Last week we heard these words from the early part of John's Gospel:

"The next day, John (the Baptist) again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ŒLook, here is the Lamb of God!  The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.  When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ŒWhat are you looking for?  They said to him, Œ....Teacher... where are you staying?'  He said to them, ŒCome and see." (John 1:35-39a)

"What are you looking for?"  That's the question, isn't it?  What are you looking for?  What am I looking for?  What is it that we want out of life?  How do we make our days and weeks and months and years have purpose and grounding and fulfillment?

But maybe the question needs to be more concrete.  Maybe asking just generally, "what are you looking for?" doesn't really open the issue.  Maybe it is better to ask, "When you do such-and-such, what is it that you are looking for?"

In the reading from I Corinthians today, Paul identifies the factions that have crept into the congregational life of that community.  They have lined up their factions with specific teachers.  Some say they follow Paul's teachings, others say they follow Apollos' teachings, others say they follow Peter's teachings, and others pull the trump card and say they follow Christ's teachings.  When people divide themselves from each other, and make their identity tied up with a particular teacher or guru or charming leader, what is it that they are looking for?  Are they looking for answers to deep questions?  Are they looking for belonging?  Are they looking to feel better or smarter than others?  Are they looking to feel righteous in being part of a group that's gotten pushed out, or that has pulled out?  What are they looking for?

In the reading from Isaiah, the Prophet refers to the area around Galilee as a place where people were in anguish.  That's because at one time, the Assyrian Empire came swooping into the area, leading off thousands into exile, and bringing in people from other parts of their violently won domain.  The Assyrians were probably one of the more unsavory empires of world history, subjecting their defeated enemies to terrible tortures, punishments, and ordeals.  What were these people looking for?  When leaders and followers go a-conquering, what are they looking for?  When we get caught up in the rhetoric of war and power, or of enemies and sinister threats, what are we looking for?  What is it that this feeds in us?  What is the part of us that responds so strongly, that otherwise civil people will become ruthless?  Rwanda, Yugoslavia, East Timor; or even in our own society, bands of young people pummelling individuals into comas and death (or less dramatically, throwing rocks through church windows): what are they looking for?  What are we looking for?

It seems to me that in our consumer society we tend to make a big mistake in our thinking.  We assume that if people want something, then it is in and of itself a good thing.  The market will respond.  The service or product will become available.  If lots of people want it, it must therefore be even better; the price will come down; all will be well.  But what happens when what people want imposes terrible suffering on others?  What happens when one group's prosperity or fulfillment is bought at the price of another's demise or oppression?  I think the mistake we make is that we don't stop to ask ourselves, "What am I looking for?"; and then ask two more questions: "Is that a good thing to be looking for?  What are the ramifications for others of this thing that I am looking for?"

Not everything we want or desire is good.  Not all movements of the free market are just or beneficial.  Sometimes the very profitable feeds on the most destructive instincts, while that which speaks to our best human traits is not profitable at all.  Mind altering drugs, weapons, and prostitution bring big profits to some, but at a terrible cost to many others.  By contrast, freely giving of our time, our abilities, and our financial resources to bring goodness into our communities and into the world shows up as a net loss on the balance sheet -- and yet this kind of giving shows us when we are at our best as humans.

"One thing I asked of the Lord," sings the Psalmist in today's Psalm, "One thing I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in the Lord's temple." (Psalm 27:4)

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that God knows well that we have physical needs for food, clothing, and shelter, but, he said, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and God's righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Matthew 6:33)

There is one thing that is best to seek, but it is a thing that is not profitable or powerful or luxurious or entertaining or diverting in the way that we have come to believe that good things in life ought to be.  Neither is it a thing, but rather a relationship: it is that deep, solid, eternal relationship to God; it is the link between your spirit and God's Spirit; it is the Kingdom of God that is within you and among us.

When Jesus began his ministry in Galilee, he began by proclaiming, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near." (Matthew 4:17)  The word "repent" means to turn around.  It is a literal translation of the Hebrew word that underlies the Biblical concept of repentance.  What Jesus was calling on people to do was to stop turning their backs on God, and to turn back to God.  Repent!  Turn around!  Look God in the eye!  Re-establish the relationship between your spirit and God's Spirit!

This repentance, this turning to God is also the deep inner probing of the self.  It is the painfully honest examination of one's own motivations, hopes, dreams, fears, weaknesses, and shortcomings.  By the same token it is the taking seriously of one's strengths, gifts, skills, knowledge, and capabilities in the light of that relationship with God.  It is the prayer, "God, help me see the dangers of who I am, and save me from them;" and also the prayer, "God, help me see the gifts of who I am and where to use them for your good."

I hope that I will always remember to look first for God and the Kingdom of God.  I hope that I will always be able to answer Jesus' question "What are you looking for?" with "I am looking for you.  Show me your way."

And you?  What are you looking for?  Amen.

 "Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"  These words from John the Baptist about Jesus have become a source of symbolic imagery for much theological reflection, visual art, and music in Christianity.  Other places in the New Testament also make references to Jesus as the Lamb of God.  Just to cite a few examples:

Paul's line in I Corinthians 5:7-8  "Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened, for our paschal lamb Christ has been sacrificed.  Therefore let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." (Note how Paul uses Passover imagery)

The line in I Peter 1:18-20 "You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.  He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake." (Note how I Peter uses sacrificial imagery)

Or the lines in Revelation 5(:6,8-9,12)  "Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered... the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.  They sing a new song: You are worthy... for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation... Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!" (note how John doesn't specify)

The Lamb of God imagery about Jesus is a highly symbolic and metaphorical way to talk about Jesus and understand him.  So it raises for me the questions: What is a symbol?  Why are there symbols?  How "real" are symbols?

In our own time we have tried to do away with most symbols.  Scientific analytical thinking, the dominant thinking of the affluent, educated, western world, tries to get away from symbolic thinking in favour of understanding merely through fact and theory.  But fact and theory, although they explain well, do not really "mean".

Symbols, by contrast, represent a poetic way of thinking.  They become especially important when trying to convey a message, a "meaning" that is complex and that has elements that transcend ordinary understanding.  So, for example, we still use the language of poetry and symbols to communicate love for each other.  A gift of flowers or some little token of appreciation may have little practical use, but it becomes a symbol for the relationship.  A relationship is complex and at some level always beyond comprehension, so symbols become important.  A lack of symbols means that the relationship is reduced to the merely functional and practical, like facts and theories, and may well die a slow death of meaninglessness.

Listen to this little Haiku from the Japanese poet Teishitsu:
"Ah!" I said, "Ah!"
It was all that I could say--
The cherry flowers of Mt. Yoshino!

Or this one by Kubutsu:
A child gazing at the falling flowers
With open mouth
Is a Buddha.

Both these poems are about that way we take in things that are big, overwhelming, powerful, moving, beyond ordinary description.  Someone watching the scene of the beautiful spring blossoms and the petals falling like snowflakes could go on and on in an analytical way explaining how the earth moves around the sun and the plants respond to the changing light and how the flowers attract pollinating insects and how this that and the other happens; or one can try to capture all of this in a symbol, a kind of evocative shorthand, which is the way that Haikus function: as a sort of verbal symbol of a moment.  Then, without a lot of time spent explaining, all who hear or see the symbol, all who know the language and associations of the symbol from their own experiences, nod in acknowledgment, and are able to contemplate the feeling and significance.

In the same way the followers of Jesus saw that he was the embodiment of so much.  As he taught and healed and acted and then suffered, died, and rose, they saw so many different elements of their faith, their world, coming together in one person.  At the same time they were deeply rooted in a living symbol system that centered on the Temple in Jerusalem.  Key in this symbol system were animal sacrifices.  To bring an animal and have the priest sacrifice it was associated with receiving God's forgiveness.  The blood of the Passover Lambs was associated with freedom from slavery, being shielded from God's judgment, protection from harm, and the sense of being a people dedicated to God.  These were powerful symbols, rooted deeply in the life and experiences of the people.  Jesus was so amazing that his followers saw in him the coming together of many different symbols -- in fact all the key symbols of their faith and heritage.  He was and is the fulfillment.  He was and is everything that the history of Israel was moving toward -- in fact the history of the world!

Symbols evoke a response.  They are alive when people have associations with them.  But associations change, and so the symbols begin to mean differently.  While for many Christians through the centuries the symbol of the Blood of the Lamb has been and continues to be powerful, for many today, blood has negative connotations, and so the symbol doesn't mean the way it did.

For me the symbol of the Lamb of God is still powerful, however.  In fact for me the symbol of the One who takes my place, and therefore redeems me from something really hits home when I think about our world.

Let me step back for a moment and take a detour before I come back to how the Lamb of God is a powerful symbol for me.  Symbols often arise out of crises and terrible events.  For us in Canada the words "Montréal Massacre" and "Maher Arar" and the people involved have become symbols.  The first one has become a symbol of the many complex issues and dynamics around gender equality, mental illness, availability of firearms, cultural biases, and so on.  The latter has become a symbol of government complicity, collusion, ineptitude, as well as for the many complex dynamics that have arisen in our world since the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001.

For the world in general, the words "Holocaust" and "Rwanda" have become powerful symbols, each with their own set of associations, feelings of blame or guilt, and so on.

These kinds of things always bring me back to the symbol of the Lamb of God, the one who takes the hit so that I am spared.  In the world of social justice, freedom for all, equality for all -- in effect, love for all -- it is, unfortunately, not enough that we think and believe that these things are important.  It seems that there also always has to be someone who stands up and suffers the consequences for doing so.  It seems that most of the time, someone has to shed their blood, figuratively and literally, in the struggle to overcome hatred, violence, slavery (in the broad sense of being held captive to the whims of another), exploitation of those least able to defend themselves, and so on.

Whenever I think of Jesus as the Lamb of God, I also think of Jesus the One whom the powers and authorities of the day "rubbed out" to keep the status quo.  His followers were spared because the leader was caught.  He becomes for me a divine symbol for the reality of this world and my own privileged situation in life: someone always pays the price, and again and again I am redeemed.  As long as I am not paying the price, it means that someone else is.  All of us who live well and safely, no matter how much effort we have exerted, stand on the shoulders of others, in previous generations, and in our own, who take the hit, who become in a small, limited way, a kind of Lamb of God for the sake of the rest of us.

So, when I sing "Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world," which in our Sunday worship is the point at which I usually break the bread for the communion, I think about Jesus on the cross, the one who suffered on behalf of the others; and I also think about the many today who suffer for the sake of others, struggling to bring love into the world; or sometimes suffering just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And as I share and eat this bread, I think of how I am fed, kept alive, both spiritually and physically, by the huge personal sacrifices that have been and are being made for me, and for all of us.

So Jesus the Lamb of God is present for me both in the classic spiritual and mystical way, but also in the lives of the many who like Jesus pay the price for trying to bring love into the world.  Amen.

I have a confession to make: this sermon was inspired, not by what is in the assigned lessons for today, but by what was (oddly) left out.  In fact, I was just a bit surprised and a little bothered by what was left out, because I think it is the "punch line" for the reading in question, and in many ways, for the topic of the day.

The lesson I'm am talking about is the Second Lesson for today from Acts.  The passage is already a little misleading by just sitting there without any context of what came before; but it is even more misleading without the context of what comes after.  I understand that the committees which put these lectionaries together have to keep things relatively short.  But I also understand that committees, in their haggling and negotiating, can miss the point too.

Let me give you some context.  The earliest Christians, those who formed the community of followers of Jesus in the years immediately following his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, were almost all Jews of various backgrounds: Galileans from Jesus' native country, Judeans from the area around Jerusalem, and some diaspora Jews, people of Jewish heritage who lived away from the land of Israel, among the Greeks and the Romans.  These early Christians, which also included all of the surviving disciples and apostles we know from the Gospel narratives, understood Jesus' ministry as having been basically to the Jewish people.  The earliest form of Christianity was a movement within the larger Jewish religious world.

One of the interesting features of the Judaism of those days was that it had a lot of Greek and Roman admirers who, although they did not go to the lengths of actually converting to Judaism (that is, they did not go through the ritual washing, and the men did not have themselves circumcised), they did, nevertheless, linger around the entry ways to synagogues to listen in on the prayers and the teaching that went on there.  These Greeks and Romans, often from the educated elite of that society, would adopt many of the basic Jewish laws to govern their lives, and would often support their local synagogue with their offerings.  These people were sometimes called "lovers of God" or "God fearers"

. Chapter 10 of Acts tells us that one of these "lovers of God", a centurion named Cornelius, therefore a Roman, had a vision in which an angel of God told him to send some messengers to a particular town, to a particular house, where a man named Peter would be found.  The messengers were to ask Peter to come to the centurion's house.

Peter, for his part, who was staying at a tanner's house, preaching, teaching, and healing, much as Jesus had done in his ministry, had a dream in which he saw unkosher animals, and heard a voice commanding him to eat.  In the dream, he objected, but the voice, which was the voice of God, said, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."

Peter was puzzled by his dream, it says, but when the messengers from Cornelius came, Peter agreed to go with them, and Peter took with him some of the Christian believers from the town where he was staying.  Remember, at this point, when I say Christian believers, I mean Jewish people who have become followers of Jesus.

