Matthew 2:1-12
2 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, magi from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “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.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
6 ‘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.’”
7 Then Herod secretly called for the magi and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 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. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
* * *
Luke 2:8-20
8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favours!”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
A ‘cutting’ of tree wisdom: ‘Tree visitors’ (Genny Tunbridge)
Native trees are those which colonised the area of Britain after the last ice age, while the land was still connected to mainland Europe. Those which arrived (by deliberate or accidental human introduction) after the UK became separate from Europe - non-native trees – might be regarded as a kind of visitor.
Some tree visitors are exotic, not really designed for our climate and terrain, mostly only found in specialist arboreta or planted and carefully tended in gardens. Palm trees and eucalyptus, bamboo, magnolia or tulip tree… often flamboyant, striking, they remind us of distant lands and different cultures. But other visiting trees have made themselves very much at home, growing freely in the wild or commonly planted in our streets and parks, and seem to have been here always: chestnut and horse chestnut, sycamore, London plane, copper beech… Even apples, plums and pears started out as visitors, but the gifts they bring have been so very welcome, we have made sure they stayed!
Among environmentalists there is an ambivalence about the role of introduced, non-native trees. Sycamore, for example has been with us at least since the 15th century, possibly since Roman times. It has often been regarded as invasive and unhelpful, hosting relatively little insect life compared to some native species; yet its pollen, nectar and seeds are beneficial to bees, birds and mammals. And as our climate is changing too rapidly, in our streets more non-native trees are being planted as they are better adapted to thrive in increased temperatures.
Introduction to the theme (Al Barrett)
In this week after the feast of Epiphany, we’re thinking about the different kinds of visitors to the baby Jesus, as told in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. We’ve already (in the lead-up to Christmas) caught a glimpse of the differences of emphasis, and of content, in these two gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ birth, and how our familiar ‘nativity story’ is really a mish-mash of bits from those two different stories. Today, we see those differences laid out clearly.
Matthew’s gospel, characteristically, picks up references from the Hebrew bible (what we Christians often call the ‘Old Testament’) to point to Jesus as fulfilling what the prophets said. Matthew quotes the prophet Micah (‘and you, Bethlehem…’), but gives it a subtle twist: ‘one of the little clans of Judah’, says Micah (5:2) – ‘by no means least among the rulers of Judah’, says Matthew. And there’s more. Surely Matthew, as he writes his story here, has the words of the prophet Isaiah in mind:
‘Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
…the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
A multitude of camels shall cover you…
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.’ (Isaiah 60:3, 5-6)
Matthew makes no mention of kings (his ‘magi’ are astrologers), or camels (but we can guess how they’ve crept into our nativity scenes!) – but we get the impression that the magi from the land of the rising sun are representing, for Matthew, ‘the nations’ of Isaiah’s prophecy, and he uses Isaiah’s ‘gold and frankincense’ to point to Jesus as the ‘light’, ‘the brightness of [the] dawn’. What Matthew also introduces, though, is the third gift of myrrh (used for the anointing of the dying and the dead), and the frightened King Herod – who, we will soon discover, turns out to be a genocidal tyrant – in stark contrast to Isaiah’s kings who ‘proclaim the praise of the Lord’.
Where Matthew’s God sends messages (to Joseph, to the magi) in dreams, Luke continues with angels – from Mary’s visit from Gabriel to, now, a multitude of them, appearing to the shepherds. For Luke’s angels, ‘Don’t be afraid’ is there consistent message: because Jesus is God’s ‘good news’ for all people. And the all is significant here. Matthew’s ‘all’ is about the nations of the world. Luke’s ‘all’ is concerned most with those Mary herself has sung of as the ‘lowly’ and the ‘hungry’. Luke’s Jesus, remember, is the bringer of God’s ‘upside-down kin-dom’, and after God’s beginning with the humble Mary of Nazareth, here God uses shepherds – marginal shift-workers, outside ‘polite society’ – to be witnesses, messengers (like the angels themselves): the bearers to Mary and Joseph of the angels’ message, and to be the voices of God’s glory and praise on their return journey.
