Evangelistic Talk on Matthew ii.1-12

Please bear with the prematurity of this post. On Friday 11th December, we’re having an evangelistic carol service in Moscow in the University of Idaho Auditorium. This is the talk I am hoping to give. Suggestions for improvement are welcome (but the talk can’t get much longer!).

You may have heard of the four stages of a man’s life:

1. You believe in Santa Claus
2. You don’t believe in Santa Claus
3. You become Santa Claus
4. You start to look like Santa Claus

For many, the story of Jesus Christ is in the same category as Santa Claus: we have known the Christmas story since childhood and we may have believed it then but now we’re adults, we’ve grown out of it, we don’t believe it any more. After all it’s only make-believe, isn’t it? Just something for the children? Listen again to the first sentence of Matthew 2: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king…” The Christmas story is no fairy tale: it really happened, in a particular place at a particular time in history. And as we’ll see, it’s clear that it’s not just for children. It is something of which political leaders and scholars have to take notice and it’s for people from every nation. The story takes us on a journey to two towns and as we follow the journey, we’ll see who Jesus is, and the two ways that we can respond to him.

Our first stop is Jerusalem. Wise men from the east arrive and ask, “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him.” God had somehow made known to the wise men the meaning of this new object – whatever it was – they had seen in the sky. As soon as the news reaches King Herod, there is no doubt in his mind about what has happened. To answer the question of the wise men he gathers together all the religious experts and asks them where the Christ was to be born. We tend of think of Christ as a surname, like Smith or Jones, but it’s a title, like Doctor or Professor. It means ‘the anointed one’, the king appointed by God. In our readings and carols, we have heard and sung about this king whom God promised would come. He would be a descendant of Israel’s great King David and also God himself. He would rescue people from the death that overshadows them. He would bring about a reign of peace and justice which would be never-ending and ever-increasing until it extends over whole earth. He would put right all that is wrong with the world.

Christmas is supposed to be the season of joy, peace and goodwill. Sadly it is so often the time of year when we are acutely aware that there is something deeply wrong with the world. Two years ago, the UK mental health charity Mind conducted a poll over the Christmas period which found that 40% of people experienced increased levels of stress or anxiety and 25% had increased feelings of depression. We find it hard to get on with those we love the most, we lose our temper with our relatives – our children, our parents, our siblings. Sadness and loneliness hits us as we remember our loved ones who have died and are no longer with us. Genesis 3 tells of the cause of all this. The first human beings wanted to be gods themselves, in charge of their own lives, so they disobeyed God by eating the fruit he had forbidden them, and we have all followed in our parents’ footsteps. But God cares about right and wrong and he has passed sentence on us: he has given us what we want. The consequences are broken relationships with one another, with the world in which we work, and most importantly with God, the source of our life and all that is good. Being cut off from him, we each face death, and after that separation from all that is good forever.

But God in his great love for the world he made hasn’t just left us in that mess. He promised that a king would come – the Christ – who would rescue us and put everything right. One of the promises God made about this king was where he would be born. So when Herod asks the religious experts where the Christ was born, they answer, in Bethlehem of Judaea, and they quote a passage from the book of Micah in the OT which says that from Bethlehem in the land of Judah shall come a governor who will rule the people of Israel. Of course, as Matthew tells us at the beginning of this episode, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea. He is the Christ, the king of David’s line who is also God, who came to rescue us and put the world right. We need to remember that Micah was writing over seven hundred years before Jesus was born, and yet he pinpoints the place of the king’s birth. Jesus could not have arranged for this to happen. The fact that it happened just as God revealed it would, many centuries before it happened is one reason why many, many people are persuaded that the Christmas story is true, that Jesus is who Christians claim he is. The question then is how to respond to Jesus, the king. This is the question that faced Herod and the wise men, and their responses illustrate the only two possibilities that are open to us.

