Wise men from a far away
land signal that the new king is born. This is not a king only for the people
of Israel, but for the whole world. This is a new kind of king. Not an earthly
king; not one like we’ve had in the past. This is the One who ushers in God’s
kingdom of love and righteousness for the world, no matter where you come from.
When
I was in the seventh grade, the kids chose sides. It was expected, and
sometimes necessary for survival. You could be either a surfer or a skater. You
were either a metal-head or a rapper. You might be a redneck or a jock. These
were labels, yes, but also identities. These groups provided an identity, and
to belong to a group meant protection. There were days that I kept my head low
and walked quickly to the bus to avoid possible fights that would break out.
There were wars and rumors of wars. It could be a rough place, at least it
seemed that way. By the time I got to high-school, the lines were a bit more
blurry, but similarly drawn. These artificial borders separated groups of kids
that sometimes mixed in class or on the gym floor or the football field, at the
mall, or elsewhere in the community.
We
draw lines.
That Jesus was born in a
manger, attended to by shepherds, and visited by foreign priests, signals an
event that crosses lines that we draw for ourselves. To call myself a follower
of Christ is NOT to say, “I’m on this side, and unless you declare your
allegiance, then we cannot be on the same team.” In Christ all people are
united. In Christ, the Holy One in which God is revealed in flesh and blood, we
find that we are one people. We are united by the love that God shows for the
world in sending the Son to be human just like us. We are united by this Jesus that
is the incarnate One, fully divine and powerful to save us from sin.
Not everyone saw the
star. The wise men came from the East, and returned to their home country. The
promise of Immanuel was not just for them, though they saw the sign. The
visited the newborn king of the Jews, though not Jews themselves. Did they tell
the story? Did they speak about what they had witnessed? The travels of the
wise men tell us that this was the event for which the universe was waiting and
that the change in the world was for the world, through the world did not know
it. The people had yet to see what God was doing.
It’s a matter of
perspective. We cannot see all that God is doing, and we don’t know everything
that encompasses what Paul calls the “mystery of Christ”[1].
Paul says that we are all sharers in the promise of Christ through the gospel.
The good news of God is to be shared among all people, and the rest is up to
the Spirit. We are one people. We are kings and shepherds, magi and innkeepers,
carpenters and scribes, metal-heads and gangsta rappers, surfers and skaters,
members of one body of Christ, united in the gospel, the Word made flesh.
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