GODS WIDE ANGLED LENS

(Preached on Sunday, January 6, 2008)

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, AWhere 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.@                                                       -Matthew 2:1-2

 

William Beebe, the naturalist, used to visit fellow nature-lover, Theodore Roosevelt.  Often, after an evening of good conversation at Roosevelt=s Sagamore Hill home, they would walk across the lawn in the darkness.  They would look up at the stars, point out the constellations, and carry on a conversation something like this: AThere=s the spiral galaxy of Andromeda!  Did you know it was as large as our own Milky Way?  It is over a hundred billion stars, and every one of them is larger than the sun C 750,000 light-years away.  And there are a hundred million more galaxies like it out there!@  The numbers would get larger, the facts and figures more spectacular.  Eventually, they would shuffle on in silence, lost in wonder.  Finally, Teddy Roosevelt would say, ANow I think we are small enough.  Let=s go to bed!@

 

One of the things that we=ve lost in much of the modern world is the night sky, stars, too.  The ambient light from streetlights and automobiles blocks out the fragile light of the stars.  Having lost the wonders of the night sky, our world has shrunk considerably.  Too rarely do we have the sense of immensity, of distance, of overwhelming greatness that our ancestors knew.  It is one of the reasons I love to spend time regularly in the wilderness; to reconnect with the true breadth of our universe and remember, like Theodore Roosevelt, how small we, I, truly am.

 

This is so important because our world is increasingly being tormented by our tribalism.  The irony is that as our horizons on the globe have expanded, they have also shrunk dramatically.  Both realities due to the amazing technologies that have become so much a part of our daily lives: satellite mass communication, air travel, and computer connected on the internet.  We are now exposed to all the diversity of the world, which is incredibly rich, but can also be incredibly frightening and threatening.

 

Our human tendency is to narrow our vision.  We have trouble coping with a wide-angled view of the world.  We want to hold on tight to our perspective, to what we have always known, and to what has worked for us in the past.  And when confronted with variety and diversity, we want to hold on tighter to what we know, what is familiar, even to the point of asserting its dominance.

But God has a wide-angled lens view of the universe.  Eight-year-old Cory was on his first airplane flight.  Mom was taking him with her from Duluth, Minnesota, to see his grandma and grandpa in Quebec, Canada.  When they reached their cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, Cory opened his eyes and looked out the windows for the first time.  AI don=t see the boundaries,@ he exclaimed in wonder.  AThat=s because boundaries are made by people and you can see them best on maps, like the one in your classroom at school,@ Mom explained.  AHow does God tell the Canadians and the Americans apart, then?@ Cory asked.  Mom never ceased to be amazed at the questions Cory could come up with.  After a moment of thought, she responded, AMaybe God sees us all together and has a boundless love for all without it mattering whether we are Canadian or American.@  She was not sure that Cory would understand what she was trying to say.  Cory propped himself up for a better view.  He turned to his mom and smiled.  AThat would mean we share the Great Lakes together, wouldn=t it?@ 

 

What delightful insights can be gained when a person is carried to a higher view to see things from a new perspective, a wide-angled lens perspective.  That is the perspective and view Matthew=s gospel is clearly trying to offer to us, right from the beginning and all the way through.  The very first thing Matthew does is establish Jesus= Jewish roots, tracing his family tree all the way back through King David to the Patriarch Abraham.  He wants everyone to know that this particular person was clearly a good Jew.  But he then immediately moves to establish that what God is doing in this particular person was not just for the Jews.  In the words of the prophet Isaiah Matthew insists that Ait is too light a thing@ to limit the revelation of God in Jesus to the Jewish people alone.  The scope of this epiphany, this revelation of God in the flesh of Jesus, is to the world, and perhaps even beyond the world to the universe.  As George W. Truett said: AChrist was born in the first century, yet he belongs to all centuries.  He was born a Jew, yet he belongs to all races.  He was born in Bethlehem, yet he belongs to all countries.@

 

And, I would add, to people of all faiths.  Surprisingly, the appeal of the magi has remained constant in spite of the general hostility of biblical and church tradition to astrologers and metaphysical stargazers.  It is a truly wide-angled lens view presented here: wonderful gifts and expression of joy presented to Jesus, from persons with vocations that Christianity and Judaism hold suspect.

Consider how there is no hint of judgment upon the magi for their use of star-gazing, astrology, to seek out God=s presence and activity in the world.  On the contrary, these exotic figures stood for the ancient assumption that somehow the universe made sense and that one could interpret events, local and cosmic, and discern their meaning.