When Peter got to Cornelius' house, there was a big group of Cornelius' family and friends and colleagues assembled.  Mostly Romans, I would guess, but possibly some Greeks as well.  They all wanted Peter to talk to them.  At this point Peter makes a disclaimer.  He says, "You... know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.  [Note Biblical literalists: Peter did not interpret his dream literally, but using food as a metaphor for all "unclean" things, extended it to people!]

At that point Peter speaks to the group, and the content of his little sermon is our Second Lesson for today.  What happens next is very interesting.   I will let the Bible speak for itself:

"While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.  The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God.  Then Peter said, ŒCan anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?'  So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.  Then they invited him to stay for several days.  Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God.  So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying Œ Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?'" (Acts 10:44 - 11:3)

Peter then explains at length what had happened.  In the end, the other apostles have to concede, apparently with a great deal of surprise: "Then God has given even to Gentiles the repentance that leads to life" (Acts 11:18).  I think this is the punch line of the whole story.  God has given to the outsiders the same gift as to the insiders.

This is a fascinating story to me, because it reveals how the Spirit of God had to work against the tendency of faithful, well-meaning people; against the tendency to draw circles around groups and say that everyone in the circle is beloved of God, and everyone outside is not, or is some sort of second class citizen in the City of God.  When the teacher of the Law named Nicodemus came to talk to Jesus, so it tells us in John's Gospel, Jesus told him, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).  In other words, God's Spirit is moving across the globe, enlightening and inspiring people everywhere and none of us will ever be able to nail the Spirit down.  But we will, of course, try to nail it down.

And so, through the centuries, faithful, well-meaning Christians, in the name of defending the truth and purity of their beloved faith, have often tried to nail the Spirit down by setting up borders and boundaries to the Church, and have considered all those inside the boundaries saved, and those outside, lost.  And through the centuries, the Spirit has pushed and prodded and inspired people inside and outside of those boundaries.

This is a crucially important point, and it has a lot to do with the theme for this day of the Church calendar: The Baptism of Our Lord.   Those very first Christians thought that baptism was only for Jews who had come to believe in Jesus.  God led them to understand that baptism is for all who come to believe in Jesus.

Now, we have to understand that this was not an individualistic society, but one in which everyone was considered part of a clan or tribe.  Consequently, the children and dependents of baptized Christians were also baptized, very much as an act of inclusion.  Those who became Christians understood themselves now as part of Christ's clan or tribe, a clan which crossed all clan boundaries; a tribe which crossed all tribal boundaries; and of course their children were to be part of that new trans-clan-al clan and trans-tribal tribe.

But humans are generally uncomfortable with real inclusion, and will find reasons to create outsiders.  In one of those great ironies of history, once Gentiles predominated in the Christian Church, Jews, those who had originally made up the Church, those who were of the same bloodlines as Jesus and the disciples and apostles, became the enemy.  Wherever Jews had the misfortune of living as a minority among Christians, they suffered greatly for it.  As well, other Christians who thought or taught differently from the majority were called heretics and made into outsiders.  They, of course, returned the favour.  The Protestant Reformation and the history of Protestant denominations since then, is perhaps just one clear example of this human vice at work.  [By the way, denominations are not unique to Christianity.  Buddhism, in particular, has generated just as many or more than Christianity.  The same happens in secular politics, revolutionary movements, and anywhere where people gather in groups.  It is a very human tendency.]

Today we seem to have moved along considerably in our ability to draw the circle widely, to leave room for the possibility that God's Spirit moves among those who are not part of our particular circle.  But I think we still have a long way to go, and that as ever before, it will be a bumpy ride as we will always find some reason or rationalization to draw the circle closer in and tighter, often with very good intentions, and usually in an effort to be faithful to what we believe.

Peter and the apostles had to make a huge shift in their thinking when they accepted Gentiles into the circle of followers of Jesus.  Even while Jesus walked the earth, his disciples had their tight little circles stretched and sometimes snapped to let in those who were considered outcasts and outsiders according to the thinking of that day.

Once, when Jesus was casting out demons, and the religious authorities accused him of being in league with the devil, he replied, "Whoever is not with me, is against me, and whoever does not gather with me, scatters" (Matthew 12:30).  And once, when someone was casting out demons in Jesus' name who was not part of the group of disciples, and the disciples tried to stop him, Jesus said, "Do not stop him... Whoever is not against us is for us" (Mark 9:39-40).

