"If you want to change the world"
A sermon preached on Facebook Live Broadcast
Sirach 26:10 The Headstrong Daughter
Christmas II - January 3, 2020
In May of 2014, one Navy SEAL and Admiral William H. McRaven, delivered a commencement speech to the 8,000 graduates of the University of Texas. His speech “If you want to change the world” was so well received that it became a book.
The book was not titled by
the title of his speech. It was titled “Make Your Bed” because of the first
piece of advice was this:
“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.”
Now, I know some of you are thinking, “Right. Good. That's terrific. But, what does any of that have to do with this Gospel Story of the Three Kings?”
I’m going to get back to this idea, I promise, but first I want to talk about how the world is changed not by gold and incense or power and might but by dreams and intuitions and vulnerability and how, sometimes, we are off by nine miles.
Before I begin, I want to credit theologian and author Walther Brueggemann for this idea which I heard him lecture more years ago than I can remember but has stayed with me all these many years later.
To begin, it’s important to know that Matthew was not the first to imagine three rich wise guys from the East coming to Jerusalem. The whole story line comes from the 60th chapter of Isaiah in a poem recited to Jews living in Jerusalem.
It was about the year 580 and the Jews had been living in exile in what is now present-day Iraq. After several generations, they had returned to Jerusalem only to find it bombed out, torn down and in despair.
Isaiah anticipates that, no matter how bad things look right now, things will change for the better. “Rise, shine, for your light has come,” he invites his depressed, discouraged fellow Jews. He envisions a renewed Jerusalem with a new center of international trade.
“Nations will come to your
light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn,” writes Isaiah.
Isaiah even
tells them that there will be caravans loaded with trade goods like gold,
frankincense and myrrh, carried on camels, which will come from Asia and bring
prosperity and celebration and joy. This is God’s promise, promises Isaiah.
When The Three Intellectuals from the East come and pay homage to King Herod, they
ask him "Where is the child
who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and
have come to pay him homage."
Herod does what all incompetent rulers do when faced with a challenge and a
threat to his power and control: He panics. In his panic, a strange thing happens: Herod
invites the leading scholars of Torah and Talmud and Mishnah to tell him about
Isaiah 60.
They tell him that, well, see, actually, Isaiah was talking about the return of Jerusalem to a place as the center of global economy. The urban elites can recover their former power and prestige and – honestly? – nothing will really change.
Well, says Herod, do you have
a better text? Well, yes, they say – afraid of their King who is clearly
unhinged by the thought of losing his power. However, they are more afraid not
to tell him the truth.
See, they say, the more accurate text is Micah 5:2-4:
`And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'
This is the scene we pick up in today’s gospel. Herod tells the Three Intellectual Men from the East about Micah’s prophecy and charges them to go to Bethlehem and “search diligently for the child and when you have found him, bring him to me so that I may pay him homage.”
Bethlehem is about nine miles south of Jerusalem. It’s a very quick ride. An easy day's walk. Well, it used to be. Now, there’s a wall that physically divides the country, a reflection of the deep divisions that have brought so much suffering and pain to Palestine and yes, even Israel.
The traditional intellectuals
and scholars that had studied Isaiah but had forgotten Micah had been off by
nine miles - nine physical miles and galaxies of thought apart.
It’s difficult to fathom how the story might have be different if Herod’s interpreters had not remembered the prophecy in Micah 5 – how the world might NOT have changed.
What would have happened if The Three Scholars from Asia had not had a dream about the King’s directions
and did not return to Herod, not even with the child?
Indeed, what would have happened if Joseph hadn’t had a dream warning him about
Herod and how he should flee to Egypt?
How might the story be different if
Joseph hadn’t been later told in a dream that Herod had died and it was safe to
return to Palestine, to the district of Galilee to the town of Nazareth?
How
might the world NOT have changed? How many more millennia might it have taken for the story of salvation to unfold?
Matthew’s story of the Visitation of the Magi (the Epiphany which we celebrate Wednesday, January 6) is, in once sense, the story of these two ancient places: Jerusalem, with its great pretensions, and the “little town of Bethlehem,” with its modest promises.
And, here is the message found in the middle of these two places, separated by only nine miles: We can choose a “return to normalcy” in a triumphalist mode, a life of self-sufficiency that contains within it its own seeds of destruction. Or, we can choose an alternative that comes in innocence and a hope that confounds our usual pretensions.
Isn’t it funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same? How it is that the very choices faced by those in ancient times are not much different from the ones we face today?
Here’s the thing: Most of us are looking for a new start in a new year in the
wrong places. We are off by at least nine miles. As we look with joy into the new year
of 2021, we find on January 1 that we still have many of the same problems and
crisis we knew on December 31st.
There is no magic bullet. No miracle cure. No magic wand.
The pandemic is worse and promises to take even more lives, despite the availability of a vaccine.
White supremacist groups are, even now, gathering in the nation’s capitol for a large demonstration on Wednesday - and they're not there for the Epiphany.
Despite a controversial pandemic relief package, two million people have not regained the jobs they lost to COVID – millions more are facing eviction.
Millions of men, women and children – some of them in our neighborhoods – are living with food and shelter insecurity
Into this time in our lives we are invited into a new Epiphany. We are bidden to enter into this story and to travel those hard, demanding nine miles away from self-sufficiency and into mutual dependency which we have had to learn during this pandemic, symbolized most poignantly in the wearing of a face mask.
We are being asked, once again, to join the Jesus Movement and change the world.
Which brings us right back to
Navy Seal and Admiral William H McRaven’s suggestion that if we want to change
the world, we start by making our bed. Here’s what he said:
If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.
NB: You can find a transcript of the entire speech here. Don't miss what he has to say about hope and singing while up to your neck in ice cold mud in the middle of the night.
You have to start somewhere, my grandmother always said, reminding us frequently that the longest journey always begins with the first step.
Scripture is a good place to start, but as this gospel shows only too well, a lot
depends on how scripture is interpreted. You can be wise and learned and
scholarly, but if you don’t trust your self and take the risk of your own
intuition, you can still be nine miles off.
A dream is a good place to
start but only if you put your dream into a plan and your plan into action. As
my grandmother would also say, “Wishes don’t wash dishes.” (usually with a dish towel thrown over her shoulder and one hand in her apron pocket while the other pointed the way to the kitchen sink).
I once worked with a hospice nurse who never left a patient’s room without emptying the trash and cleaning off surfaces, sometimes even washing the dishes. I asked her once, while we were walking to our cars, why she did that.
She smiled and said, “I had a nursing supervisor who once said to me, ‘If you are not willing to empty the trash for a patient, you better start looking for another job.’ A leader serves. And a servant leader is not above the one she serves.”
The voice of Micah is the voice of a peasant hope for the future, a voice that is not impressed with high towers and great arenas, banks and urban achievements.
The voice which called to The Three Wise Men is the same which first called to Mary and then to Joseph, and called to Jesus and knocked Paul off his horse and calls to us all: the well-being of a people is not brought by high, lofty, political ambition but by attentiveness to those on the ground.
So if you’ve not yet made your New Year’s Resolution, here’s one for you: If you want to change the world and make it a better place, start with yourself.
If you want to continue what was begun thousands of years ago with the birth of Jesus, if you want to be like The Three Scholars from Asia, The Three Wise Men, and have your own epiphany and transform yourself, thereby setting in motion your participation in the plan to change the world - or, at least, your role in it - well, make your bed.
Amen.
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