Posted by stpauls on January 22, 2012 under Sermons | 
The season of Epiphany is a strange little season. On the one hand, we have just moved out of the beauteous mystery, wonder, and awe of Christmas, when we celebrated the birth of God among us, God with us, and God for us. And on the other hand, we are not quite in the season of Lent: a season that many of us dread, but which reminds us of the death-defying love of our Saviour Jesus Christ and his life-giving sacrifice on the hard wood of the cross.
Yet, despite the profound importance of these two seasons, both Christmas and Lent often leave us with unanswered questions. And it is not just about the historical events of the Virgin-birth and Jesus’ suffering and death. It has to do with the theology truth of the Incarnation and the theological justification for the suffering and death of the One who was revealed as truly divine and truly human. These things are big ticket items. They make us scratch our heads. And they make outsiders raise an eye-brow or two about these crazy Christians.
And we cannot just skip over these reactions or our questions. And neither should we skip over the season of Epiphany.
The word Epiphany comes from the Greek epiphaneia, meaning “manifestation.” Of course, this is grounded in God’s self-manifestation in the child born of our sister Mary. Yet, it moves beyond this. In fact, what Epiphany speaks about is “revelation:” Who is this baby Jesus? What is this baby Jesus? And what thing does God do in the birth, life, mission, teaching, death, and resurrection of this Jesus?
Epiphany gives both Christmas and Lent a theological grounding. It is more than a cozy story told under a Christmas tree. And it is more than being scandalised by Good Friday. The season of Epiphany provides a link between Christmas and Lent. More importantly the season of Epiphany moves us beyond these events into contemplating their theological implications. The season of Epiphany moves us into the vision of God. And this is why our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters call this season “Theophany,” the revelation of the vision of God.
Today’s reading from the Book of Jonah is case in point.
Yes, the story is cute, and is a favourite in the Bible. Telling children about Jonah getting swallowed by a fish assures the attention of little-ones, whose attention spans are not that great.
And it is not just children.
The early church looked at this as a foreshadowing of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Just as Jonah was gulped up by a fish and spat out three days later, so Jesus was swallowed up by death to break free from the bonds of death – also three days later.
However, if we narrow the Book of Jonah to this mysterious and mythical part of the story we will miss the depth of the book, and we will miss the profound revelation of God’s vision offered there. If we stick to the few verses that speak of Jonah being fish-food, or the even fewer verses provided in today’s reading, we indeed might miss a Theophany.
So, I am going to read the whole book to you now – all four chapters of it.
…
Ok, I am just kidding, but do go home and grab a Bible or google the book online and read it in its entirety.
In order to get more than a few breadcrumbs of this amazing biblical book, I will, however, retell the story, which is quickly done.
Jonah, is called: to become a prophet.
In good biblical tradition, this does not mean God calls him to be a fortune-teller, but God appoints him as the divine revealer, as the one speaking truth into the reality of “that great city”[1] of Nineveh. There is something rotten in the state of Nineveh. In fact, there is a lot rotten in Nineveh. And there needs to be a profound change of heart, otherwise the people of Nineveh will face destruction.
Jonah knows of the greatness of Nineveh – and consequently wets his pants.
Understandably, he is afraid to get killed and so he runs away by means of a boat. The sea-journey, however, does not turn out to be a gentle cruise, but God obviously is not so pleased by Jonah and sends a might storm – don’t you hate it when God does that?! In the midst of the storm, Jonah reveals his identity to the sailors, who react swiftly. This is how Jonah finds himself in the belly of the fish – after having been thrown overboard.
In the fish-belly Jonah rethinks his options – and who wouldn’t? He pleads with God, who then causes the fish to get sick and nauseous. Jonah is promptly vomited ashore. Thank God, there was no Pepto-Bismol around. If the fish had taken Pepto-Bismol could you image what kind of exit that would have meant for Jonah?
Anyhow, back to the story.
We pick up with today’s reading from Jonah. So, I can skip over this part.
After Nineveh repents and after God’s subsequent change of mind, Jonah gets pretty mad. After all he has been through – this is it? No fireworks, no mass killings, no slaughter of the citizens of the city? What? What kind of Old Testament story is this anyhow? Are we sure it wasn’t slipped in by some left-wing, tree hugging, bleeding liberal?
Yep, Jonah is mad!
So, he sits down under a bush, which provides a wonderful shade in the Mediterranean heat. And he falls asleep. But God is not done with the angry fella’. God kills off the bush… and the shade is gone. This makes Jonah even madder – so mad, in fact, that he wants to die. And God responds – and since this is the punch line I will quote from the fourth chapter of Jonah:
“God says, ‘You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labour and which you did not grow; … And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’”[2]
End of story.