Two different stories, then; two different kinds of visitor – giving us a glimpse into two different aspects of the truth of the gospels. In the arrival of Jesus, the mighty are humbled and disturbed (Matthew), and the humble are entrusted with the joy of the ‘good news’ (Luke). And in our inherited mish-mash of a nativity story, is there some truth too? Perhaps it is something like this:
In a Mexican slum there is a destitute old woman who each year puts up an extensive nativity set. The Christ Child is in the centre, of course, and around him she places dozens and dozens of figures of people and animals. This is no matched set! None of the figurines match; and they are not in scale with each other, some only an inch high, some several feet tall. She just clutters the set with whatever figurines she can find. But there is a great truth hidden in this mish mash of nativity characters. Although the senora cannot read or write, she has the spiritual insight to see that Christ reconciles and brings together all the diverse people of the earth.
Reflection (Ruth Harley)
It may seem strange to be thinking about the theme of ‘visitors’ at this time when our ability to visit or to receive visitors is very limited or non-existent. I know that is something many of us have been missing terribly, especially over the Christmas period.
But cast your mind back for a moment to a pre-Covid world. I wonder, can you think of a time when you have visited somewhere new and found it – in some way – strange, different, unexpected, or even unsettling? Perhaps staying with someone whose household operates very differently to yours, or experiencing a different culture or language?
My mum likes to tell the story of when she took me, aged 3, to visit her friends, and I encountered something I had not encountered before - a tablecloth! I apparently spent most of the meal trying to look underneath it, and for weeks afterwards I kept telling everyone we met “my Mummy has a friend with a tablecloth!” There is nothing inherently strange or surprising about tablecloths. If we had had a tablecloth at home, no doubt theirs would have seemed unremarkable, but because it was something new and different from my previous experience, I was fascinated by it.
As adults, we tend to be better at hiding our astonishment when we encounter things which are quite ordinary to other people, but seem new and different to us. But we still feel it. I remember the first time I visited a Mosque, and also the first time I visited a Deaf Club when I was learning British Sign Language, as times when I have particularly noticed the strangeness to me as a visitor of an environment which is very ordinary to my host. I think perhaps that sense of strangeness is part of the essence of the experience of being a visitor, and our response to it may vary – from wariness, to curiosity, to excitement, to fear.
In today’s readings, we have two very different accounts of visitors to the infant Jesus, and two quite different reactions to encountering something – or rather, someone – new and strange. Notice that both accounts start with fear. Herod, in Matthew’s gospel, “is frightened” when the magi tell him about the messiah for whom they are searching. The shepherds, in Luke’s gospel, “were terrified” by the sudden appearance of the angels. But what happens next is where these two stories of the nativity diverge significantly. The shepherds move beyond their fear - or perhaps they ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’, as the popular phrase has it - and they set out on a journey: a journey which will change them. By the time they are on the return journey from their visit to Jesus, they are no longer afraid, but “glorifying and praising God”.
Not so Herod. While Luke depicts what we might see as a certain amount of character development for the shepherds, on a journey of transformation from fear to joy, Matthew draws a contrast between the fearfulness of Herod and the reaction of the magi to Jesus, who are “overwhelmed with joy”. This contrast only serves to underline the fear felt by Herod – fear which, we know and the readers of Matthew’s gospel are about to find out – would lead to genocidal action in the massacre of the innocents. There is no transformation here – at least not for Herod.
What we have here are two very different reactions to encounter with the Other. Jesus is in many ways the ultimate ‘other’ – God made human, the strangeness of the Divine inhabiting the familiarity of our flesh. And encountering this Other, this messiah, requires a response.
The shepherds respond by allowing themselves to be transformed. They unhesitatingly decided to go to Bethlehem, to accept this invitation to become visitors of the divine, to become open to whatever strange or unexpected things this encounter may bring. And their openness, their receptivity to the stranger in their midst, enables them to be transformed, to leave that encounter changed, overflowing with praise and wonder.
Herod’s reaction to news of the messiah is neither open nor receptive. Rather, he is immediately defensive. Fear, secrecy and deception characterise his response in this passage, and will soon be followed by violence. It is a response emphasised by the contrast with the gift-giving, rejoicing magi.
There are all sorts of factors underpinning these different reactions. The shepherds perhaps do not have much to lose, while Herod is clinging to the familiarity and security of his own power. The shepherds – most likely itinerant workers, used to being the outsider – are accustomed to seeing themselves as the visitors, the strangers, the guests, the ones who have to adapt themselves to ‘the way things are done round here’. Whereas Herod, with all his power and wealth, is more used to being the host, and doing things on his own terms.
And what of us? How do we respond to the Other? How do we allow ourselves to be met and transformed by God, even in the strangeness of situations and encounters which we might approach with uncertainty or even fear? How do we learn to become the sort of visitors the shepherds are – open and receptive to meeting God in new and unexpected ways, in strange and unfamiliar people and places?
