"Get Out the Map" -- Matthew 2 (Epiphany Sunday)

Scott Clark
4 days ago
9 min read

To listen to the sermon, you can click here.

Chapter 2 of the Gospel of Matthew offers up a tale of two journeys.

There’s the familiar story of the journey of the Magi. The Magi see a star in the East, and wonder at its meaning. They travel from distant lands to Jerusalem, where they encounter and contend with King Herod and his advisers. With what they learn there, they keep following the star and eventually find their way to Joseph and Mary and their infant son, Jesus. There, the Magi rejoice, give gifts, and then head “home by another way.”^[1]

And, there’s the story we don’t tell as often. Just after the Magi depart, Joseph is warned in a dream to flee the wrath of Herod – and so the Holy Family flees in the night and seeks refuge in Egypt. King Herod is so enraged and terrified by a newborn who might be a rival to his power, that he orders the genocide of all male infants 2-years old and under. Jesus begins his life as part of a refugee family fleeing for their lives, fleeing genocide, an immigrant family, strangers seeking shelter in a strange land.

In these stories in chapter 2, our classic manger scene comes to a close, and folks head back out into a world of disruption. We’re going to look, this morning, at how they find their way.

As a first thing, we need to consider the terrain they have to travel. We are traveling through the world of the Gospel of Matthew.^[2] When we started back up in Matthew, just before Christmas, we noted that Matthew’s world is a more sinister world than we find in the other gospels. Matthew and his community have been thrown out of a broader community; theirs is a world of peril, with real enemies.^[3]

It is also a world of power-over. As chapter 2 opens, we meet King Herod. King Herod is what some call a “puppet-king.” He is a local king, installed and propped up by the Roman Empire to maintain the Empire’s local control. But to call him a “puppet-king” is to understate the very real power that he wields to exploit, suppress, and harm the people – yes, in the name of Rome, but also for his own profit and power.

And King Herod does that with a vengeance. King Herod is a megalomaniac obsessed with his own power and wealth. There he is installed in his palace, and surrounded by a cadre of sycophants – advisers who tell him what he wants to hear, and who feed his fear. They are collaborators. Their power is wrapped up and dependent on Herod’s power.^[4] Any threat to that power must be hunted down and eliminated. Herod is “ruthless in maintaining his grasp on power.”^[5] He deploys squads of soldiers – all the tools of the state he can muster – to pursue those he sees as disloyal, as enemies, as a threat to his continued power.

Now, in these ancient stories, we are always looking for a word for today. Let’s just pause for a moment, and think of where in our world we see and experience power dynamics like that:

SILENCE FOR REFLECTION

So let me say this. These stories are not ultimately about Herod. Herod is not the point, or even the protagonist. He is a minor character, with a bit part. He is a small man who causes great harm. Now, Herod would love for the story to be about him – about how he uses his brute strength, the military might of an empire, to maintain his power. But, ultimately, Herod is a footnote in history. In this story, he is a foil to what God is doing in the world.^[6] Herod is an embodiment of what is wrong in a world where power-over is allowed to rage and rail unchecked.

These stories are about how – into this world of harm and hurt – God is birthing something entirely new – a new world, a new reign, a new humanity^[7]. Out of a world that Herod and the powers desperately wish they could control, these stories are about how God shows up in the birth of Jesus the Christ, and how God keeps showing up – again and again – with new life. Epiphany, upon epiphany, upon epiphany.

As the Magi and the Holy Family set out on these journeys, the terrain they travel is treacherous. The way is not easy because, as Barbara Brown Taylor describes it, their old maps no longer work.^[8] Did you notice that? Again and again, the Magi change course, as they navigate this world of power-over. They begin their journey with wonder at a star, and a vague sense that it will lead them to a life-giving revelation – somehow revealed in a child born King of the Jews. They travel to Jerusalem, and the king they find there is... Herod. They ask around; they gather information; they hear from Herod’s advisers; Herod schemes to try to trick the Magi into hunting down this child king for him, but they are not fooled. They learn as they go. They course-correct, and set back out on their way – they create their own way, which is decidedly not Herod’s way – with all they have learned, they go “home by another way.”

And Joseph and Mary: Nothing about this is how they thought their lives would unfold. Their old maps told them that they would be engaged and then marry and then have kids, as they lived out a righteousness shaped and structured by rules and by law. But when this baby comes, in this unexpected way, Joseph chooses a righteousness more generous, more full of grace. And with Mary, they choose together a life that will magnify God in the world.

For all these folks out on the road on these journeys, their old maps no longer work – either because those maps never really worked at all (power-over has never ever led to life), or because life opens up in ways far more expansive than they ever had imagined. And so they learn as they go.

This is what we’ve talked about before as “transformative learning.” Educational theorist Jack Mezirow says that this is one of the primary ways that we learn and make meaning in the world.^[9] Mezirow says that we move through the world, at any given moment, with a worldview that is based on what we’ve experienced up until know. And then we encounter something we’ve never encountered before – a new bit of information, a new question, a new experience, sometimes a disorienting experience – something that can’t be explained completely by our current world view – by what we know now.