It is an intriguing story, right?
Even if we do not know much about the story’s cultural setting, we get that it reveals something very important about God, something that can be summed up best by words quoted from this biblical book: God is “gracious … and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”[3]
Yet, I am not sure many of us expected this – particularly as many stereotype and misinterpret as vengeful and violent the vision of God revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures.
And there is more:
See, there is an elephant in the story (in the room). The elephant in the story, the thing that we might miss but was not missed by those who first heard the story, is this: Nineveh ain’t just any city. Nineveh was synonymous with Assyria. And Assyria was a power that had rolled over its neighbours, had stomped out any other power in the region, and had occupied many a country. More horrendously, the Assyrians had employed outrageous torture, unspeakable brutality, and heinous terror to force everybody into submission. The Assyrians were anything but “gracious and merciful,”[4] anything but.
Therefore, when Jonah first refuses God’s call and then gets angry with God, we should not get smug about Jonah’s behaviour too quickly. If retold in more contemporary times, the story would send the Jew Jonah to Berlin in the 1930s to preach repentance to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. And if we stick with the story line, God would then forgive the SS, the concentration camp guards, those, who dropped bombs on innocent children in Coventry, Rotterdam, and Warsaw, and those who masterminded the Shoa, the Holocaust.
The very thought makes my stomach turn!
I’m very much with Jonah now! I am angry! How can God forgive those people? Where is the justice in this? What kind of Theophany, what kind of vision of God is this?
These questions cannot be answered easily – and neither should they be.
Yet, this is how the story becomes prophetic for us: This is how the vision of God shows us how things are not quite right in our own lives, and how God calls us back into His loving embrace.
There is no room in the life of God’s people to be smug, judgemental, or righteously indignant. The vision of God revealed in our sacred texts, the vision of God revealed through the birth of a helpless child in Bethlehem, and the vision of God revealed through the torturous death of the sinless, faultless Lamb of God, these visions of God speak of God’s radical mercy and they speak of God’s radical offer of forgiveness even for Assyria and Nineveh, a forgiveness that is beyond our comprehension, and that leaves us speechless, and at times even angry.
But God’s ability, willingness, and determination to shower mercy even on the least deserving open the door wide to our own hope, and to our own salvation. On the half-point between Christmas and Lent, today’s Theophany is this: God breaks into our world to break the cycle of sin, bitterness, and violence. God, whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting, comes to us in Jesus to embrace us in all our fear, in all our frustration, and in all our failure, each and every one of us – so that we can experience God’s mercy and forgiveness. And so that we can do likewise unto others.
[The Reverend Markus Dünzkofer delivered this sermon on January 22, 2012.]
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings |
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10 – Bible Reading for January 22, 2012
The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
Posted by ParishAdmin on January 18, 2012 under Contributors, Webmaster Blog |
The Vancouver Sun`s Jan 18 story of “Our House” resident Conrad Callihoo details Conrad`s efforts to give back to the community that once reached out a helping hand to him. View the full story at `Church offers refuge from the cold`.
You can read more about this ministry of St Paul`s at “Our House“.
Posted by stpauls on January 15, 2012 under Sermons |
As most of you know, I describe St. Paul’s very often as a place that is both wonderful and crazy. And lest you think this is a judgment from afar, I realise very much that I am crazy, too. Just last month, for example, I ordered a new piece of liturgical clothing, which I received in the mail from England a few days ago. It is something that is not worn very often any more in the Anglican Communion. I brought it, today. So, I am going to wear it.
Father Markus in a Canterbury Cap
It is a Canterbury Cap, the Anglican answer to the Roman biretta. It is a way for me to show my loyalty to the See of Canterbury even though I am probably the only clergyperson in the whole diocese, who owns one of these.
Told, you I am crazy!
And, yes, it looks a bit funny…
Yet, religious practitioners use headgear to mark their rank and status. And priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, monks, nuns, or shamans also use hats to give solemnity, gravity, and earnestness to rites and rituals. When I look at old edgings of clergy wearing Canterbury Caps I agree: these were solemn, grave, and earnest people who took their faith and their vocation rather seriously.