Herod in Jerusalem understands who Jesus is but rejects him. Herod is the king, he wants to stay king and the birth of Jesus as the King of the Jews, Christ, God’s anointed king is a threat to him. That’s clear from the way Matthew tells the story. In just a few verses, he switches back and forth between between “Herod the king”, “He that is born King of the Jews”, “Herod the King”. Do you remember how Herod responded to the news of Jesus’ birth? He was troubled. When he finds out that the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem of Judaea, do you remember what Herod did? He privily called the wise men – he summoned them in secret – and inquired of them what time the star had appeared, and thus when the child was born. When he asks them to bring him word that he may go and worship the child as well, it just doesn’t fit; he is up to no good. This is confirmed at end of the reading, where we are told that God warned the wise men in a dream that they should not return to Herod. Shortly after this Herod orders the slaughter of all the male children in Bethlehem and the surrounding region who were two years old and younger, on the basis of the time the wise men had told him the star had appeared. This is another way the rebellion we heard about in Genesis 3 shows itself. Herod, like our first parents, like each of us by nature, wants to keep the crown on his own head rather than acknowledge that it belongs to Jesus. He wants to be the ruler, rather than live under the rule of the king whom God has appointed. That is the scene in Jerusalem. Now we leave Jerusalem behind and follow the wise men to their second destination, Bethlehem, where we see their response to Jesus.

The wise men are sent on their way by Herod and the star they saw in the east now goes before them until it stops over the place where the child, Jesus, was. How different is their response to Herod’s! They have made it clear from the beginning that they want to come to the new-born king to worship him. Unlike Herod, who was troubled when the heard the news, the wise men rejoiced with great joy when they saw the star. They go into the house where the child was – the family has moved out of the stable now – and when they see the child, they fall down before him and worship him. They know what the reign of this king of the Jews will be like. The equipment of war will be thrown on the bonfire. Mortal enemies shall be friends again. There will be no more miscarriages of justice. No more will death be ever looming over them. And the wise men understand that this isn’t just for the people of Israel. His government will extend to the four corners of the earth. They recognise that this is good news and that the only sensible thing to do is to come from their faraway land and present themselves to him as his subjects. Historically, one of the ways you would show your loyalty and commitment to a ruler is by making some payment to him, bringing a tribute. That’s what the wise men do – they open their treasures and present gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. It’s the last one to which I’d like us to pay particular attention.

We read in one of the other accounts of Jesus’ life that it was the burial custom of the Jews to wrap the body of a dead person in linen cloths with spices. In his early thirties, Jesus was crucified – put to death on a cross by the Romans – and when his body was being prepared for burial, myrrh was used. In the gifts of the wise men, we are being given a clue about how Jesus was going to do all that God had promised he would. Unlike the rest of us, Jesus lived a perfect life, he never disobeyed his heavenly Father. He was the only man who ever lived who did not deserve to be cut off from God and face death and separation from all that is good forever. But on the cross, he willingly stood in for people like you and me who have disobeyed God and who do deserve that punishment, so that we needn’t face it ourselves. He paid the penalty in full, and that was seen when he rose from the dead on the third day; death could not hold him. Just before Christmas 2005, a new film adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was released. Towards the end the White Witch demands that Edmund be given to her; according to the the “deep magic” of Narnia, all traitors belong to her and she must kill them at the stone table. The great lion, Aslan, the true king of Narnia offers himself in Edmund’s place, so Edmund goes free and Aslan and is sacrificed by the White Witch on the stone table himself. But there’s a deeper magic that the witch doesn’t know about. When one who is blameless willingly dies on behalf of the guilty, he may return to life; so Aslan comes back to life. The Bible says that we’re all traitors to the God who made us and we face the death penalty. But Christ died in the place of traitors so that they may go free and then he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and now reigns over the whole world.

So, this Christmas, as we hear again the story of the birth of Jesus, whose response will be yours? Will you be like King Herod in Jerusalem, troubled, because if Jesus is the King, you are not? Will you – like him – pull the crown more tightly over your own head, and refuse to give it to the one to whom it rightly belongs? We’ve heard what will happen to those who continue behave like that, as if they were the rulers of their lives. Or will you be like the wise men in Bethlehem and rejoice, because Jesus is this world’s true king who can save us from death and ruin, and will put the world right? As we survey the world around us, we don’t see right judgements and fair decisions everywhere, or all the relics of war being thrown onto the fire, or universal peace. Then again, all the wise men had in front of them was a child in its mother’s arms. Yet they knew who that child was and what he would do, and so they bow before him and give their allegiance to him. Will you do the same? Will you take the crown off your own head, and stop trying to govern your life your own way? Jesus freely offers to pardon you completely for the way you have lived as if you were in charge of your life. He offers free and total forgiveness, because of his death on the cross. Will you accept that he is the king, receive the pardon he is holding out to you, and accept his rule over your life? Those who do needn’t fear the future but can instead look forward to the wonderful, glorious, sure, and certain hope of being with Christ in heaven after death, and later of being raised up to live forever in his perfect future kingdom of life, peace, uprightness and justice.

May you all enjoy a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.