January 19, 2025 Epiphany 3 Sermon

In our Bible lessons for today we hear God speak through the prophet Jeremiah:?

“ . . . this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Isn’t this our hope – that somehow God has put his law within us, written it upon our hearts, so that we know how to act, how to behave?? This is indeed our hope, that the new covenant makes us God’s people and Godly people.

Jeremiah spoke the promise of salvation, long, long ago and somehow the wise men, however many there were, got the message and showed up ????????offer their gifts, they are warned in a dream not to report back to the palace, as King Herod had ordered, but to return directly to their own country, which they are never heard from again.?

It would not be Christmas or Epiphany without them.

Just as it would not be a good life if we did not have periodic visitors bearing gifts and good news.? Sometimes visitors can show us something that we do not see ourselves.? All the world’s cultures have admonitions to honor the visitors, the strangers in our midst and the Bible is full of such admonitions, to welcome the stranger, to protect the defenseless, to care for the injured by the roadside.?

Dreams also play a role in this story.? The wise men in a dream are warned not to return to King Herod and an angel shortly appears to Joseph in a dream to tell him to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt.

Long before modern psychologists started interpreting dreams, people all over the world assumed that their dreams told them something wonderful and portentous.

To put everything that I have been talking about together, let us say that the theme of the story of the three kings might be

the sky above and the earth below;

or the heavens above and the world within. ?

There is something wonderful above us and within us.? As above, so below.

In today’s story strangers come from afar to help the people of Bethlehem - shepherds and whoever else - celebrate something.? The angels told the shepherds to go and worship the wonderful child and there, on cue, were these richly clad strangers to help them understand the specialness of the occasion.? Sometimes it works that way.? Sometimes it works the other way.?

I have a story to add, one that I have been meaning to tell for a while.? I have been waiting for the right readings and the right Sunday.? It’s a story of visitors from afar and people near at hand and how they somehow worked together for mutual benefit.?

One day along the Atlantic coast, in North Carolina, to be precise, there was a town that had fallen on hard times.? Unemployment was high, upwards of 25%.? There hadn’t been a new building put up in years.? The place looked awful and people in general felt pretty awful about their town, even though most people who lived there had grown up there and they loved the town and loved the region.?

So the town council hired a development firm to come in, look around and make some recommendations.? I think the state of North Carolina might have even pitched in some money to make it all possible.? The firm included an economist, a town planner, an architect, perhaps a few others.? You might say:? the usual suspects.? Now this is a true story.? It was told to me and written up by one of the people involved, a landscape architect with whom I studied at Berkeley.?

So the outside experts, we might call them the wise men, in this case from the west, walked around, looked around and made some recommendations.? It all took a few months or so.? I should add that when a town is at 25% unemployment the town is usually willing to try anything, bring any kind of industry to town, a soot mill, a toxic waste dump, a nuclear weapons storage facility, whatever.?

The wise men from the west thought their proposal was pretty good.? It required tearing down some rather worthless-looking old buildings, filling up some old vacant lots with new buildings and so on.? But the voters had to approve the proposal and they turned it down flat, by a substantial margin.?

Now the wise men were puzzled and the townspeople were disappointed.? At that point the outside experts could have said “Well, OK, let’s collect our fee and get out of here.? We don’t care if these yokels don’t like our plan.? There are plenty of other towns – let’s shake the dust from off our feet and get outa here.”

And the townspeople did not say: “All right, enough of these so-called experts.? Give them their check and give them the boot.? Whoever wanted to hire these bozos in the first place?”

Instead, they all agreed to move on to round two.? They held a number of meetings, and the outside experts listened while the townsfolk told them that some of the buildings slated in their plan for destruction were quite dear to people; some of the apparently vacant lots were, too; especially the ones on the waterfront. ?So they came up with a new plan that satisfied most people and the town is now thriving with just the right mix of new development and old preservation.

This is what happens when you have a meeting of the minds.? You might say in the biblical story that Herod represents the old uncompromising way of doing things - my way or the highway.? The visitors to his kingdom brought him important news about how his world was changing for the good and he chose to thwart this new development; rather than welcome the child, Herod chose to destroy it.? Wise people show up in our lives from time to time.? We have a choice whether to heed their advice or ignore it. ?Of course, accepting or rejecting advice requires discernment, because sometimes the experts are wrong.?

All of our stories today bid us ask:? how do we welcome the new while being faithful to the old?? How do we discern what is right for us?? There are no obvious or automatic answers, but the answers in God’s time do indeed come.? The Gospel story reveals the need for guides, both earthly and heavenly, from within and without, and the need for discernment.

When we acquire that gift of discernment, we more readily do what the Magi and the shepherds did—we bow down and offer our gifts.

Jeremiah 31:15-17; 31-33

Thus says the LORD: "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not." Thus says the LORD: "Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for your work shall be rewarded, says the LORD, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, says the LORD, and your children shall come back to their own country.”

"Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband,” says the LORD.? “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Matthew 2:12-18

???????? And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.? Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him."

???????? And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt have I called my son."? ???????? Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men.? Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:? ???????? "A voice was heard in Ramah, ???????? wailing and loud lamentation, ???????? Rachel weeping for her children; ???????? she refused to be consoled, ???????? because they were no more."

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