Thomas Cranmer in a Canterbury Cap
And after reading today’s lessons from the First Book of Samuel and the First Letter to the Corinthians, I think you might agree that it is highly appropriate to wear one of these today. These texts put me into a state of solemnity, gravity, and earnestness. There is no pussyfooting around here. These two biblical texts raise very serious matters. And as crazy and silly as it may look: The Canterbury Cap will stay on (and will probably become a more permanent feature here at St. Paul’s) as a reminder that what we are dealing with in our lives as Christians is serious, is nothing short of matters of life and death: spiritual life and death as much as physical life and death.
Yes, of course, I realise, with this cap, I am fishing for reaction: your reaction. And I realise that for some of you it might just be too silly. 
Add to this the “odd” bulletin cover and I might just have pushed it too far. This is just inappropriate, right? Just like the amount of water I use at baptism. Or my messing about with the liturgical furniture. Or the rather weird messages on our notice board. Or my orange- and salmon-coloured clergy shirts. I can hear the voices already: “The younger generation really does not have any respect anymore!”
I am used to this criticism. My generation of clergy has been accused of this for a long while. We keep hearing it as we refuse to leave a church that does its best to show us the way out.
The thing, though, is this: I do what I do, because I do have a deep love for the traditions of our church, our beloved Anglican Church, and, more importantly, because I do profoundly love and embrace the traditions of our faith. GenX clergy use what many call “disrespectful means” to further God’s mission in the world – and to prophetically reveal what is wrong in the church. We do it for the love of the church – even though many of us believe that all is not well in the church and that there are specifically two things that need fixing:
Firstly, many in the church remain mere naval-gazers and get their knickers in a twist about the wrong issues. We get upset about hymn-selections, spelling-mistakes in publications, the properness, gender, ethnicity, or sexuality of people in leadership positions, or the liturgical changes that must occur as time moves on. Meanwhile, we forget that the real battlefields are out there, beyond the walls of our sacred spaces. There are real struggle and fights happening on our streets and in our alleys. War has been declared on life by a society that gives a rat’s-ass about God and about justice and peace: Too many of our sisters and brothers have no idea who they are or whose they are as they shut their ears, eyes, and hearts to the love-song of the Creator. Too many of God’s children die a miserable or lonely death, live under deplorable conditions, or are exploited and oppressed. Too many of our neighbours suffer from addictions or abuse their bodies in all kinds of ways.
The apostle Paul might sound like a moralist, and he sure has been misused by many of our co-religionists in this way. But, in a more mystical understanding of today’s reading from the first letter to the Corinthians, God declares through the apostle Paul: I care about what and who you are. I care about every aspect of your life. I loved you into being, every bit of you. And I call you, each and every one of you, to celebrate and honour life, to celebrate and honour your spiritual as much as your bodily existence.
Therefore, ministry that is concerned with the body, that is: ministry that feeds the hungry, that clothes the naked, that welcomes the stranger, that visits those who are captive and stands with those who are oppressed, that houses the homeless, that advocates for those without a voice, that provides ways out of addiction, that celebrates in joyful and ecstatic ways our sexuality, while affirming faithfulness and commitment – all these ministries are as important as the saving of souls. All these ministries reflect the spirit of today’s reading from 1 Corinthians.
The second “thing” that – according to many of us GenX clergy – is killing the church is the nonchalance among certain ordained and lay leadership in a generation before us. What some identify as “openness” and “inclusiveness” many of us see as a non-commitment and non-avowal to the radical claim of the Gospel. This does not mean we want to be exclusive. Far from it! God’s call is inclusive as it affirms every ethnicity and gender-identity, and as it upholds the validity of same-gender love. Furthermore, we must respect, listen and indeed learn from those with other worldviews.
However, the tendency amongst some to sugar-coat the Gospel, to avoid complying to the outrageous outspokenness of God’s prophets, to castrate mission by avoiding the spiritual claims of Jesus, and to make it all nice and cosy – all this really doesn’t help the church – and it doesn’t help our neighbours either.
In a post-modern world, when the modern polarity of conservatism versus liberalism really doesn’t hold sway and really doesn’t matter anymore, what are needed are not watered-down versions of the Gospel. What are needed instead are bold affirmations of God’s radical and holistic call in the Gospel. What are needed are new ways of being Samuel, whom we meet in today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. Eli’s time is over! We need a new way of being, which is radically dedicated to the call and the prophetic insights of the Gospel.
Yes, it is difficult, hard, unpopular, and counter-cultural to fully commit to our triune God, to celebrate Jesus as Lord, and to affirm that the Gospel has a radical and holistic claim on our lives. But without embracing this claim we will find ourselves in trouble!
And not just ourselves.
Just look at the reading from the first book of Samuel.
