Epiphany Day, January 6, 2019, "The Gospels As Science Fiction"

C Epiphany Day BFC 2019

Matthew 2:1-12

January 6, 2019

From African-American science fiction writer, Octavia Butler, “all

that you touch, you change. all that you change, changes you.”  Let us pray.  May the imperfect words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen. 

African-American author and organizer, Adrienne Maree Brown has written:

all organizing is science fiction.

we are creating a world we have never seen. we are whispering it to each other cuddled in the dark, and we are screaming it at people who are so scared of it that they dress themselves in war regalia to turn and face us.[1]

In effect, this is what the gospels are.  They are a form of science fiction mystery which calls us to an imagining with God, an imagining of a different future--without violence and war, without hunger, poverty, and oppression.  It borrows the language and vision, the science fiction of prophets who spoke from the time after the Exile,

The Living God shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war any more;
⁴ but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
    and no one shall make them afraid;[2]

As Brown writes, “it’s neither utopian nor dystopian, it’s more like life.”[3]  It is the science fiction imagined by those prophets who wrote after the Exile, envisioning a time when people might grow food that they might eat themselves, build homes they might inhabit themselves—when all that they could remember of the Exile was growing food for others to eat, building homes for others to inhabit.[4]  From these writers, the gospel writers borrowed heavily. 

My critique against modern day Gospel interpretations, even more so Christmas stories, is that they are sentimental and vanilla, the Bible a little rule book that misses the vision, humor, and mystery found in its holy pages.  Identities, signs, and symbols are references to the deep memory of the Jewish people so that they might remember who they are and what God calls them to be in a different place. 

The author of the gospel of Matthew frames the identity and titles of Jesus in very clear ways.  One of those titles for Jesus is the second Moses, hoping to use the authority of Moses to evangelize Matthew’s Jewish community so that they too might see authority in Jesus.   Two examples.  Jesus escapes the slaughter of babies in Bethlehem at the hand of the local client king, Herod the Great, as Moses escaped the killing of male children in Egypt at the hand of Pharaoh.  While Jesus gives his famed sermon with the new commandments on the plain in the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of Matthew has Jesus speak the beatitudes from the mount.   The mount is the place where Moses also shares the new rules for living in the wilderness, The Ten Commandments, way back in Exodus.  According to the author of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is the second Moses.

The other title is evident in the first two chapters of Matthew, including the passage we have before us today.  In chapter 1, King David is the axis point in listing the ancestors of the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One.  There are fourteen generations from Father Abraham to King David.  There are fourteen generations from King David to the Babylonian Exile.  There are fourteen generations from the Babylonian Exile to the Messiah, a title usually reserved in Jewish mythology for a king, prophet, or liberator.  The poetic style of Jesus’ genealogy says in effect, “As King David, so now the Messiah.”

Within the Scripture passage for today, is prose that is not only meant to antagonize the Romans but, in particular, Herod the Great, King Herod, colloquially known as the King of the Jews, serving at the whim and will of the Roman Empire and its Caesar.  And here come the Magi in their traditional role, as people who pose a threat to ruling powers.[5]  You may have heard it before, but it bears repeating.  We have regularly assumed three magi made the journey because there are three gifts.  But the story does not tell us how many.  Imagine at least 12 magi, in their traditional role, taking a little side trip to Jerusalem just to stick it in and twist it by innocently asking Herod, “Where will we find the King of the Jews?”  In the movie version of this scene, I imagine Herod, who believes King of the Jews is a title reserved only for him, excusing himself and finding a private room where he punches his royal purple walls for about a half hour before he returns.

The question by the Magi is a form of Biblical humor, sarcasm aimed at the upper-crust and powerful.   In our modern world, it might be a number of radical Muslim clerics arriving in Washington, D.C., asking where they might find “the leader of the free world.”  Making it clear that they don’t think it’s the president, they move on to Haiti to follow the star they have seen.  It’s a snub, a diss, to move from the seat of Rome’s political and religious power in Jerusalem to a place on the margins. 

