The Wall that Divides

 

Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

 

As so often is the case, there was good news and bad news from the Holy Land over the Christmas period.  And for obvious reasons, let's start in Bethlehem.  The good news was that Bethlehem was relatively peaceful this year, so that a large number of pilgrims were able to join with local Palestinian Christians in worshipping in the Church of the Nativity, the church that, according to local legend, was built over the site of the stable in which Jesus was born.

 

So that was good news.  And at the political level there was also some good news.  The leaders of Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to talk, and accepted the aim to achieve a peaceful settlement by the end of this year.  But, sadly, that's where the good news ends; because already those talks have stalled.  They've stalled because of Israel's concern about security from terrorist attack, and, because of that concern, Israel's determination to separate its people from the Palestinians.

 

Hence the huge wall that Israel is building.  Such a wall is not an Israeli invention, of course.  We human beings have often put our faith in walls to keep us safe from our perceived enemies.  It says something about our human nature that the only man-made object visible from the moon is the Great Wall of China, now over 2,300 years old!  Those of us of British stock can look back to Hadrian's Wall, only 300-400 years younger.  Thr first was built to separate the Chinese from the Mongols, the second to keep those terrible Celts in their place in what we today call Scotland.  Walls are designed to separate, to keep 'us' safe from 'them'.

 

So we must be a bit careful in our condemnation of Israel – they got the idea from our ancestors, among others.  But their wall is particularly tragic in terms of our faith, and theirs, because it is contrary to our Scriptures and theirs.  It is designed to separate Jews and Gentiles, to preserve Israel for the Jews.  And despite what the religious right in the USA and elsewhere want to believe, that contradicts the teaching of the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures.

 

And today is a very good day to remind ourselves of just that.  As I've said in other sermons recently, the great end-time hope we find in the Hebrew Scriptures is of a renewed and restored Israel, cleansed, purified, obedient and made holy, becoming a sort of irresistible magnet to all the other peoples of the world.  The great prophets looked forward to a day when all the peoples of the earth would worship the one true God, the God of Israel, and would come to Jerusalem to learn the ways of this God and to bring him tribute.

 

Our first lesson this morning is an example of this vision.  Addressing Jerusalem, Isaiah says: Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightest of your dawn.  And he goes on to talk of people  from Midian, Ephah and Sheba flocking to Jerusalem bringing their treasure with them.  No hint of a wall here – open borders on all sides.  That's not a Christian vision, that's the vision of one of the greatest of all the Hebrew prophets.  That is part of the teaching of Judaism – part of the hope that faithful Jews still nurture and are nurtured by.

 

And that's the sort of hope that St Paul was brought up on.  That is surely part of what he had in mind when he wrote this Letter to the Ephesians.  In fact, it is the heart of what he is writing in this letter.  He calls it the mystery of Christ now revealed.  He has pondered what Christ's coming is all about – what is its essential meaning – and he says this: The mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

 

And even more to the point, in the preceding chapter, he says this: For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.  His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.  This passage, if no other, should be plastered over the wall that Israel is presently erecting – if only to remind Christian sympathisers that such a wall is contrary to the teaching of St Paul.

 

Bethlehem is on the other side of the wall, and that alone should give us pause on this day of the Epiphany, for our story today is based in Bethlehem, and its about Jews and Gentiles.  As I have said in the pewsheet notes, this story is found only in St Matthew's gospel, and it is told in his characteristic way.  But before we get to that, just for the record, and not expecting it to do any good at all, I want to make three quick observations.  First of all, the Magi do not find Jesus in the stable, but in a house.  Secondly, this may well be due to the fact that they did not arrive on Christmas night, but about two years later.  And thirdly, and most intriguingly, Joseph was not there, it seems, when they arrived.

 

Presumably, St Matthew feels that he has solved the 'Joseph problem' in chapter one.  If you have been here over the last week or two you will have noticed that Mary hardly gets a mention in chapter one; the whole drama focuses on Joseph, because St Matthew is concerned about the legitimacy of Jesus, not his virgin birth.  Jesus had to be a descendant of David if he were to be recognised as the Messiah, and he could only claim such descent through the paternal line.

 

Now St Matthew has a different problem.  If Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and it seems to have been accepted that he was, how come he was known as Jesus of Nazareth?  Hence this rather strange and drawn out story of the visit of the Magi and its aftermath, which, whatever else its does, is designed to explain why Jesus was born in Bethlehem but raised largely in Nazareth.  (We might notice how careful St Matthew is not to mention where Mary was living before Jesus' birth.  St Luke's story of the census is another approach to the same sort of problems.)

 

But St Matthew has much more in mind than this problem of geography.  He has in mind that great Jewish hope.  In the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, the end of the age is coming, and with it that great influx of Gentiles promised by the prophets.  The Magi, whoever and whatever they were, and wherever they hailed from, were Gentiles, and they came to Jerusalem bringing their treasures, before being directed on to Bethlehem.  In his typical way, St Matthew is showing us how the prophecies of the past and the promises of the future come together in Jesus the Christ.

 

And, of course, he is pointing us forward to Christ's passion and death.  When the Magi ask for directions from the King, whom does he consult?  The chief priests and the teachers of the law – that is, the Jewish elite.  They know their Scriptures, they know that the promised Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem, but do they show any interest or excitement?  No, they do not.  It is the Gentiles who go looking for the Christ child, not the religious leaders of Jerusalem.  Far from being excited, we are told that Herod "was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him."

 

St Matthew surely has in mind the eventual arrest of Jesus before Pilate, and the conspiracy of members of the Sanhedrin, the Ruling Council, to have him condemned.  Once again, St Matthew reminds us that we can't have Christmas without Good Friday.

 

We don't know what became of the Magi, except that they returned home to their country by a different route.  They were fortunate: they had unimpeded access to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and safe passage.  Those rights are promised by the Scriptures, Jewish and Christian, to all gentiles, including you and me.

 

To build a wall between people is to divide the Body of Christ.  In our lifetime, the Berlin Wall has come down, and so has the wall of apartheid.  Let us pray that Israel's wall will go the same way, and soon.  Amen.