There was one overriding issue that dominated the hearts and minds of the early followers of Christ, and that was “the Gentile Question.”  Could Gentiles be accepted into the household of God, the community of faith without converting to the Jewish customs and rituals, including circumcision and laws governing eating and table fellowship? 

Gentiles had been accepted in the past into the Jewish worshipping community and were known as “God-fearers.”  However, they were still looked upon as a separate group and not admitted without condition to the community of faith.  Many early Jewish-Christian believers felt that Gentiles should be accepted under basically the same terms that “God-fearers” had been accepted in the synagogues by the Jews.  But, revelations came to Peter and to Paul (see Acts, chapters 9 & 10 and following), and outpourings of the Holy Spirit on Gentiles occurred as well so that Peter could no longer deny the will of God to open the kingdom fully to Gentiles as well as Jews.  And, Paul was commissioned as an Apostle with his primary mission to be to proclaim God’s grace in Christ to the Gentiles! 

This was a radical social and religious position to take in 1st century Judea.  It caused tremendous discomfort and drew attacks and persecution from the synagogue who felt such communities of faith that were blurring the differences between Jew and Gentile were violating the will of God and were polluting the very people of God and the worship of God.   If you read Acts 15, you see there was a great council in Jerusalem with the Apostles to the Jews on one side, and the Apostle to the Gentiles (Paul accompanied by Barnabus) on the other side.  An agreement was reached, but clearly it was not easy.  Just read Galatians, Chapter 2 to see how volatile an issue this was, as Paul tells of a heated and public conflict between him and Peter over table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles!

All of this makes me think back on Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, and how his table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners (unclean, immoral Jews) provoked controversy about whether such practices could possibly be the will of God.  And, Jesus also had some close dealings with Samaritans as well, who were thought unclean by Jews, and Jesus also praised the faith of some Gentiles as well, and even emphasized how God had reached out through the prophets of old to heal Gentiles who were lepers when there were plenty of lepers in Israel who were not healed. 

The movement of the Gospel of God in Jesus is a movement that provokes controversy because it brings people into a place of fellowship that challenges the barriers of social privilege, custom, and religious tradition.  If we follow Jesus, we will come to a place where our time-tested opinions and ways will be shaken.  And, most of us run from that type of challenge.  Life is hard enough anyway, who wants to be shaken and challenged, even disturbed at religious gatherings or fellowships? 

If I as a white person become part of a community of believers that has black persons as well, I will have to deal at many levels with the social prejudice I have absorbed as a member of this society.  And, I assume that black persons who become a part of a community of faith that has white persons will have to come to terms with issues as well that aren’t that comfortable to deal with.  Sure, black people have always had to get along with white people in this society to survive, but it is another thing to become united in a true fellowship of faith. 

The early church went through struggles to overcome barriers set up by centuries and centuries of social influence, and the influence of religious/ethnic traditions.  Though we live in a more enlightened society in some ways, we still bear within our souls the sin of a society that produces division and hostility from diversity instead of producing a “Rainbow People” that Bishop Desmond Tutu proclaimed and in some measure helped begin in South Africa.  We would do well to read the New Testament with an eye to this issue of reconciliation between Jew and Gentile that Paul emphasized so strongly and experienced so wonderfully.    

Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany

6 Jan 13

Throughout the Advent season we have talked a lot about the cast of characters surrounding Jesus’ birth:  Zechariah, Elizabeth, parents of John the Baptist.  Mary, and Joseph. We have talked about the shepherds and their response to the good news proclaimed to them by the angels.  We have been concerned with one family , and one group of fields, as we’ve seen the story of the Christ child fulfilled. 

Today, on epiphany, the story gets a wider audience.  Epiphany means “manifestation”  or even more accurately “striking appearance” in the Greek. Today is the day we celebrate that Christ was made manifest, or known, to more than just the surrounding neighborhood.  We celebrate that and hear the story of the wise men who came from the East.

 Often when we have a nativity scene it includes sheep, various other animals, shepherds, Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, some angels and three kings or wise men with presents.  They are so much a part of the scene that we have incorporated them into our understanding without really thinking about who they are, or more importantly where they came from and HOW they came to be there in Bethlehem.

