Isaiah 60.1-6, Eph3.1-12, Matt 2.1-12
Do you want to know a secret?
I’m not actually going to tell you one, but it’s an offer
which usually makes people sit up and take notice. We all like to be “in the
know”, to have some piece of information that maybe not everyone has. It makes
us feel special, honoured, trusted. Depending on what the secret is it might even
give us power, make our lives easier, give us leg up in the world.
At the time of Jesus, there were quite a number of what were
known as “mystery” religions around. To
join one you’d need to go through some sort of initiation rite, maybe quite
demanding. The lure was that, at the end of it, you’d be given some sort of
special knowledge or power that others didn’t have. Of course you’d be sworn to
secrecy about it then, which is why today we don’t know much of what actually
went on in these cults, but that was their appeal. You became part of an elite
group if you were accepted. If everyone was in on the secret, there would be no
sense of specialness in belonging .
The early Christians in Ephesus, who Paul wrote to in our
second reading today would have been very familiar with these mystery
religions. It’s quite possible that some of them had been members of one of
these groups themselves. So when Paul uses the word “mystery” in our second
reading today, he knows they will get the reference straight away. Paul tells them that he’s been shown a mystery
himself, something that’s wonderful, something that has changed his life, and it
can change their lives too. The mystery he had discovered was at the heart of
Christian faith. What was it? It was that the Gentiles, those who were not Jewish, those who had
always been treated as outsiders, were actually fellow heirs, part of God’s family
, members of his body, “sharers in the
promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”
That may not sound very mysterious or unexpected to us, but
it had come as a complete surprise to Paul. He’d been brought up to think that God
was really only interested in the Jewish people. He’d been a devout and zealous Pharisee, eager
to patrol the boundaries of his faith, to make sure that only those who
followed the rules and kept the rituals could be part of it. When he began to follow Jesus, though, after Jesus
had appeared to him in a vision on the road to Damascus, he discovered that God’s
love was for everyone, his call was to everyone – Jew and Gentile, slave and
free, male and female. It wasn’t just for those “in the know”, the religious
elite, the exclusive tribe of people like himself.
Ironically, the mystery he declares to them is that there is
no mystery. I think he means this passage to be a bit of a joke. The secret is
that there is no secret. There is no elite group, no magic formula, no demanding
admission ritual. Everyone can draw close to God “in boldness and confidence”
he says. And far from keeping it to
themselves, this mystery is one that can and should be shared with everyone,
shouted from the rooftops, preached in and out of season, gossiped about,
spread in every way possible.
Why did Paul think this was so important? I think it was because
he’d learned the hard way that elite groups are bad for people. Elite groups are obviously bad for those
outside them. They’re denied the benefits of whatever that elite group is
guarding as their own possession. But
Paul realised that they were just as bad for those inside them too, because if we
can’t hear the voices of those who are different from us, we end up impoverishing
ourselves as well as them. We may think we have all the answers, but if we
aren’t open to others we may not even have realised what all the questions are.
One of the most significant things that happened last year
was a classic example of this. In the latter part of the year, a slew of sexual
harassment allegations were made against powerful men in many sectors of
society. As the stories broke, women started sharing many other stories of day
to day harassment, in the office, in the street, on public transport, stories about
things that they – we - had often taken for granted. When I was a teenager and
young adult we warned each other about
men who had WHT – wandering hand trouble. Previous generations talked
about men who were NSIT – not safe in taxis. And those were only the mildest
issues. You just learned to put up with it, because it was a part of every day
life for women. And yet, when these stories started to be shared, often with
the hashtag #metoo, there seemed to be widespread surprise, especially from
men. Some men, the ones who wouldn’t dream of harassing women, had just been
oblivious to the scale of the problem, but others were surprised because though
they knew it went on and maybe did it themselves, it seemed never to have
occurred to them that the women they harassed or abused really minded. They’d convinced themselves that it was ok to
behave like this, and because they were the ones who had the power to decide
whose voices were listened to, that was that.
That’s the key. It’s an issue of power as well as gender,
and if we open our eyes we can see this same dynamic at work wherever there inequalities
in our society. Able bodied people make
assumptions about what disabled people need and want . We think we know, when
it is actually they who are the real experts in dealing with their disability.
Rich people make political decisions that affect the lives of those who are
poor without knowing anything about what it really feels like to struggle to
make ends meet, and without seeking to know it either. Adults decide what
children will want and how they will feel without asking them. A report that came out a few days ago
highlighted the dangers of “sharenting” – parents who post endless pictures of
their children on social media, even if the children would rather they didn’t
and ask them not to. “Nothing about us without us” is the repeated cry of those
who find themselves in some sort of disadvantaged position, yet we often find
it easier to talk than to listen.
Paul says that, for the church to thrive we need to
recognise “the wisdom of God in its rich
variety”. Inclusivity, valuing everyone,
isn’t about political correctness. It’s not just a nice idea: it is at the
heart of Christian faith. It reveals the presence of God in our midst and
releases his power to work among us. He comes to us in one another. His wisdom is
found in our diversity. Each one of us has part of the picture he wants to give
to us all. So we need each other, just as we are. We need each other’s gifts,
but we also need each other’s struggles and vulnerability. They are what opens
us up to God’s grace and love. We need each other’s answers, but we also need
each other’s questions to make us dig more deeply into our own faith. Wisdom and variety go together – you can’t
have one without the other, says Paul. This was the mystery that had been revealed
to him, but unlike the secretive cults of
the ancient world, this was a mystery that needed to be shared with anyone and
everyone, because anyone and everyone was part of it.
The story of the Magi is a reminder of this truth. We
sometimes call the Magi “wise men”, but in reality they weren’t that wise at
all. They may have been clever, but that’s not the same thing. They’d seen a
star in the sky, and, like many ancient people, they assumed it meant that a
new leader had been born. They knew some
old prophecies about a Messiah who would usher in a better world. But the last
thing they were expecting was that this new beginning would come through an
ordinary child born to an ordinary couple in the ordinary back streets of
Bethlehem. That’s why they went looking for him in Herod’s palace, with
disastrous results for the rest of the children of Bethlehem. When they
eventually found the right place, if only with the help of that star, they must
have been baffled. And yet God had drawn them to the place where they needed to
be, the place where they could discover that they were welcome in God’s
presence. There is wisdom in this story, but it is God’s wisdom, not theirs.
Mary and Joseph must have been baffled too at these strange
visitors with their even stranger gifts, but the arrival of these foreign Magi
revealed God’s wisdom, the news that his son was for all people.
The Magi’s visit changed Mary and Joseph, just as it changed
the Magi. Matthew tells us that they went home “by another way” – not just a
geographical detail but a spiritual one also. And the message of the story is
that we can, and need to, be changed as well.
This change can only come though, if we are open to the
possibility that God’s wisdom can come to us through people who are utterly
different from us, whose language and whose lives we don’t understand and whose
experiences seem completely foreign. It can only come when we accept that there
are pieces of the puzzle we didn’t even know we were missing, questions we haven’t even thought of asking,
voices we haven’t even realised we weren’t hearing. When we fail to notice
them, we fail to notice God too. We may also need to learn that we have gifts
to give and stories to tell, and if we don’t tell them, others will miss out on
some of God’s precious wisdom for them.
The word epiphany
means revelation. God revealed himself to the world in the Christ child two
thousand years ago. But he also reveals himself in each of us, friend or
stranger, because we are now the body of Christ. Let’s pray that in our rich
and glorious variety, we might discover the mystery of God at work in us as we travel
together through this New Year.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment