Sermon Tone Analysis
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God Speaks to All
One of the things that happens when you live in a house with three other people, four cats, and a dog, is you say, “I wasn’t talking to you” about 700 times each day.
Just this morning, as our big orange cat Julius greeted me, I held his little face in my hands and said, “Aren’t you a pretty boy, my sweet cuddly buddy.”
any my husband groggily replied, “What?!”
He was far less confused when I told him I was talking to the cat.
It’s sometimes ludicrous too, the things people don’t realize are being said to someone else.
I’ve had my kids reply “I’m not ON the kitchen counter.”
when I’ve scolded a cat for trying to help me cook.
They don’t seem to hear me when I’m talking to them, but the second I start talking to the dog, they hear every word I say.
It’s really frustrating when the people you’re talking to don’t hear you or when other people accidentally jump into the conversation and make it way more confusing than it was.
And it’s also frustrating to be the one who wasn’t being talked to.
Sometimes in a house as busy as mine, we just start tuning out everyone and not listening at all.
We have to really pay attention to know when someone is talking to us and when they are talking to someone else.
We have to be aware of what is going on around us, the relationships involved, the other people who are nearby, because the context matters.
As soon as we aren’t paying enough attention, we find ourselves saying “What did you say?” to someone who wasn’t talking to us or not hearing a person who is talking to us.
It’s the same when we are listening for God.
We get caught not paying enough attention to what is going on around us or being too overwhelmed by all the noise around us and we find ourselves mishearing, misinterpreting, or missing what God is saying to us.
When this happens too often, we can get frustrated and just stop listening because we assume that God must be talking to someone else.
When I was a kid, there was a popular series of books called “Choose your own adventure“.
You would read a story and at certain parts of the story, you would be faced with a decision.
Which direction to travel, which character to trust, etc.
And the book would tell you what page to flip to for whichever decision you made.
The book ended differently depending on the choices you made.
Sometimes you “won” so to speak and sometimes the book ended in tragedy.
I never felt like there was enough information provided in these stories with which to make the decisions, so I made myself a loophole.
I would use scraps of paper or my fingers to mark my last decision so I could back track if I got abducted by aliens or bit by a vampire.
I could thereby ensure I would always find the best possible ending to the book.
That’s not how life works, unfortunately.
And since we don’t have cosmic scraps of paper with which to mark the places to go back to if we get something terribly wrong, sometimes we just sort of freeze up and/or take the easy path because it’s safer.
Or we figure that if we don’t have the confidence to say “I heard God say. .
.”,
God is talking to someone else.
But God has something important and life changing to say to absolutely everyone if we put in the hard work of listening - actively and attentively.
We can’t possibly know how to move through the world and our rapidly changing culture as individuals or as a church if we don’t assume God has something valuable to say to us and take the time to listen.
Just be warned: God might have something really weird to say like “So there is this baby king sleeping with the animals in the backwaters of Israel. .
.”
Sometimes we don’t give ourselves enough credit for having the immagination to do this or we don’t think God has much to say to us.
Today, in our gospel passage we read about the “wise men”.
This is the most common translation these days for the Greek word “Magus” (plural “Magi”).
In the past it has been translated as “kings” but they were really king’s advisors, not actual kings.
Today, in our gospel passage we read about the “wise men”.
This is the most common translation these days for the Greek word “Magus” or the plural “Magoi”.
In the past it has been translated as “kings” but they were really king’s advisors, not actual kings.
μάγοι
μάγος, οὑ, ὁ (s.
μαγεία, μαγεύω)
① a Magus, a (Persian [SNyberg, D. Rel.
d. alten Iran ’38], then also Babylonian) wise man and priest, who was expert in astrology, interpretation of dreams and various other occult arts (so Hdt.+; Jos., Ant. 20, 142; s.
Da 2:2, 10; in still other pass. in Da, Theod.; Tat. 28, 1. Beside φιλόσοφος of Apollonius of Tyana: Orig., C. Cels.