After all was said and done, Eli had had to listen to some harsh words. And I know these words make many of us cringe. But I am still wearing my Canterbury Cap. And in the spirit of the cap’s solemnity, gravity, and earnestness let’s not ignore these words and dismiss them, but let’s face God’s self-revelation in our sacred text.
So, why then, are Eli and his kin condemned?
One chapter earlier, we discover that Eli’s sons had eaten the best part of the sacrificial animal, the parts that were reserved for God. From a modern perspective this might seem petty – a violation of an outdated, antiquated, and obsolete rule that surely has no bearing on our lives any more, right?
If this were just about following rules, I would wholeheartedly agree.
However, the deeper truth of this story is this: The selfish appetites of Eli’s sons led them to abuse their power and the trust given to them not only by God, but also by the people they serve. The sons of Eli failed God not because they violated some weird law, but because they lacked commitment to God and to their neighbour and because they put their needs and desires above everybody else’s needs and desires.
The first book of Samuel is deeply concerned with the abuse of power by the first kings of Israel, an abuse that prevented the poor and marginalised from claiming their God-given rights and their place in the assembly. In this context, the abuse of power by Eli’s sons has implications that jeopardise justice and peace for all. A lack of commitment to God’s call not only threatens our relationship with God, it also threatens the well-being of the commonwealth. This is why God’s judgment comes so quickly, so swiftly, and so seemingly unmercifully.
God’s call is not just for our own sake, but God’s call happens also for the sake of the welfare of all.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus also calls. Jesus calls his first disciples. And these disciples do not pussyfoot around. They answer with all of who and what they are – despite the dangers, despite screwing up, despite the ridicule, and despite the sacrifice.
Yet, in the end, Jesus’ call will bring healing – and not just for the disciples, but for us, for you and me, for every aspect of our lives, and, ultimately, Jesus’ call will bring healing for the peoples of the earth. The divine call is never about mere individualistic salvation of the soul, but it restores to sacredness our entire being and goes forth from the one being called into a searching and hurting world.
Jesus calls each and every one of us and every aspect of our lives: Canterbury Cap and all.
[The Reverend Markus Dünzkofer delivered this sermon on January 15, 2012.]
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
John 1: 43-51 ~ Gospel Reading for January 15, 2012
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
1 Corinthians 6:12-20 ~ Bible Reading for January 15, 2012
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
1 Samuel 3:1-10 ~ Bible Reading on
Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. Then the LORD called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. The LORD called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” Then the LORD said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”
Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” He said, “Here I am.” Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him.” As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.
Posted by ParishAdmin on January 14, 2012 under Contributors, Webmaster Blog |
Evensong
Sunday, 05 February, 7pm
Marking Queen Elizabeth’s 60th year as
Queen of Canada and the Commonwealth
All are welcome! Bring a friend!
Posted by stpauls on January 8, 2012 under Sermons |
Many of you know what these are: signs.
The interesting thing about these signs is that they describe something they are not. This sign does not mean that it is Highway Number 5.
Equally, you cannot park on top of this sign.
And, even though this picture was taken in Europe, where things are a bit smaller, I do know that Denman Street in the City of Westminster is bigger than the dimensions of this sign.
Signs do not describe something they themselves are. But signs point to something else, something beyond the sign itself.
It is easy to identify road-signs. Most of us know them and are guided by them as we walk, cycle, or drive the streets around us.
But there are other signs. And very often they are not so easily identified as such. And because they are not so easily identified, often these signs are seen as ends in themselves.
Take our worship for example. Liturgy is supposed to be a signpost into the divine mystery. However, we all know of instances or places where liturgy has become so important that it no longer is viewed as a means by which we honour and encounter the triune God, but it has morphed into something that is important on its own.
Or think of the physical structure or the interior decoration of church buildings. Yes, these walls demark a sacred space, a thin place where God can be encountered. But is the building sacred all by itself or is it hallowed by being consecrated to God’s glory and by people gathering here to pray and to experience restoration in body, mind, and soul?
Ministry, any kind of lay or ordained ministry, is also just a sign. Yet, we forget at times that ministry is not supposed to be self-serving, but is supposed to be missional instead. Whatever we do in the church is to point us to how to serve God, how to serve one another, and how to bring about reconciliation, peace, and justice in the world.
Sometimes even theological signposts are misunderstood. The title “Mother of God,” for example, was intended to point out something profound about Jesus, not about Mary. The Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus picked the title for Mary in 431 AD to proclaim and reveal that she bore not just a mere mortal, but that she gave birth to Jesus, who is true man and true God. Yet, in the history of the church the title “Mother of God”, which was supposed to be a signpost to Jesus, changed into something that became important, even essential, in itself. Many misunderstand the title “Mother of God” to turn Mary into a demi-goddess. Thus, however, the sign becomes what it points at.
