Epiphany 1
Revd Chrys M Tremththanmor
‘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.’
As no doubt you’ve heard in sermons before, the Bible doesn’t actually say how many wise people there were. In fact, from the structure of the New Testament Greek, we don’t even know their genders. There could have been wise women as well as wise men in the group! We don’t know whether they were rulers or magicians, respected or shifty.
But we do know something rather remarkable. They knew that they were trying to find a child, and that they were willing to worship him.
I was once told off by some of my friends on Facebook because, when I’d watched the last episode in the series, ‘Merlin’, I’d put on my status the comment ‘I’m glad Merlin let the dragon live!’ So all my friends who were going to watch the episode later told me off for spoiling the ending.
Perhaps our own reading of the story of the magi is also spoiled by our awareness of the ending of the story. We know that they are looking for Jesus, King of the Jews and, indeed, King of the whole world. We know the end of the Gospel story, and we know the strong, confident adult Jesus would become.
So perhaps we lose sight of the strangeness of the magi’s desire. These wise people from the East, rich and powerful enough to be able to make this long journey to Israel, know that they are not coming to bow down before an adult man already on his throne. They know that they’re not going to find a military ruler at the height of his powers. They know that they are looking for a small, vulnerable child.
When they do find that child, in his humble abode in Bethlehem, you could have forgiven them for checking their astral equivalent of SatNav and wondering whether the star had got it wrong. But the Bible tells us otherwise. Although this child is not in a palace, not obviously an heir to fortune and power, they still bow down and worship him. They still offer their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to their God and King, found in the form of a child.
God as a baby. God as a child. John Pridmore had a commentary in an issue of the Church Times newspaper which pointed out that the church has often been negative about childhood. Children have been viewed as sinful and selfish, creatures who must have their will broken. There’s a line in the carol ‘Once in royal David’s city’ which I always refuse to sing. ‘Christian children all must be mild, obedient, good as he.’ A good child was mild and obedient, seen and not heard.
But at Christmas we worship a baby, a child. Pridmore’s article asks whether we really allow ourselves to pay attention to the theological implications of God being born into the world. Pridmore writes, ‘Our belief about the child Christ and the significance of the incarnation must be shaped by our belief about children.’
What it does it mean to us that Jesus was born a baby? What does it mean that he spent years of his life being a child?
In the theology of the Orthodox Church there is the idea that the life of Jesus is as important as his death. The life of Jesus redeems the stages of our own human lives. His infancy redeems and hallows our infancy, his childhood redeems and hallows our childhood. His childhood makes childhood, and children, sacred.
The author David Jensen calls childhood ‘graced vulnerability.’ To be a child is to be vulnerable. We see this as the Gospel of Matthew continues its narrative, and Herod slaughters the innocents and the Holy Family flee to Egypt. Jesus, the infant, the child, was vulnerable. God did not come into the world as a full grown, powerful adult. God chose to be born. God chose to be vulnerable.
Jensen writes, ‘The baby Jesus comes into the world not to ignore the stigma of vulnerability, but to enflesh it.’ Again, perhaps we lose sight of this truth. The Word became flesh, and that flesh was initially a baby, a child.
Childhood is not an unfortunate stage of life, to be gotten over as quickly as possible. Childhood is not a passage to something better. Childhood, as hallowed by our God having shared in it himself, is a sacred time of life. It is as graced any as other part of human life.
As others have argued, as I have myself said, children are not the FUTURE of the church. They are the present of the church. The magi bowed down and worshipped a child. They saw in that child the Word become flesh and saw his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. They did not wait until the child was a mature adult to honour him.
What I have come to realise, as I work with children, is that they have a spirituality of their own. Jerome Berryman, the creator of Godly Play, argues that we should see children in sacramental terms. They are a means of grace. That is not to deny them their temper tantrums, their mistakes as they learn social graces and how to function in our rather complex world. But there is something fresh in a child’s approach to God, and to people, from which we can learn. Is there anyone here who hasn’t been embarrassed by a child’s honesty about a person or situation, yet secretly wished that you could have been as honest? There is a freshness to a child’s approach to prayer which can put our more measured words to shame. And anyone who has had a child offer her comfort in a time of grief knows that there is a wisdom in children which many adults seem to lack.
The
adult Jesus will say, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like
children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ I don’t see him
challenging us to become mild, obedient, and good. Perhaps what Jesus is
challenging us to do is to be willing, like a child, to be honest. To ask the
awkward questions. To take risks. To be willing to explore, to be playful, and
to be unafraid of being wrong about something.
Above all, perhaps Jesus is asking us to be willing to be vulnerable, to even seek vulnerability. In one novel George MacDonald has a preacher telling his congregation that God was saying to them, ‘My son, my daughter, you are growing old and petty; you must become a child. You are becoming old and careful; you must become a child. You are becoming old and distrustful; you must become a child. You must become a child—my child, like the baby there, that strong sunrise of faith and hope and love, lying in his mother’s arms in the stable.’
As the hymn ‘Once in royal David’s city’ continues, ‘For he is our childhood’s pattern, day by day, like us he grew. He was little, weak and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew.’ Perhaps we don’t like the idea of being vulnerable. It may be that our vulnerability as children was abused by those larger, stronger, older than us. So we would rather leave childhood behind and relate to each other, to the world, to God, as strong adults.
But even the adult Jesus did not stand on his strength. His death reflects his birth. During his trial, his scourging, his crucifixion, Jesus exhibits the same willing vulnerability as he did in his birth. Christ put aside his power to be born as a baby, and refused to call upon this power to save himself from the Romans. He placed himself into human hands, even knowing that those hands would one day nail him to a cross.
Jesus was willing to be vulnerable because he trusted in the love of God his Father. ‘Not my will but yours be done.’ ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ His identity as the son of God, the child of God, was the only security Jesus needed. In that security he accepted childlike vulnerability.
As
Jesus told Mary Magdalene, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my
God and your God.’ God is our Father, the source of our own security. In his
love we can take the risk of becoming like children. Like the magi, we came
here today to worship the God who chose to be vulnerable, the child born to set
us free. Amen.