Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Matthew 2:1-12; Matthew 2:13-18
You may have been wondering after my comment just now: it's all very well to assume everyone has gifts we can offer to Jesus, but is that really the case? Does everyone really have the power, the ability to please God, or is it just the saints, the theologians and the unco guid? And why am I assuming that everyone actually wants to do so? Aren't I being a bit naïve, going by the headlines we hear every day about power abused, about selfishness that doesn't care what it tramples as long as it gets what it wants?
I'd have to admit that our second reading from Matthew's Gospel this morning, about the bloody aftermath of the visit of the magi to King Herod in Jerusalem, rather bears out any cynicism you may be feeling about the desire of human nature to please God. While we remember with pleasure the pomp and majesty, the retinues of camels and the extravagance of gifts brought by the wise men, it's not so pleasant contemplating the slaughter of toddlers that resulted from their journey to see Jesus, and not so frequently the subject of sermons, either. We get too much of that in daily life, you may think. Why bring it into church, when we can think of gold and frankincense and myrrh?
Yet though the gifts of the magi seem to have almost a fairytale quality to them, the powers they symbolise - riches, worship and death - are just as much part of our daily lives as on the pages of Matthew's Gospel. The question is, will we use them for God's glory, or will we try to use them purely for our own gain and comfort, and end up being used by them? I'd like to test my idea that people in any circumstances can give gifts pleasing to God by considering some of my experience over the last few days volunteering at HARC - 'Homeless and Rootless at Christmas', which this year found a home at the Broomhall Centre, just up the road. And against that, I'll set the life of Herod.
Most guests who come to HARC do so because of a lack of resources in some way or other. They may come in search of food, entertainment, a place to rest, a haircut or just the company at a time of year when loneliness feels more like failure than usual. Great generosity has been shown by everyone who donates money so that between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day HARC can happen every year. But the greatest generosity I encountered this year was that of the young lad who, rather than squirreling it away, offered me one of his Green & Black chocolates. Someone with very few resources still showed generosity with what he had - a gift worthy of the Magi.
Herod certainly had resources, including lots of gold. He ruled all Judea under the Roman Empire, and was expert at keeping the province quietly governed and collecting taxes for Rome. The gold he kept as his reward was used to rebuild the Jerusalem temple, but also to keep up an army to crush any revolts against Caesar. When he heard of a new king, soldiers bankrolled by Herod's gold suppressed that threat at his command: by killing babies of his own people. His heaped-up gold had ended up by controlling him.
What about worship, the Magi's acknowledgment of divinity in Jesus? You might think that worship of God would be in short supply at HARC - but that wasn't the case at all. Several people brought Bibles with them, though I wasn't privy to their conversation. But one of my conversations made another volunteer exclaim, 'I never expected a theological discussion here!' (to which my reaction was, Why not?). The lad I spoke with had read his Bible well, but believed there could be no God, because of tragedies in his life. He complained that religious people never gave you a straight answer, but always waffled around. Science, on the other hand, could be shown to be true. Yet in his fierce search for truth, in his dismissal of book-answers that weren't real, I saw an anger at the pain and injustice of the world, and a true desire for a God worth worshipping, that in itself was the incense of prayer.
You could argue that Herod scored pretty highly on the worship front. But he hedged his bets: building not just the Jerusalem temple but also a temple dedicated to the Roman Emperor. His problem came when one priority clashed directly with the other. Rome insisted on placing the standards of their legions, crowned with figures of eagles, inside the Jerusalem Temple - and, as you know, Jewish faith bans images of any sort, because they could be worshipped in God's place. When there was a riot smashing the blasphemous Roman eagles, Herod killed its Jewish ringleaders. In the end the desire to honour God was weaker in him than his desire for self-preservation.
What about the power of death? At HARC death was certainly a present reality. Someone's girlfriend had died of a methadone overdose on Christmas Day, and his bullied flatmate had committed suicide. Another man admitted to me that he didn't want to go to the doctor because he was afraid of what he might find, and he knew that drinking had brought his problems on him, yet he was supporting a friend through cancer treatment. No tinsel-wrapped merry little Christmas here, but with tangled and fractured stories behind them and uncertain futures ahead, our guests at HARC kept on keeping on, with a courage that speaks to me of the God who never tires of bringing life out of death.
Did Herod rule death, then? In the two incidents I've mentioned so far, he solved his problem by killing, but that could probably be said of every ancient monarch. Yet Herod and death were more closely connected than most. He had his favourite wife and three of his sons put to death because he thought they were plotting against him. And according to the Jewish historian Josephus, when he was dying, Herod gave orders for several distinguished men to be killed at the time he died, so that he could be sure of public mourning. Here was someone powerful whom the power of death ruled mercilessly.
I'm not arguing, of course, that our guests at HARC were all saints; all our gifts to God are broken ones. Our generosity with resources depends to some extent on prioritising us and ours. Our generosity with time and effort worshipping God depends to some extent on how life is going, as does our ability to see life coming out of death. But we don't have to do it alone. For Jesus' way of being king means he loves, serves and directs us; Jesus' prayer connects us to God; Jesus' death brings us through death to life everlasting. He is our gold, our frankincense and our myrrh. So with Isaiah we can rejoice: the Lord GOD has caused righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. Happy birthday, Jesus! I know you'll like what we're giving you. Because it's us.