Light in the Darkness
By Charles Rush
January 6, 2013
Isaiah 60: 1-6 and Matthew 2: 1-12
[ Audio
(mp3, 4.8Mb) ]
is text sometimes takes me straight back to the Renaissance and fairer days strolling through Venice and Florence looking for cappuccino and grappa. It is because this scene was a favorite among the wealthy patrons of Italy for a very simple reason.
It was quite
fashionable back then to commission a painting for the Church and the artists
of the day were quite good at suggesting ways that the patrons could be brushed
into the background of the painting itself. So there you would have Jesus
preaching to the 5,000 right near the altar piece and all around Jesus, in the
crowd itself, would be the Borgia family, hanging on Jesus every word, so to
speak. A lot of people didn't quite feel comfortable presenting themselves as
actual disciples of Jesus, knowing as they did, that their families were a
fairly compromised lot.
This scene was
the fall back for people that knew they were full of real world compromise. You
didn't really have to be an actual Christian in order to go with the wise men
to the place of Jesus birth and leave a gift. If you couldn't follow in the
way, at least you could be counted among those were curious enough and
insightful enough to recognize this babe as something special. At least you
could be counted among those that contributed gifts to the church. And let me
take this opportunity to remind you that we still need your pledge at Christ
Church and we can find some way to paint your family into the building as well.
Like the
Medici's in Florence. I read a couple long books on them because they funded
all those painters like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci
that gave us such gifts in the Renaissance and also because they were one of a
handful of families in Europe that invented investment banking, opening the way
for the development of the modern economy as we know it.
If you have ever
wondered if investment banking has only become full of sharks in the past few
decades or whether it has always been this way, a read about the history of the
Medici family suggests that things are actually tamer today
than at the beginning.
In the late
1400's the Medicis were one of the five wealthiest
families in Italy (and Europe for that matter). One of their chief rivals, the Pazzis, had been buying up property surrounding Florence in
an effort to squeeze the monopoly held by the bank of the Medicis.
There was a lot of back and forth between the two banking houses that wasn't
pretty when the Pazzis decided to make a bold move.
On April 26th, 1478 the head of the Medici bank, the patriarch
Lorenzo was at high Mass at the Duomo in Florence. In the middle of the Mass,
he and his brother Giuliano are at the rail, kneeling
for the Eucharist when Francesco Pazzi and a hired
assassin Bernardo Bandi approached the men from
behind. They stabbed Giuliano 19 times which more
than killed him (I'm willing to guess). Lorenzo's body guards managed to fend
off the assassins and Lorenzo escaped to the sacristy, which is right behind
the Apse in the Duomo, and his body guards managed to close those immense
doors, securing the door, while the whole church took sides in a melee. The two
assassins were caught, dragged through the streets and hung right over the
Ponte Vecchio before being dropped unceremoniously
into the river Arno.[i]
No wonder church
was so popular back then. We just don't have that kind of action in worship
anymore. Coffee hour was lively that day, don't you know?
I think you can
see why the Medici family lacked the temerity to paint themselves in the
background as real followers of Jesus. But we have several of them painted in
as people who came with the Wise men from the East, curious about the birth of
this new child, and pious enough to at least drop a knee in adoration and bring
an appropriate gift.
So, if you come
here this morning, secretly wondering if your complicated and contradictory
life is actually even acceptable enough for God to deal with, you come in good
company, with all of the rest of us who know that our families are whacky and
that we are a mish mash of virtue and vice rolled up in a personal internal
struggle, wondering who will get the upper hand in this next chapter of our
lives? We can all come seeking. Truth be told, God makes a place for you too in
the stalls. If the birth of that baby means anything, it means that God is born
into our stables, into the chaos and earthy grime of our lives,
and in compassion meets us where we really are.
The story itself
is highly stylized with symbolism as it should be. The wise men, we are told,
bring gifts. The first gift is gold, the gift that is fitting for a King, for
royalty. It recognizes that people will later say of Jesus that he represented
the very highest of what we humans stand for. He is fulfilled as a person in a
way that sets him apart from the rest of us as a kind of example to follow the
way that ordinary children might look to the rich display of a great King
ruling for the good of the people.