And so we engage what we don’t know. We gather the resources to figure it out. We gather a community. We take it apart, along with our current world view. We look at it from every angle. And then we put our worldview back together in a way that makes sense – and then we act – we take the next step – we move forward with a more robust way of encountering the world. Our old maps no longer work – we learn by living – and we make new maps.

That’s what Matthew’s community is doing in this Gospel. They’ve experienced Jesus – and as they have lived into the fullness of what that means – they’ve been thrown out of their community for living out radical, expansive good news. This Gospel is their new map. They start with the old map – experience something even more in Jesus Christ – and they map out an even more expansive world.

That’s what the Magi and Joseph and Mary are doing in this story. They are learning by living – they are making new maps.

Notice just a few things about how they find their way.

First, notice how they are drawn out of themselves by something that is beyond their comprehension: wonder at a star that appears in the sky brighter than any they’d seen before; the unexpected blessing of a birth; the advice of angels; a disorienting dilemma; a question with no easy answer; curiosity at what this all might mean.

Second, notice what they bring to the task. At least for the Magi, there is a star to help them find the way – and for all of them, angels whispering warnings and encouragement. But notice what they themselves bring to the task of finding their way.

There are some core values and longings that guide them. With the Magi, there is their love of learning and curiosity. All of them – the Magi, Joseph, and Mary – bring a whole lot of courage. And what strikes me most as I read the story this year – the core value throughout these stories is respecting, protecting, and saving human life.

The Magi read Herod – they are not fooled by his death-dealing scheming. They know why he wants to find this child born King – and it’s not to give him praise. They go home by another way.

And Joseph and Mary – Joseph has already chosen a way guided by human decency. And here they choose to leave everything they know to protect the life of this child. These folks are not unequipped for this journey. They bring all that they are, all that they value and long for; they bring the fullness of their humanity.

And third, notice how they find companions along the way. No one in this story finds their way on their own. Scripture doesn’t say that the Magi all came from the same place – maybe they were drawn together to this journey by a shared curiosity. When they don’t know, they stop and ask for directions – they seek the viewpoints of others – and they sift through those. Joseph and Mary – the heart of what they are doing here is saying with their whole life, “We are in this together.” No one travels alone.

This year, we’re going to think of “epiphany” in terms of learning. An epiphany is a manifestation – a showing up in the world of something we haven’t experienced before. God shows up in Jesus Christ – in the flesh of humanity – and keeps showing up – and we make meaning of that experience as we live our lives: We Learn by Living.

Last year, as we started the year, I offered 7 practices to ground the new year. We will carry those into this coming year. And at the start of this year, here are three sets of questions to inform our journey:

1. First, what has got you wondering these days? What has you curious? Where are the old maps not working? What questions do you bring into this new year?

2. Second, what do you bring to the journey? The time is passed for sitting around in this troubled world and saying, “Oh, I feel like I can’t do anything.” We know better than that. We are people who have moved through and lived through COVID – and more than a full year of resistance to a lawless regiem. I’ve walked alongside you as you have faced the hard things in life. You have something to bring to this moment. We have something to bring to this moment. We have values that ground and guide our life – the values that we are called to embody in the Body of Christ – feeding the hungry, sheltering those who are vulnerable, extending tender mercy to those who are hurting, working for peace, to name a few. What are the values, the longings, the skills and gifts that you bring to this journey – to this new year?

3. And third, who will be your companions along the way? No one travels alone, or learns alone – we serve, and live, and learn in community – together. Claim that. Who will your conversation partners be? What other voices will you consider and sift?

We have this lovely manger scene here – this mash-up of the Christmas story from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew – all imagined in that one Holy Night. And at some point, folks head home. Luke tells us that the shepherds go to proclaim the good news. Matthew tells us that the Magi come from afar, but then they head home by another way. And Joseph and Mary flee to a safer nation, refugees from a petty despot. They all leave the shelter of that night – back out on life’s journey – and as they head down the road – what lies ahead is the dawning of a new day – a new year.

In this new year, in the unfolding life of Christ in the world --

1. What questions will draw us forward?

2. What will we bring to the journey and discover along the way?

3. What will we live and learn as we travel together, through this world of disruption, into the bright new day that God is creating even now?

^[1] See Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way (Lanham, MD; Cowley Publications, 1999).

^[2] For general background on this text and the Gospel of Matthew, see M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. viii (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp.134-37; Jill Duffield, Commentary in Connections, Year A, vol. 2 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2019), pp.127-29, 159-61; Kristen Stroble, Commentary in Connections, Year A, vol. 2 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2019), pp.125-27, 157-59; Herman C. Waetjen, Matthew’s Theology of Fulfillment, Its Universality and It’s Ethnicity (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017).