The Magi come from the East, the place of the Roman Empire’s mortal enemy, the Parthian Empire.  Imagine not only 12 magi arriving in Jerusalem but maybe 50 to 100 of them with all of their royal servants and accoutrements.  For the Biblical passage says that when the magi tell Herod of the star they have seen Herod and all of Jerusalem is frightened.  That is the other role played by the Magi.  They were the king makers.  The Magi looked for portents, signs in the natural world, which would tell of the passing of an old order in favor of something new.  

The first-century Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, tells of a star or comet which was like a sword that appeared as the Romans besieged the city of Jerusalem close to 70 years later.  That star or comet was taken as a sign by the Jews defending Jerusalem that God was fighting on their behalf and gave them hope when Roman legions had them surrounded and outnumbered.[6]  These signs or portents were part of Jewish mythology that hoped for liberation from alien rule.[7]   Biblical scholars date the writing of the Gospel of Matthew five to ten years after the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem. 

As the seat of Roman-controlled Jewish power, everyone in Jerusalem knew that a star sighted by the Magi could only mean that change and transformation were about to occur, a new king was on the rise.  Three times in Matthew, Chapter 2, it says that these “king makers” prostrate themselves before the infant child, a form of worship and reverence for a ruler or an emperor.  Not once did these same magi do so for King Herod.[8]  They have made their choice.  The Magi proclaim who is the king of kings.

The gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh evoke the words of Psalm 72 where nations and kings shall make a pilgrimage to Zion to lay these gifts at the feet of the king who is full of justice for the economically poor and crushes the oppressor.  Three times in Chapter 2, Herod’s death is mentioned, as a way of suggesting that when God’s narrative and the narrative of imperial power come into conflict, imperial power is not ultimate.  The imperial system, a system exposed as ruthless and murderous, opposes the presence and power of God, and at each turn the imperial system is thwarted in trying to kill the new king.  The Magi are uncooperative.  Angels and dreams further the will of God.  Though the Holy Family must quickly leave for exile in Egypt, the imperial system is not the ultimate.  Rome has its limits.  While Caesar claims the god, Jupiter’s presence, for Rome, throughout the Gospel of Matthew claims are made for Jesus’s presence among the community of the disciples even after the Empire crucifies him and he dies.[9]

The title of king is not taken lightly by the Romans.  Those who claimed the title without ordination by Rome were routinely executed.  Josephus chronicles that others who took the title were Simon, who was beheaded, Athronges who was captured, Menachem was killed, and another Simon, who led one of the longest and most successful revolts against the empire, was executed in Rome’s capital city as a dramatic presentation of Rome’s superiority and intolerance for any challenges to its superiority.[10]

Religion and politics were inseparable in First Century Rome, made even clearer by the Christmas stories that Luke and Matthew put before us.  The Magi were political and religious figures in the Eastern Empire over and against the Western Empire where an indigenous Jewish population longed for liberation and an end to the very real economic, political, and social violence they experienced every day of their lives.  Jesus of Nazareth became a symbol of hope and resistance because of the very real and gritty ways he offered ways of living that helped Galileean communities to be sustainable and resilient at a time when they were fracturing due to the intense stress, pressure, poverty, and violence they experienced interfacing with Rome and its Caesar.

Here is the warning, the temptation we all have in a culture that wants to make Christmas only about a sentimentality that finds the perfect Christmas tree, sings “Silent Night” with candles ablaze, and walks out of the church on Christmas Eve to see larger-than-life snowflakes falling from the sky.  If we only believe in . . . Santa, the magic of Christmas, even in Jesus, all of the pain fades.  Maybe.

But for some in the world, that pain is all too real.  And a sentimental and vanilla Christmas does not rhyme with their family’s tremendous debt, the fear of one more medical bill, people caught struggling with trauma and addiction, and the worry for some that they will be stopped without proper papers.  Or, now in our own country, what happens if Herod or Caesar come for my family and my children?  What am I to do?  The Gospel of Matthew makes it clear that even Jesus’s arrival does not prevent the slaughter of children, poverty and disease, and deep, deep pain in the world.  What Jesus brings is the idea that God wants a decidedly different world and that God is inviting us in to be collaborators on the project. 