Because in fact, epiphany is the manifestation, or appearance, of Christ’s coming to people from far away.  Beyond the fields of the shepherds in Bethlehem, Beyond the country of Judea, far to the East, these wise men saw signs in the sky that told them a King had been born to the Jews. 

Epiphany, January 6, was my dad’s birthday. If he were alive today he would be turning 83.  He felt a special affinity for the wise men because of his birthday and did a lot of research on what they may have seen in the night sky.  It turns out there was a celestial anomaly that would have accounted for a bright star that could be seen over Bethlehem from the East.  They knew enough about the stars to specifically predict that an important child, a ruler, was being born to the Jews.

They came to see Christ and to know his importance from all that distance.  Not because they had been reading the Hebrew scriptures, not because they heard prophecies, not because the Angel Gabriel came to them in a dream, not because they were well versed in the law of the Jewish people !   They knew none of the Jewish religion at all.

They came from a distant land because they had been studying the stars!  They were not familiar with scripture, or God!  There was a religious group from Eastern Arabic lands called Zoroastrianism, which worshipped the sun and studied the stars as a guide for living and it is believed by many scholars that these men were probably priests of that religion.

This might make some feel uncomfortable.  But not long after Jesus was born people who hadn’t ever heard of God, who worshipped in a different religion, who were arabs from the land of Persia, which we now know as Iran, came a long way because they were drawn by what they saw in the stars, to see Jesus, whom they called King, so that they might honor him. 

God works in mysterious ways! And not always through the conventional means.

God reached these wise men in a way they would understand, in their language :  the stars. He did so with an astronomical sign so obvious they came a very long distance bringing precious, expensive gifts on a treacherous road to a foreign king. If this is not evidence of God’s providence or dominion over absolutely everything then I don’t know what else is.:  that he could call men from so far using only the stars to guide them.

Now look at Herod’s reaction to the wise men’s visit.  He was struck with fear! And not just Herod, but all the capital city of Jerusalem with him.  He got all the scribes and priests together to talk about it.

Why would Herod not want to hear about the coming of the Messiah, do you suppose?  Why would anyone not want to hear about more people coming to know God’s love in the world?

In Herod’s case it’s pretty obvious:  Herod was himself King.  If there was a new baby who was to be king, Messiah, then where does that leave Herod?  Displaced.  He and the priests and scribes.  He had a lot to lose if Jesus was the Christ, the one to come save them all.  Everything in his title, everything he’d worked for and come to know, would change.

Today, God still speaks to people, I believe, in ways that are unknown to us Christians.  In ways that are beyond our fields, beyond our shepherds, in the languages of other religions, in customs that are strange to us.   God calls people from all over the world, from lowly and miserable to grand ruler, and does it like an all powerful God, using the entire universe as his invitation.

It’s so easy to go Herod on this idea.  Even within Christianity we can’t even agree from denomination to denomination about the proper procedures for worship, or the way to administer the sacraments.  Entire denominations have split over over disagreements on how to administer baptism, or who can take communion when.  After the black slaves were freed in this country at first they were not allowed to take communion, and then later they took communion but at completely separate times.  Even at God’s table, we humans find a way to divide ourselves and keep our power alive.  We become accustomed to a ritual, and before long we say, “ Our way is right, everybody else is a heretic.”  Yet, here, in the Biblical witness, right after the beautiful tale of the birth of Jesus, three scientists from another religion come all the way from Iran to tell king Herod they’ve been reading their horoscopes and heard there was a Messiah born to the Jews. 

The fact is, we build our own empires within our belief in Christ, within our churches, our own little pockets of power, and like Herod, we work to protect them.

When Christ said in Matthew 19 it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, I don’t think he was trying to say people with a lot of money are evil.  I think he was trying to say if a person has got a lot that they are holding on to in this world, or a lot to lose as Herod did, that person is not going to be as open to the good news of Christ’s love.  And they certainly won’t be ready to see God working in the stars or other unusual means. 

Because it is the kind of manifestation that empties you, that changes you, that takes away what you thought was important and replaces it with something far more valuable.