Sermon: "Merry Little Christmas"

King Street UCC. Danbury CT

January 2, 2011

Matthew 2:1-12

“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

Matthew 2:11

“Merry Little Christmas”

Christmas 2010 is over.

Many of us have already taken down the decorations,

packed away the ornaments, and either dragged the tree out to the curb or stuffed it back in its box for another year.

We’ve stopped wishing each other “Merry Christmas” and instead have switched to wishing each other a “Happy New Year.”

The colored lights, the swatches of red and green, and silver and gold that have decorated our landscapes since Thanksgiving, will soon disappear, leaving behind the whites and grays of just another winter’s day.

That giddy feeling of anticipation that prevailed in the weeks leading up to Christmas has dissipated.

The magical spell which leads strangers to smile at each other, hold doors for one another, and to actually be civil to each other in their daily interactions, has worn off and soon we’ll be back to the standard exchange of impatient glares, judgmental comments, and general crankiness that we reserve for those who invade our space, cut us off in traffic, or keep us from getting where we need to go as fast as we’d like to get there.

Yes, Christmas 2010 is over  - according to our cultural calendar.

But according to the Christian calendar the season of Christmas still lives on.

The celebration of the birth of Christ does not end on Christmas day.

It continues right through to January 6^th, the day we traditionally set aside to commemorate the arrival of the Magi – those wise visitors from the East who came bearing gifts for the child King whose birth was announced via the appearance of a guiding star in the heavens.

But in reality since our cultural Christmas begins earlier and earlier each year, with sale ads appearing well before Halloween even arrives, by the time December 26^th rolls around we’re ready to have it all over and done with.

We’re ready to pack the whole thing away and get back to our normal routines.

But not everyone is in such a rush to put Christmas behind them.

While we in the Western Church celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25th, many Eastern Orthodox churches still follow the older Julian calendar and celebrate Christmas on January 7^th. 

So while we’re packing away our decorations and returning to work and school, their celebration is just beginning.

In Ireland, January 6^th is known as “Little Christmas” – in recognition of the fact that this is the day the wise men arrived marking the end of the Christmas season.

Also known as “Women’s Little Christmas,” the Irish celebrate this day by honoring the work that women do to prepare for the Christmas holiday.

On January 6^th it is the tradition for Irish men to take over all the household chores while the women spend the day in the pubs with their friends.

Alas, we have no such traditions in our country; in fact January 6^th often passes by unnoticed even among those of us who attend church on a regular basis. When I was growing up, January 6^th was the day that we took down the Christmas decorations, but few of us honor that tradition any more.

Some of us may know that January 6^th marks the first day of the season of Epiphany, the season that celebrates the revelation that the human Jesus was God made manifest in this world.

Yet because January 6th often lands in the middle of the week, many churches choose not to recognize it at all. The story of the Magi is wrapped up into the Nativity story on Christmas Eve, and the season of Epiphany begins instead with the story of Jesus’ baptism.

Before we know it Christmas is over and the next time we encounter Jesus he is a full-grown adult.

But we’re not there yet.

On this day, January 2^nd, we’re still waiting for the Magi to arrive.

We’re still living in anticipation of the gifts they have to present to the Christ child.

In a way it’s fitting that we’ve already moved on from Christmas Day.

It makes sense that we’ve already packed the decorations away, including the Nativity Sets that adorned our tabletops.

Because those Nativity Sets complete with adoring shepherds and the baby Jesus lying in a manger often contain one glaring inaccuracy.

They often contain the figures of the Three Wise Kings arriving to present their gifts to the newborn Jesus.

But according to the gospel text that we heard today, that’s not how it happened.

The Nativity story that we all know with the pregnant Mary, the overcrowded inn, and the baby Jesus lying in a manger is from the Gospel of Luke.

The story of the Magi is from the Gospel of Matthew.

And Matthew makes it clear that the Magi arrived to visit not the infant Jesus, but the child Jesus.

They found him not in a manger, but in a house.

And it is soon after their arrival to visit this new child King, that King Herod ordered the killing of all male children under the age of two.

Because these Wise Men arrived not at the time of Jesus’ birth, but nearly two years afterward.

I had to laugh when I heard one pastor admit that at Christmastime when he enters the homes of his family, friends, and parishioners he takes note of whether they have a nativity set.

And if the nativity set contains the figures of the Magi, he immediately removes them and places them across the room, or in another room entirely, to symbolize the time and distance that separated them from their actual arrival.

In fact, the children in his congregation have now made a game of “finding the missing Wise Men” who inevitably disappear whenever their pastor visits their homes.

But the timing of the Magi visit is one of those details that we tend to take liberties with, just as we do with other aspects of the story, as the children discovered earlier.

In reality, we don’t know how many wise men there were, where they came from, or whether they were kings, astrologers, or philosophers.

But we like to place crowns on their heads, gold chains around their necks, sit them on camels, and give them names because it helps us to visualize their role in the story. 

But there is one detail of the story that we do find in Matthew’s gospel:

We know that the wise men brought gifts - and that detail fascinates us.

Much has been made about the meaning of the gifts and what they symbolize, and how the rareness and assumed high value of the gifts made them all the more special when presented to the Christ child.

Just like those television commercials that try to convince us that no one has ever asked for a smaller less expensive gift at Christmas  – and thus we should be buying each other cars  – we tend to equate monetary value with meaning.