These shifts of the essence of signs not only occur in the religious world. Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites are intended to point us to other users and thus they can be tools to interconnect people. However, for many, Facebook and Twitter have become worlds and entities worthy in themselves. It is no longer about the connection. It is about how many friends you have and how often you update your status message.
And there are many more examples of how we at times transform signposts into essentials or goals or ends in themselves.
The Bible calls this role-reversal “idolatry” and identifies it as the root cause of human failing and sin. Whenever we replace God with something else, bad and even evil things happen.
This does not make signs in themselves bad or evil. In fact, just like traffic-signs direct traffic and lead us on the road, so non-traffic signposts can aid us into staying on course on our journey of life. We should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. But neither should we make the bathwater equal to or more important than the baby.
In today’s reading from Matthew, we also encounter a signpost. It is a very bright signpost, a signpost in fact so bright that at our wonderful pageant on Christmas Eve, both shepherds and magi had to wear sunglasses. Yes, I am speaking about the Star of Bethlehem. And what a glorious rendition we have here hanging from our rafters – despite what some members of the altar-guild think ….
The Star of Bethlehem is not just an afterthought in Matthew’s account of the birth of the messiah. It serves a very important function, as it points beyond itself.
Astronomers have tried to link the star to all kinds of possible scenarios: comets, a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, or other planetary constellations. However, remember, the magi followed this star. And if we plot the route taken by the magi, the Star of Bethlehem led them first westward only to take a sharp left turn to lead them all of a sudden southward and even a bit eastward. And there is no natural phenomenon that could explain this: Due to the earth’s rotation, all moons, suns, and stars seem to be traveling in our sky from East to West.
So, the Star of Bethlehem introduces something that has nothing to do with nature or science. It is more than a traffic-sign: The star points the magi to where they need to go, but it also points out that God is now made manifest in Jesus.
And despite what it might look like, this is a rather subtle and gentle criticism of astrology, of a pseudo-science, which looks at the stars and tries to find meaning there. But the star is only a signpost pointing to something bigger: The deep and profound meaning of our lives sought after by astrologers and those who consult them cannot be found in astrological constellation, but is only made known in the birth of Jesus. In Bethlehem, astrology surrenders to Jesus, who is the true star of this story.
Yet, there is another layer to the appearance of the star:
Note that the text does not condemn the magi – or who and what they are or what they do. The very facts that they are somewhat odd, somewhat different, engaged in somewhat strange (and even unbiblical) practices, and are alien and foreign to the biblical revelation – all these things are fully intended by the Gospel. Matthew is the most Jewish of the Gospel accounts, the one most concerned with how this birth fits in with God’s self-revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures. But Matthew also fully understands that God’s self-revelation is not limited to God’s chosen people. The Gospel is good news for all people. Jesus is born as the Jewish Messiah, but the hope he brings is for all, no exception!
Hence, the Star of Bethlehem allows for another dimension to enter the story of the birth of the Messiah. In fact, it allows for a whole new world to enter into the story of God’s salvation: a story, which was first revealed to Abraham and Sarah, to Isaac, Jacob, Miriam and Deborah, and to their offspring and compatriots, but a story, which now draws a much wider circle. The appearance of the star and the presence of the magi point out that God is made manifest in a child born of our sister Mary, the Mother of God, who is God of all the world and all peoples. All the peoples are welcome at the manger.
And if some weirdos, some funnily dressed and misplaced wise guys, who upset the religious establishment by who they are and what they do – if these magi fit into this story of salvation and are placed right next to manger, don’t you think there is a place for you and me there too? After all, by the standards of the establishment of our time we here at St. Paul’s are equally weirdos, who dress funnily and who don’t quite fit in anywhere else. But we do fit in: We fit right next to the magi, close, very, very close to the manger, where we are welcomed with open arms by the Saviour of the world, who was born not just for the sake of the religious establishment, but also for the sake of the magi, and for our sake too.
The Star of Bethlehem points to the truth that at the manger all are welcome. All are welcome, whatever troubles them or wears them down. All are welcome with their unique gifts, their unique offerings, their unique talents. All are welcome, even weirdos, even strangers, even outsiders, and most especially you and me.
[The Reverend Markus Dünzkofer delivered this sermon on January 8, 2012, Epiphany.]
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Matthew 2: 1-12 ~ Gospel Reading for January 8, 2012
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”
When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