Spiritual guide, Matthew Fox, has written, “Sentimentalism is feelings without care for justice.  Nazi concentration camp hierarchy would torture prisoners during the day and return home at night and weep listening to Beethoven.”[11]

“The tamed piety of the conventional church wants an innocent baby who comes gently into our secure lives and keeps everything benign and friendly.  It may be conventional and it may be tame but it is not biblical and it is not Christian.”[12]  I thank the Living God that I pastor an unconventional church filled with wildly unconventional, courageous, creative, and goofy people.  Ok, so maybe the goofy is just about me.  But you get the idea.  Advent was about both hope and hurt; pain and risk, as well as excitement and joy.  All were part of the adventure.

“Both the hope and the risk of Advent get summed up on Epiphany. The word means ‘manifestation,’ or ‘appearance’ or ‘revelatory moment.’ Theologically speaking, epiphanies signal something new, but—at least for a lot of folk—something uncomfortable as well. Biblical convictions always impinge on political realities. The something new breaking out is good news for some and bad news for others.

“Epiphanies are often disruptive. For new learning to occur, old lessons have to be unlearned. For new public policies to take effect, old policies have to be dismantled. A lot of people have invested heavily in those old policies. Herod certainly understood this.

“Is there any epiphany moment for us, right here, [right in this community of faith]? Is there something new thing to be learned; and if so, what old things must be unlearned?”[13]

On this last day of Christmas, Epiphany Day, I want to invite us all over again to be Christ’s church, a symbol of hope and resistance over and against Herods and Caesars in each age.  How might we join with, be good allies with an indigenous population that seeks liberation from the everyday warfare aimed at its people?  What would we look like if we began to put that in place over the next 5 to 10 years?  In this day, the Magi come looking for the people who walk the path of a new king, people who seek to be collaborators on the project God has set before communities of sustainability and resilience.  Billings has never been the center of the universe, but neither were Bethlehem and Nazareth.  People of good courage, let us begin, with imagination and vision to walk the road.  Begin to plan out the mystery of the course of this year, what that yet may be. Like the Magi, what are we willing to walk a long time for?  Let

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[1] Adrienne Maree Brown, “afrofuturism and #blackspring (new school, #afroturismtns),” adrienne maree brown, May 2, 2015,

[2] Micah 4:3-4a

[3] Ibid.

[4] Isaiah 65:21.  Reminiscent of the Homegrown Prosperity initiative from Northern Plains, “We are building diverse and resilient local economies that work for all of us.”  That involves three initiatives:  1) Rebuilding local food systems; 2) Reclaiming coal country; 3) Powering up the clean energy economy.  That mission statement and those initiatives sound very much like the post-Exilic verse from Isaiah.

[5] Warren Carter, Matthew and Empire:  Initial Explorations (Harrisburg, PA:  Trinity Press International, 2001), pp. 66-67.

[6] Richard A. Horsley, The Liberation of Christmas:  The Infancy Narratives in Social Context (New York:  The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989), p. 59.  using Flavius Josephus, War, 6.289.

[7] Horsley, The Liberation, p. 59.

[8] Carter, Matthew and Empire, p. 66.

[9] Ibid, p. 67.

[10] Ibid, p. 161.

[11] Matthew Fox, The Pope’s War:  Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved  (New York:  Sterling Ethos, 2011), p. 39.

[12] Ken Sehested quoting Kyle Childress, “Wiseguys and one scared king,” Prayer and politiks, January 1, 2012.  http://www.prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/2019/01/04/wiseguys-and-one-scared-king.3418910.

[13] Ken Sehested, “Wiseguys and one scared king,” Prayer and politiks, January 1, 2012.  http://www.prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/2019/01/04/wiseguys-and-one-scared-king.3418910.