Perhaps it feels at the moment like there is quite enough strangeness going on without us seeking it out. These are strange times, for sure, and unsettling for many of us. But, paradoxically, these are also times which, for many of us are limiting our horizons. Not only are we not able to travel or to visit and encounter the Other in new places or contexts, we are also missing out on many of those day-to-day chance encounters and conversations which give us glimpses of the Divine in the face of neighbours and strangers.
Perhaps this is a time when we need to be intentional about finding ways to visit the Divine in new and unexpected places. That might be in our conversations with others, in what we choose to read or watch or listen to, and hopefully in this new series of Trees of Life reflections too. Wherever and however we can, let us approach the new, the strange, the Other, the unknown with curiosity and openness, ready to be transformed, prepared to allow our fears to give way to joy and praise, receptive to encountering God in unfamiliar ways.
Reflection (Gloria Smith)
I remember when our daughter Emma was born and how many visitors came, both family and friends over the first few days and I was inundated with all kinds of gifts. She was the firstborn grandchild in both families and that made her special- to our family at least. If it had happened today during the pandemic we wouldn’t have been able to celebrate as much, visitors wouldn’t be allowed and any gifts would have come via Amazon or through the post. It would be far less celebratory. But then again this isn’t normal times is it?
And it wasn’t really normal times in Palestine 2000 years ago. Palestine was occupied by the Romans and according to Luke, Joseph and Mary had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem to take part in a census. If that is the case Mary and Joseph wouldn’t have had many visitors as they obviously had no family or friends they could stay with in Bethlehem otherwise they wouldn’t have had to sleep in a stable. Yet they did have visitors, not family and friends as you might expect but according to Matthew a group of astrologers bearing gifts and according to Luke, some shepherds from the surrounding hills; a strange selection of visitors to see the Son of God.
So how did they get to hear about the birth? The reading today from Matthew writes that the astrologers/wise men/Magi came from faraway countries. They spent their lives looking up at the stars and interpreting what they meant. They had seen a new star which they believed would lead them to the King of the Jews. They went to the king at the time Herod believing he would know where he would be. The chief priest told them about a Jewish prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. They went and found the stable and gave gives of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. That really is all the information we have in the bible about these travellers other than that they came from the east. The Church has attempted to fill in more detail about the wise men. It is assumed there were three of them as they each brought a gift and theologians/historians believe that they came from what is now Iran, Iraq and in the western church India, or in parts of the orthodox church, Ethiopia. The western church named them as Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar although the orthodox church has different names for them. What are the most important things about them was that they were not thought to be Jewish, they were from different countries, had travelled hundreds if not a thousand mile following the star and had brought gifts; gold as a gift fit for a king, frankincense to identify the baby as being divine and more unusually myrrh as a prophecy for his death.
So although the tradition is of them travelling together from one place, it is more likely they came from different places and probably worshipped different gods. Their perseverance is remarkable to travel so far and even if by camel would have taken 2 to 3months or more of travelling through inhospitable deserts with blazing temperatures with little water along the way. They must have thought this was a very special baby to give up so much time and effort just to see him. They responded with commitment, perseverance and belief.
The other visitors to see the baby Jesus did not have so far to travel. They were shepherds out in the hills nearby to Bethlehem. They were visited by angels who told them the good news and immediately the shepherds responded and went to visit this new born baby. Shepherds lived with their sheep and goats, sleeping out at night and they weren’t particularly welcomed in the villages and towns as they were thought to be dirty and smelly. They lived an almost nomadic existence as the pasture if it could be called that was sparse and the sheep would roam long distances to graze so they were constantly on the move. Also in Palestine 2000 years ago, there were wild animals that would prey upon the sheep and goats so the shepherds had to be brave, tough and willing to fight off the wolves and wild dogs in order to protect their livestock. So in essence they weren’t well educated members of the community who would be invited in for a meal, they were on the margins of society, necessary to provide meat for food and sacrifice, but not to be friends with. So for the shepherds to be given this message was amazing! But again they responded with commitment, and belief. This is what drove them to go and find the baby the angels had told them about.
