrims. Why leave the power and give up the influence they enjoyed there in Jerusalem to go out to that no-place called Bethlehem. The only people hanging around there were those low-life shepherds. They were not about to be seen around that kind of people.
Those holy people hanging around Herod had no curiosity and no desire to change or discover something new. They were threatened by this new revelation that came from foreigners, and they wanted nothing to do with it. They just wanted things to stay the same.
When Matthew tells us that those magi when home by a different way, there is the possibility of understanding that to mean more than using a different route. It may also mean that they went home differently than they came. People who come to adore the Christ must be changed. They must be different for having made the journey, for having seen the Christ and doing him homage.
This Gospel speaks to us who know very well our scriptures and the promise that has been fulfilled. We also know how easy it is to stay just the way we are in spite of what we know. Those who do homage, those who seek Christ and find him in all the little unpleasant and unimportant places and people who have nothing to offer us will never be the same. Prestige and privilege hold great power over us just like Herod and his Court so blinded those chief priests and scribes leaving them to dismiss with complete disinterest what might have set them free.
As we tell their sad story we might hear an invitation to be humble enough to see and seek something new always knowing that there is more to discover in God’s mysteries if we are willing to venture into the unknown where it might be possible see the face of God.