These two contrasting responses of Jesus, when you hold them in tension, imply that the work of Christ is the work of freeing people from what possesses them, and gathering all of humanity into one whole, healthy, free, humanity.  Those who are with or against this movement of God are not defined by who is with or not with the circle of overtly identified followers of Jesus.  We are the ones who identify each other by labels.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus indicated how one might recognize the Spirit of God in a person.  He said, "Beware of false prophets, who come in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits.  Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?  In the same way every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit... Thus you will know them by their fruits." (Matthew 7:15-17,20)

It is not the label or even self-identification as Christian which ultimately matters.  To paraphrase Jesus, God can raise up Christians from these stones if God wanted to.  No, God knows our hearts and the hearts of all.  God knows who is responding to the Holy Spirit and who is not.  I think that we have to be prepared to have our thinking radically shifted to recognize that many whom we might consider outsiders, are really filled with God's Spirit and are very much a part of Christ's work of casting out the evil that possesses us, freeing us from our prisons, restoring our relationship to God, to people, and to ourselves.

Perhaps we too will one day find ourselves scratching our heads and saying, "Then God has given even to [fill in the blank] the repentance that leads to life?!"  Amen.

The word "epiphany" is made up of two elements from the Greek language: the prefix "epi-"  which has many uses, but here is used in the sense of Œabove' or Œat the surface of something,' like the word "epidermis" for the top layer of the skin; and the verb "phanein" meaning Œto show.'  It is a word conceived in the context of an ancient way of thinking expressed most strongly by the philosopher Plato, but not unique to him, that there is a hidden, non-material world that sometimes finds its expression in the physical world.

In the Christian context, the concept of Epiphany has to do with God's revealing of things which were formerly hidden, as we heard in the reading from Ephesians, where Paul says, "this grace was given to me... to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.  This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord..." (Ephesians 3:8-11).

The nature of the Epiphany is heightened for Paul, because it is not merely a spiritual thing revealed in the physical world, but it is a mystery which was kept hidden in God, so that even the spiritual powers "of the heavenly places," as Paul says, were unaware of it, and now through the proclamation of the church learn this divine mystery from mere mortals: the first will be last, and the last will be first!  This is big.  This is ground breaking, and I think it shatters the way we normally think about faith and religion, but more about that later.

The story we associate with the Feast of the Epiphany is the one we heard form Matthew's Gospel, the story of the "wise men" who came from the east bringing gifts to the young child Jesus, and learning to elude the wiles of King Herod.  This is a controversial little story for all kinds of reasons, so I am going to look at it from a few different angles in the hopes of understanding it better.

Most modern scholars dismiss this story as an invention of Matthew, a literary device which fits into the Gospel writer's objective of demonstrating how Jesus is the fulfillment of things written in the Prophets and Writings of what we call the Old Testament.  In addition to this, the work of church artists and popular piety has gone so far as to assign names to these unnamed visitors, and even to make kings of them from diverse places, including Africa.  Some of this can be traced to the passage in Psalm 72 which says, "May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute,/ may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts./ May all kings fall before him, all nations give him service" (Psalm 72:10-11).  You see, from the beginning of the Christian proclamation, the Psalms were believed to speak primarily about Christ, and so they were plumbed for apparent prophesies about him.

But Matthew does not call these men "kings" or even "wise men."  Rather he uses the word "magoi," which is sometimes rendered as "magi."  The magoi or magi were a specific group of men, namely Zoroastrian priests.  Zoroastrianism traces its roots back to a shadowy Persian prophet  called "Zoroaster" in Greek, but more correctly called Zarathustra.  He lived some 500 or more years before the time of Jesus and proclaimed a faith which sought to live in a sort of agricultural harmony with the earth, while promoting an ethical and moral life.  The central symbol of Zoroastrianism is fire, and their most important acts of worship involve sacred fires which serve as the receptacle for offerings and as a manifestation of the good God of the universe, Ahura Mazda, which means "the Wise Lord" or "Lord Wisdom".  Zarathustra's relationship to Ahura Mazda has strong parallels to Jesus' relationship to the Father as expressed in Matthew Mark, and Luke; and to Mohammed's relationship to Allah.

