"Fear and Courage in the Christmas Story" - Epiphany 2020

Saint Matthew 2:1-12

The highlight of almost every church Christmas pageant is the arrival of “the Three Kings.”  Children, boys and girls now, dressed in costumes that bear a striking resemblance to their parent’s bathrobes and crowns that look like they either came from Burger King or are so tattered and worn that they look like they could have belonged to the original owners. Because they are children, forced to play dress up at their parents wishes their rages as actors stretch from the uninterested to the uncomfortable.

They are probably not as uncomfortable as the mixed pairs who get assigned to play the camels.  In very creative churches, with big budgets to spend at Fantasy Costumes, the tallest child is usually teamed up with the shortest to make up a costumed camel.  The good news for them is that they usually don’t have any lines to memorize.  The bad news for the one bringing up the rear is that the scenery never changes.

They “traverse” down the center aisle to the strains of “We Three Kings.”  It’s beloved.  It’s traditional.  And as Owen Meany points out none to delicately in the John Irving novel, if you don’t want to rush into Easter and choose to end the song with the fourth stanza, the final line will be:  “Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying” Which Owen points out: “Doesn’t sound very Christmasy to me.”1
 

I am sorry to tell you this but as we reflect on the story it will appear less like the romantic tale that we have become used to but rather the stuff of high drama.  This is a story that brings with it all kinds of skirmishes between good and evil, between God and all those who would corrupt and destroy.   It is not only a story about gifts for a child but about “a madman who lived every moment of his life in fear of losing all that he had gained.”2
 

Fear is the darker part of the story that everybody wants to leave out.

T..S. Eliot caught this in his poem, The Journey of the Magi.

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.3

 Those voices may have begun before their journey even started.  They may have begun with members of their very own family. 
 

For you see there are many misconceptions about these travelers.  We only assume that there were three because of the three gifts.  There could have been three hundred or only one with a very large shopping bag.
 

And they were not kings at all.  No matter what the song that we will sing says they were not kings they were Magi.   Magi is the root of our word for magician but these folk were not even as well thought of as Wizzo the Wizard.  They were dream-interpreters, fortune-tellers, horoscope fanatics.  They were “no accounts,” the ultimate outsiders who in our day would be working out of storefronts and offering to tell our future by stars, tea leaves, and Tarot cards. 
 

Their families had to have howled with laughter and horror at the idea that they were going to close up shop for a few weeks, months, or even years, and chase after some star.  Their spouses must have been furious and their children bemused. 
 

“The parental units are going off somewhere to follow a star ‘no matter how hopeless, no matter how far.’” announces one of their children.  “That’s an impossible dream!” replies another.  “I told you they were crazy!” concludes the familial affirmation.
 

So off they go with the voices ringing in their ears that this was all folly.
 

The foolish looks like it might become fatal for them as they come closer to their journey’s end and they come face to face with one of history’s great villains. 
 

Herod was not the stuff of legend.  We know a lot about him and his kind and his cruelty was legendary.  “He not only murdered most of his good friends, but even his beloved wife, and three of his own sons.” He was such a threat to every one and so disliked that to ensure mourning at his funeral, “Herod wanted his soldiers to kill notable political prisoners upon the news of his death.  His goal was expressed thus: ‘So shall all Judea and every household weep for me, whether they wish it or not.”4
 

He was one evil man and when he became afraid all of Jerusalem did so too.
 

Can you imagine that?  Herod, with all the might of Imperial Rome behind him became afraid of a child not yet two years old. 

 Fear can do terrible things to you.  Even if you have a moral compass it can make you lash out at your enemies and try to destroy them by either word or deed.  That is exactly the kind of leader Herod was.  He ruled by fear because he was afraid that someone more powerful or even less powerful would come and take his power away from him.
 
Fear can cause one to lie outright which is exactly what Herod did.  He tells his visitors to “search for this little child with the utmost care. And when you have found him come back and tell me—so that I may go and worship him too.” 
 
Herod is a known liar.  He treats truth like a second home only living there occasionally.  His lie is so transparent, so insincere that even these storefront psychics can see through it.
 
It is here that courage enters in.  In one sentence Matthew tells of their courageous act.  “Then,” Saint Matthew tells us, “since they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by a different route.”5
 
This was courage overcoming fear because if Herod caught them disobeying his orders he would have surely had them killed.  They were taking a chance going home a different way but after finding what they had been looking for it didn’t seem they had a choice.  It was either follow the way of  Christ or follow the ways of the world.
 
We know what the world brings.  
It brings an anti-Semitic attack at a Rabbi’s home just as he and his family were celebrating Hanukkah.  

 It brings yet another crazy person who has somehow obtained a firearm into a church to shoot the place up and kill innocent worshipers.  

It causes us to once again stand on the brink of another war in the Middle East where the answer to any problem seems to be only more violence, more guns, more bombs, more killing, more slaughters of innocents.
 
For the magi this child and their journey he calls them to undertake is a source of great courage rather than a cause of deep fear.
 
The magi may have begun their journey with the voices of folly ringing in their ears but they returned home with a fierce determination to never be fearful again.  They turned their back on Herod and his kind and faithfully walked on another way.  The magi risked their lives to protect this child.
 
Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, would do the same when warned by an angel that Herod was out to kill his son, took Jesus and Mary off to Egypt.  Joseph risked his life to protect this child.
 
This child would grow up and show the fearful a way of courage.  Just as some risked their lives that he might live he gave his life that we might not ever have to be afraid again.

The image of the Three Kings, and really, who cares if there were three or not or whether their names were Casper, Balthazar and Melchior or something else entirely.  Who cares if they came from the Orient or more likely  Persia  the very region were so many conflicts rage today? 
 
This image reminds us that life is more than a moment from a Christmas pageant but is about people who looked evil in the eye and turned their backs to go another way.
 
It is about brave people doing brave things because they had met the Christ child. 
 
It is about people who stopped searching the stars for a better way to live but found a different meaning for their lives in this simple encounter.  In the end it is about you and me.
 
We tell this story during the “most wonderful time of year” to remind ourselves that God’s will  . . .  “is to change the world from the nightmare it often is into the dream that God intends.” 6

While it can warm our hearts in Christmas pageants it can also inspire our lives as it tells us that in the midst of our fears we can find courage to live the life as bravely as God intends.
 
 It happened for the magi as they really did become wise men and it can happen for us as touched by Christ we can set fear aside and move forward into this new year with courage.

__________

1.  John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany. London: Bloomsbury, 1989.

2. Steve Pankey,  “One Long Nightmare.” Modern Metanoia, December 16, 2019.

3.  “The Journey Of The Magi” by T S Eliot - Famous poems, famous poets. - All Poetry. Accessed January 4, 2020. https://allpoetry.com/The-Journey-Of-The-Magi.

4.  Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 2.13-23 1st Sunday after Christmas- Year A.” Matthew 2.13-23. Accessed January 4, 2020. http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt2x13.htm.

5.  St.  Matthew 2:8.  (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English; Translated by J.B. Phillips.  (London: Bles, 1968.)