If the Wise Men had brought Jesus a simple clay pot, a pair of homemade sandals, and a handful of mustard seeds, the gifts probably wouldn’t have even garnered a mention in the story.

This would be the first century equivalent of getting socks and underwear for Christmas. I can just see two-year-old Jesus ripping open the packages and glaring at the Wise Men with a look on his face that says, “C’mon guys, where are the real presents?”

So we’re happy to read in Matthew’s gospel that the Magi brought Jesus some good stuff: Gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Even if we’re not exactly sure what frankincense and myrrh are, they sound exotic so they must be expensive.    And actually they were.

But the reason why these gifts are mentioned in the story has more to do with their symbolic meaning then their monetary value.

Gold was a gift that was often given to Kings, thus the implication was that even as child, Jesus was to be worshiped as a King. 

Frankincense was incense that was burned by the priests in the Temple, thus the implication here is that the boy Jesus was being recognized as a revered religious leader. And Myrrh when combined with oil was used to anoint the bodies of the dead before burial.  

This gift was meant to be a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

Ironically, with our focus landing so solidly on the gifts that the Magi brought we tend not to notice that the presentation of these gifts is the last thing that the Magi do in the story.

The gifts are mentioned in a single verse, almost as an afterthought.

Because the reason why the Magi came from so far away to visit this boy King was not to present him with gifts, but to pay him homage.

The word “homage” is mentioned not once, but three times in this passage.

In the original Greek the word used is proskuneo, which literally means to kiss the hand, and in common usage meant to prostrate oneself at the feet of a king, to lay oneself down, to give oneself over out of respect for another. 

When the Magi first entered Jerusalem, they asked, “Where is the child who has been born the King of the Jews, for we have come to pay him homage.” 

When King Herod summoned the Wise Men, in his deception he asked them to return to him and reveal the location of the boy king, so that he too might pay him homage.

And the first thing the Magi did upon entering the house and seeing the child Jesus with his mother Mary, was to kneel down and pay him homage.

Only after this act of worship – the kneeling down, this payment of homage - only after giving themselves completely to Christ, do the Magi present their material gifts.

And oh how I wish it were our tradition to do the same.

I wish we could separate December 25^th from January 6^th.

I wish we could keep December 25^th as the day we honor the birth of Christ, the day we pay him homage by giving ourselves completely over to him and pledge to live our lives just as he did.

And I wish we’d come to celebrate January 6^th as the day that we emulate the actions of the Magi by exchanging gifts and paying homage to the image of Christ that we see in each other. 

Because the way it is now, we get so caught up in the gifts that we miss the part about paying homage.

We are so enamored with the gold, and the frankincense and the myrrh we forget that the first thing we’re supposed to do is kneel.

At no time is this more evident then when something happens to disrupt our idea of what Christmas is meant to be.

A working father of six spends his entire paycheck on gifts for his children only to have them stolen out of his car, “I guess my kids won’t have Christmas this year,” he says dejectedly.

A woman in a refugee camp in Haiti cries out in anguish, “We're not having Christmas this year ... The children have no toys. If we don't have money to buy them clothes, how could we have money to buy them toys?”

The message that we are sending to our children, and that we have internalized ourselves regardless of our social standing, is that there is no Christmas without the gifts.

But the message of the Gospel is that the hope and they joy of Christmas is not found in the material gifts that we give each other, it’s found in the gift that God has given us by becoming human in Jesus.

God became human in Jesus to show us that we have the potential to do so much more than we think we can do, that we can be so much more then we think we can be.

The Magi prostrate themselves before the child Jesus and give him gifts that honor who he is and who he has the potential to become – a king, a spiritual leader, a servant to all.

The Magi represent the wisdom that recognizes that every human life is a journey taken in search of the One who calls us beyond ourselves into faithful service – the One before whom we are prepared to kneel, and to whom we offer the best of our gifts, flawed and unworthy though they be.

We encounter these wise men, as they kneel with supreme grace and dignity before a child who represents to them simplicity, vulnerability and poverty. They are prepared to kneel, for in their wisdom they discern the glory that is hidden in this child.

And so we too, as we’re engaged in our own human journey, search for the One who would have us be so much more than we are.

And bearing our unworthy gifts, we kneel on the dirt floor beside these Magi, and worship the child who calls us to live our lives in love rather than fear.

When we encounter the story of the Magi, once we strip away the things that come from our memory but are not in the story itself  - the crowns, the kings, the baby Jesus lying in a manger - we’re left with the image of human beings giving themselves completely over to Christ.

Laying their bodies down on the cold, hard ground while saying, “We offer our lives to you.”

And we do this by asking God to help us to discern what it is we are called to do, who it is we are called to be. 

As we begin this New Year, ask yourself, “Who is it that I am called to be?”

What is it that you are being pulled towards?

What is tugging at your soul and won't let go?

What keeps you awake at night, as you wonder could I, should I, how will I?

What is God asking of you, and are you willing to take a leap of faith to get there?

This Thursday I hope you’ll remember to celebrate January 6^th by paying homage to the Christ child.

I hope you’ll take the time to commemorate the arrival of the Wise Men and the beginning of the season of Epiphany.

I hope you’ll keep that Christmas tree up just one more day and hang a shining star upon the highest bough,

And have yourself a Merry Little Christmas, now.

Amen.