6, 41, 13).
The common tellings of the Christmas story seem to have a huge contrast between the two groups who come to see the baby Jesus.
you have the dirty, sheepy, common shepherds, and you have these regal, fancy pants guys on camels from far away.
And especially contrasted with the shepherds, the idea of actual kings getting word about Jesus and following a star to see him is a pretty cool idea, theologically.
Scripture does state in other places that both kings and common people will bow to Jesus.
Just be careful, because the gospel writer Matthew was making a different theological point here originally.
But other places we see these sorts talked about in Scripture, they are sort of looked down on.
“Smart guys” “eggheads” “hippies” etc.
They aren’t necessarily much more desirable than the stinking, rough shepherds.
Just be careful, because the gospel writer Matthew was making a different theological point here originally.
The magoi were not actually very popular guys in many circles.
In other places we see these sorts talked about in Scripture and other ancient texts, they are sort of looked down on.
They are seen as knowitalls, “eggheads”, or even “hippies”.
They are the weirdos who read the stars and think they know the future.
They aren’t necessarily much more desirable than the stinking, rough shepherds.
The magi were not actually very popular guys in many circles.
In other places we see these sorts talked about in Scripture and other ancient texts, they are sort of looked down on.
They are seen as knowitalls, “eggheads”, or even “hippies”.
They are the weirdos who read the stars and think they know the future and then tell it to kings and other important people.
They aren’t necessarily much more desirable than the stinking, rough shepherds.
The only real earthly king in the story is Herod.
And Herod completely misses the voice of God in all of this.
A bunch of smelly farmhands hears angels and obeys.
A group of weird eastern astrologers reads about Jesus’ birth in the stars and come looking.
But the king doesn’t get it.
He seems to want to, he asks the magi to help him, but ultimately, he’s unwilling to go out on a limb and listen for himself, so he misses out.
Grace in the text
God speaks to shepherds.
God speaks to weird smarty-pants magicians.
God speaks to any and all who are willing to do the work and listen.
Not all of our Christmas imagery is very historically accurate and that includes our picture of the wise men.
There are even stories about their names which are not listed anywhere that we know of.
Someone was just doing creative reflection on Scripture once upon a time and it stuck.
That’s not always bad, though.
Sometimes, the theological drive of the image is just as important as having a good historical understanding.
It’s wonderful to use our imaginations when we read these stories.
A great example of this is when the wise men are depicted as being of different races.
(Take a look at the church’s nativity - one Magus is clearly a white guy, another is of African decent and another is probably middle eastern or Mediterranean).
Historically - they were all probably from the same place.
But, the whole reason they began to be imagined and pictured in the way that they are is because it highlights the epiphany promise that Jesus is for all people.
The easiest way to represent the idea of all people is to make them look different from one another.
It is through Christ that freedom is opened up to everyone everywhere and that is what the wise men represent.
Joanna Harader: Ephesians presents a mystery: that gentiles are fellow heirs with the Jews.
I've always assumed that the revelation here is that Jews should let the gentiles into the community.
But perhaps the revelation is at least as much the fact that the gentiles want to be included.
A great picture, is when we see them of different races.
This highlights the epiphany promise that Jesus is for all people.
It is through Christ that freedom is opened up to everyone everywhere.
From: https://www.christiancentury.org/article/editors-desk/post-christmas-blues
As outsiders—non-Jews in a Jewish story, Persians and Arabs at the manger with these Hebrew parents and child—the Magi give us a foreshadowing of Jesus’ ministry.
Jesus will shatter religious tradition and ethnic boundaries and bring strangers center stage.
Before the story is over, Jesus will challenge boundaries of race, social class, status and even gender.
He will welcome outsiders—sinners, the unclean, lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes, poor people, women and children, Roman soldiers—and share meals with them.
Jesus will scandalize some people with his radical inclusivity.
Apparently he didn’t know or care about the function of a religion to define insiders and outsiders.
Instead he will fling open the doors.
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