The church artists of the earlier centuries of Christianity did not miss the fact that Matthew used the word "magoi."  The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built in the 300's and then enlarged in the 500's bore frescoes of the wise men that looked so much like Zoroastrian priests that when the Persians briefly conquered that area in the early 600's, (in the time just before Islam came bursting out of the Arabian desert) the Persian soldiers, who had destroyed every church in Jerusalem, left the church in Bethlehem alone, apparently thinking that it must be some sort of shrine from their own religion.

Now, many modern scholars, as I said, consider this story about the magi a literary device constructed by Matthew in the style of ancient history and literature, to flesh out what was known about a famous person.  Indeed, it was not considered odd to create material when writing about famous people as long as the material seemed to jive with the spirit of the person.  So modern scholars have good reason to suspect that Matthew was doing just this.  However, I always find myself playing the "on the other hand" game with assertions both from Biblical literalists and from modern scholars.  I'll say, "yes, that could well be, but what about this?"

So here, with this story about the magi, I find the strong connexion to Zoroastrianism curious.  Scholars will point out that Matthew likely wanted to draw a parallel to passages like the one I mentioned from Psalm 72, and the one we heard from Isaiah today, which says, "the wealth of the nations shall come to you./ A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah;/ all those from Sheba shall come./ they shall bring gold and frankincense,/ and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord" (Isaiah 60:5-6).  And perhaps in the story of these magi coming to the child Jesus, Matthew perceived a fulfillment of these passages.  But if he were merely creating a story based on Old Testament material to preface what he had received about the adult life and death of Jesus, these visitors would have appeared either as merchants bringing their wealth, or as actual kings bringing their gifts, in the way the story evolved in popular consciousness in later centuries.  Instead, these visitors are magoi, priests of a foreign religion.

Rather than seeing these men as wealthy travellers with a caravan of camels, wearing costly bejewelled turbans and silk robes, we should instead see them as travellers, perhaps on foot leading pack animals, or perhaps on donkey, or perhaps even on horse, given that the Persians had one of the great cavalries of the day.  They probably wore plain white robes and white head coverings, possibly wound as turbans, but possibly also in simpler form.  They came as pilgrims, seekers, mystics perhaps, who had interpreted some astrological sign to mean that something significant was happening.  Note how they do not go to Herod, nor are they immediately summoned by Herod, rather Herod only finds out because these foreigners are wandering about Jerusalem asking about a newly born king.  They are not important international dignitaries, just clergy from someone else's religion.

Now whether the star moved around, as is often portrayed in films and art, or whether we are talking about a conjunction of planets in a particular constellation, or the appearance of a comet or supernova, is up for debate.  There was apparently a somewhat rare multiple conjunction of some of the planets, including Jupiter, one of those conjunctions where the planets seem to pass each other back and forth repeatedly, that someone might have read as having to do with a king.  As to comets and supernovas, no astronomical observations preserved from that time mention any such phenomenon in that time period.  That doesn't mean it didn't happen, it only means we don't have anything concrete to point to.  But divination and the reading of omens is always particular and peculiar to the cultural and religious or philosophical system in which it happens.  Unfortunately we don't have a lot of information about such things in the Zoroastrianism of that time.

   I find the presence of Zoroastrian priests significant because the ideas about heaven, hell, resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and Satan as an independent adversary of God all seem to have come into Judaism during the period between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New.  During this period the entire Middle East was under Zoroastrian Persian control for several centuries, and after Persia was pushed back by the Greeks and Romans, it continued to be the great rival to Greco-Roman civilization in the east until it was conquered by the Arabs and Islam in the 600's -- a period of over 1000 years of Zoroastrian Persian influence! I think as Christians we should not be averse to looking at other religions and spiritual traditions, especially considering that Christianity has itself absorbed and adapted the insights, teachings, and world views of numerous traditions.  In other words, there is no such thing as "pure" Christianity.  Rather, there is the heart of the Gospel -- that God came into the world in Jesus Christ, to reconcile us to God, to each other, and the creation, in other words to bring life in its fullness inside and outside of time -- but the rest, all the elaboration, always involves applying this central revelation within the cultural, metaphysical, and scientific frameworks of whatever time or place the message is preached.

For me the presence of the magi, the representatives of the religious tradition which gave to the Judeo-Christian tradition so many things that we consider part and parcel, worshipping the Christ child, bringing their gifts is both an acceptance of the gifts already given by Zoroastrianism, as well as an invitation to us to look again at how the message of and about Jesus transcends every religious system, and can speak to everyone in their way, even if they never leave their own traditions.  What God revealed in Christ, the Epiphany which the world had in Jesus, is bigger than any of our systems.  Thank God for that.  Amen.