The second gift
they bring is frankincense. That is what almost all ancients used in their
temples, a pleasing fragrance that symbolized the presence of the divine. Our
prayers go up to God like the smoke from a censor and God is present with us
like the pleasing fragrance of incense. People will later say of Jesus that he
is not only the best of what we humans might strive for,
the way of Jesus is what God wants for us in our lives. His way is the divine
way and through becoming like Jesus, we will not only find a deeper personal
fulfillment in our lives, we will actually make contact with the divine in each
of us.
And the third
gift is Myrrh. It is an oil that ancient people used
to embalm the dead. Like a good novel, this gift prefigures the end. Jesus will
die, much to the shock of people around him, but like the rest of us he also
dies. And Jesus will later show us how to die, so to speak. Perhaps we might
say that Jesus will show us how to live so well that when we die, our lives
will not be lived in vain, but we will be able to find purpose and meaning for our
lives, even in the midst of suffering and tragedy.
The Wise men,
almost as soon as the Bible was written, were depicted as coming from three
different continents and they were given names. Balthazar was depicted as
coming from Arabia. Melchior is depicted as coming from Persia. And Caspar was
depicted as coming from India. Up until that point, these three symbolize the
ancient traditions of religion from our primordial past. So they symbolize the
fact that our quests for spiritual wholeness from our deepest past will be
answered and fulfilled in the person and the teaching of the Christ.
Likewise, what
we can learn from the Christ, we can all take back to the four corners of the
Earth because the message and the way of the Christ is
not just for one cultural or religious tradition. It is for all of us. It is
universal in scope.
Maybe you've
seen that corny billboard in the heart land of our country that says, “Wise men
still seek him”. Oh, please!
But the truth is
that all of us knuckleheads, all of us yahoo's, come away from kneeling at the
foot of this one child, on a life-long quest for wisdom.
Jesus doesn't
come giving us a blue print for our lives. Jesus doesn't tell us how to worship
or be religious. Jesus doesn't directly answer the hard moral questions like
why really bad guys like Bashar Al Assad have so much
money and power and get to kill 50,000 people with impunity when 20 innocent
children get shot to death in school before they even had a chance to start life?
That is for us
to figure out. “We are all on a hero's journey” from where we began to where we
will end. And like the hero's of old, we face challenges as we enter the forest
of our lives and we are forced to find a way on through.[ii]
We need our own
particular wisdom that we have to find for ourselves. And we know that we have
a very limited insight. Our time is short here. We can't really see the
consequences of what we are doing now and really know what they mean for the
future. This is what we have to figure out. This is our mission.
In Jesus, we
meet someone who was really alive. It wasn't just the way he lived out of love,
gratitude, grace. It wasn't just his acceptance, his compassion, his
forgiveness. It wasn't just his moral strength, his healing, his
spiritual peace in the midst of strife. But sum total, when people were around
him, the divine life force was magnetic to those he touched. In him was life
and that life is the light of our lives.
I wish I could
tell you where you should work, who you should marry. I wish I could tell you
what you need to change in this next chapter of your life, but I can't. That is
for you to find out. That is the wisdom for you to develop.
What I can tell
you is that the way of Jesus is the way of truth and life. What I can tell you
is that the way of Jesus is the way of light and that light will be enough for
you to develop the wisdom you need to find your way through the unknown forest
of your life. What I can tell you is that you are not seeking wisdom alone but
you are surrounded here by other seekers of good will and we will lift you up
in prayer that will make a material difference in your life and we will help
you access the best part of who you can be. And if you are really lucky some of
these seekers right around you just might become real pillars of strength for
you in the future when you are weak, real anchors of meaning around you when
you are uncertain about the point of your life.
I hope for you
that you find the wisdom that you need this new year.
The clock is ticking as I'm reminded watching the older generation pass and the
newest generation looking to us for maturity and insight. I hope that your life
is coming together, cohering around our Ultimate Source and Destiny. I hope for
you this year that you really live, come what may. Amen.