What a mish-mash of visitors to visit any newborn baby, let alone the Son of God! Certainly not what would be expected to visit the Messiah, the King of Israel- foreigners, outsiders and non-believers. Why were these people the ones chosen to follow a star and have angels appear to them? It is this upside-down kingdom again that is found in Luke’s gospel. The message about this new baby was not given to the respected religious leaders of the day but to unlikely ordinary people who weren’t necessarily religious, going about their everyday lives. But these people had two things in common a belief and a commitment to what they recognised as the truth – that this baby was indeed special and worth visiting, worth giving up their time and worth making an effort for, worth responding to.
Of course there were other visitors, although not named, there must have been the animals. The shepherds would never have left their most vulnerable and precious sheep, their lambs or kids to the mercy of the wolves. They would have brought them along. As the manger was in a stable I’m sure animals would have been there too.
God chose the least likely of people to receive the message and I think that is what she does today. Don’t look for signs in church but out there, to the ones labelled as outsiders, to people who on the surface are as unlikely candidates for hearing and responding to God’s message as back then. That means we need to be on the lookout for those signs not within our church but out there in the community, amongst the mish-mash that is our world.
No dignitaries, no religious folk but foreigners, outsiders and the marginalised, alongside with creatures of God’s creation. From the rich to the poor, form Jew to gentile, from close by and far away, from human and non-human these were the unlikely ones who responded and visited God incarnate in the form of that small baby Jesus. For us that sends a clear message – that Jesus became incarnate for the whole world not for the chosen few, but for those on the edges, those who don’t fit in, the ordinary – but definitely for those who see the signs, hear the good news and respond.
Images of Jesus: ‘The Good Shepherd’ (Beth Millman)
When I first started thinking about writing a reflection on the image of Jesus as a good Shepherd it suddenly occurred to me that growing up in Birmingham I didn’t even know what the qualities of a shepherd were let alone a good shepherd. So I did some research:
• A good Shepherd needs to not only know all about sheep but to know each one of their flock individually.
• A good shepherd needs to be able to know what their sheep need to remain happy and healthy
• A good shepherd needs to be committed to looking after their sheep in all weathers.
• A good shepherd needs to be aware of dangers to their flock and be willing to protect them.
Sheep and Shepherds are mentioned a lot in the bible, not only as a description of real sheep and real shepherds, but also to describe God’s people and their leaders - however, it is only Jesus that describes himself as the ‘Good Shepherd’. I began thinking about how the above qualities can make someone good at looking after a flock of sheep, how they can be seen in Jesus and why he may have been seen and described as the Good Shepherd.
In the passage from John 10, Jesus makes a comparison between himself as a ‘Good Shepherd’ and the ‘hired hand’. The hired hand is described as running away when danger arises and a wolf attacks the flock. He ran away because he did not own the sheep nor did he care for the sheep. He was unwilling to sacrifice himself to protect the sheep and had other, more selfish reasons for playing the role of the shepherd.
· what did I notice, or what particularly stood out for me?
· what did they make me wonder, or what questions am I pondering?
· what have they helped me realise?
· what am I discovering about Jesus?
· how might these (noticings, wonderings, realisations & discoveries) change the way I live out my faith?
Poems / prayers for this week:
We call them wise
and I had always thought of them that way
respecting the pilgrimage of anyone
who sees a star and follows it
to his discomforting -
being prepare to change.
And yet -
in following their star, the star
that was to lead them to
enlargement of the soul (their own) -
they blundered mightily, and set in train
the massacre of many innocents.
Naïve and foolish men they were, not wise,
to go and ask of Herod ‘Where’s
your rival, where
is he who might unseat you?’
I wonder if, back
in their own countries,
for all that they themselves were born again,
they heard the voice of Rachel
weeping for her children
refusing to be comforted
because they were no more?
Kate Compston
O God, the source of all insight,
whose coming was revealed
to the nations
not among men of power
but on a woman’s lap:
give us grace to seek you
where you may be found,
that the wisdom of the world
may be humbled
and discover your
unexpected joy,
through Jesus Christ, Amen.
Janet Morley
Activities / conversation-starters with young (and not-so-young!) people
- In today’s readings, we hear about two very different groups of visitors to Jesus: the shepherds, and the magi. I wonder where you are in these stories… which group can you imagine yourself visiting Jesus with? And why?
- The magi bring gifts to Jesus. Each gift symbolises something important about who Jesus is. What do you think is important about who Jesus is? What gift would you bring to symbolise that? You might like to draw a picture.
- After the shepherds have seen Jesus, the return “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen”. Imagine being one of the shepherds at this point. What would you say (or maybe sing!) to praise God? You might like to write down or record your ideas, as a poem, a prayer, or a song.
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