Sermon - Birth Pains

“Birth Pains”

A sermon by Sid Burgess for Edgewood PC, Birmingham, AL
Epiphany Sunday, January 6, 2008

Texts: Matthew 2:1-12, Isaiah 60:1-6a, Ephesians 3:1-12

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’

So begins T. S. Eliot’s memorable poem, “The Journey of the Magi.”

“And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly,” Eliot continues,
“and the villages dirty and charging high prices:
a hard time we had of it.”

Travelers trying to get to the town of Bethlehem today might say, ‘Mr. Eliot, you don’t know the half of it!’

The news service, MSNBC reports:

Gray concrete walls measuring about 25 feet high enclose Bethlehem on three sides — part of the separation barrier that Israel says it’s building to keep out attackers from the (Palestinian-controlled) West Bank.

Another source reports:

There are around 40 obstructions to freedom of movement in the Bethlehem region, including the wall, manned checkpoints, roadblocks, and gates.

These barriers have been put in place over the past seven years as more than 4,400 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis have been killed in the current round of Middle East hostilities. In this tense atmosphere, imagine travelers from the east-- that is, from nations like Iran and Iraq, trying to make their way into Bethlehem.

This week’s story of the wise men and their “hard journey” and last week’s harrowing tale of Herod’s “slaughter of the innocents” in Bethlehem serve to bring the Church back to the real world following our sentimental celebrations of Christmas.

Literary critiques says that Eliot’s poem is the story of his conversion from doubt to faith, always a difficult journey. But so, too, the move from war to peace, from violence to non-violence. All require trust.

Consider what lack of trust produces. The paranoia of Herod--and Hitler and Stalin. The deep seated prejudice of Sunni vs. Shiite, the hostility of Arab vs. Jew, our suspicion of Hispanic immigrants. Lack of trust in the Church creates division. Lack of trust at home divides families. Lack of trust puts the lie to our national motto: “In God we trust.”

For if we truly trust in God . . . . If we put our trust in God’s ultimate mercy and grace. . . . If we put our trust in God’s abiding goodness and love, then we have nothing to fear from one another, no matter how much we may differ by race, creed, national origin, or sexual orientation. If we truly trust in the steadfast, never stopping love of our creator God, we have nothing to fear from changed circumstances, nothing to fear from illness or injury, nothing to fear from death itself.

Coming to such trust--in God and in one another-- is indeed a challenge. But the alternative is what playwright Eugene O’Neill describes in his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” That play is an insightful examination of a family caught in a downward cycle of mutual suspicion. Project that same mistrust onto society at large and we get more walls going up in the Middle East, more fences being built in the American southwest, more abandonment of our cities. We get bluer, blue states and redder, red states until no one is left to work for the common good of all. “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” indeed.

Compare this dark prospect to the vision offered today by Isaiah:

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
⁴ Lift up your eyes and look around . . . .
⁵ Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice . . . .

Isaiah’s prophesy implies a choice--keep our eyes downcast, perhaps even shield our eyes from the light, focus on the negative--or look up and see the bright light of God’s righteousness and truth. It is a hard transition, this move from looking down to looking up. This move from suspicion to trust. From doubt to faith. How fortunate we are that God has provided “the light shinning in the darkness”(Jn. 1:5).

The wise men of Matthew’s story follow the guiding light of a star. Today, St. Paul tells us that God has provided us with a path to the Holy One of God which leads right through the church. “So that through the church,” the great apostle writes . . .

“So that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known . . .”(Eph. 3.10) A star might make a better story, but the Church has proven to be a more lasting means by which God’s eternal mercy and grace can be made known to all the world.

Comes now the question: Can we trust the Church? After all, the Church is so divided. East and West, Catholic and Protestant, intellectuals vs. fundamentalists. The church is so divided by race and class and culture, can we trust the Church? Up close and personal, the Church is so very human. We make mistakes, we fail in mission, our leaders disappoint us, we, who claim to be followers-- followers of Christ Jesus our Lord. We fail time and again to ‘bear our crosses.’ Can we trust even the Church?

“The light shines in the darkness, (John writes,) and the darkness did not overcome it” (1.5). Two millennia, and counting--centuries of evil trying to cover up the light, and the light still shines. Even through the flawed Church, the light still shines. “God from God, Light from Light, (proclaims our Nicene Creed), true God from true God.”

The church pushed to margins, pushed aside in our overwhelmingly secular culture. The church may seem an unlikely place to begin to build trust. This little church, especially, may seem an improbable place to start. So small in a world of big, bigger, and biggest. So modest in world of glitz and glamour. So meager in resources, stretched thin for volunteers . . . . This little church may seem an unlikely place to begin to build trust-- trust in God, trust in humankind, trust in those nearest and dearest to us, trust even in ourselves.

But--remember, that three-letter word is always the biggest word in faith . . . . But when the wise men, following a star, found the Christ child in a humble village in a remote part of the world, they demonstrated for all time and all people the mighty power of God to reveal the divine self in the most unlikely of settings, to the most unlikely of people, for the most enduring purposes of eternal truth.

As T.S. Eliot concludes his remarkable poem, “The Journey of the Magi,” the story of his journey from doubt to faith, from mistrust to trust, he seems to be saying that giving up doubt is something akin to experiencing a death. Giving up the familiar, perhaps uncomfortable, but still familiar doubt--giving up the suspicion of others, giving up the resentment. . . . . Giving up these oh so familiar feelings may not be as hard as accepting the death of a loved one, but it’s close. And the birth--the birth of faith, the dawning of trust-- was “hard and bitter agony for us.” Birth and death, says the poet, are so much alike; they have so much in common, so much pain.

Well, I may not know much about poetry, or about Eliot, but I do know that ‘Momma never said it was gonna be easy!’

Remarkably enough, the gifts the Magi bring to Jesus say the same thing. Yes, there is the gold, indicating a king. But that gold is our sign to switch our allegiance from the prevailing power structures on which we depend-- like money, medicine, technology, and government. . . . The gold is our sign to switch our ultimate allegiance to Christ the King. The frankincense is the ancient symbol of the priesthood--a priesthood Jesus himself will redefine from the role gatekeeper and scorekeeper to models of service and sacrifice. Models for us, who uphold the priesthood of all believers. And the myrrh? That incense is a symbol of the prophet. Hear the prophet Isaiah, challenging us to “hope for more than we have yet seen.”

“Arise, shine,” my sisters and brothers, “for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon us.”
⁴ Lift up your eyes and look around . . . .
⁵ Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice . . . .
as you place your trust in God the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1 Eliot, T.S., “The Journey of the Magi,” from The Poetry Archive, http://www.poetryarchive.org.
2 Associated Press, 12.24.07, via MSNBC.com
3 Ben White, ALTERNET (Independent Media Institute), http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/71553/
4 Associated Press via msnbc.com.
5 Alison, James, “Halo Effect,” CHRISTIAN CENTURY, December 25, 2007, p. 16.