The Myrrh's the Thing

Isaiah 60:1-6

Matthew 2:1-12

The spring semester will soon begin at Hastings College and this means that I will once again be teaching an introductory course in the New Testament, something I look forward to with great anticipation every year. There's nothing I enjoy more than delving into the religious and cultural context of Roman-occupied Palestine and encouraging students to appreciate the enormous complexity of the material that they will be studying until the month of May (and hopefully thereafter). But there is one obstacle that invariably stands in the way of this endeavor, something I like to call "the Ouija board approach" to reading scripture. If this reference is less than self-explanatory, imagine trying to persuade a group of Christians – whether in college or in the church – to read the book of Isaiah on its own terms and not as a kind of visionary foretelling of events that come to fruition in the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ.

With respect to Isaiah 60:1-6, for example, I can conceive of impressing upon the class the importance of historical context, the fact that the prophet is offering a destitute people newly returned from Babylon a sign of hope amidst unfathomable ruin. In sixth-century BCE Jerusalem, a place whose glory had long since disappeared, the Jews could look forward to little else but darkness and despair. But Isaiah's words present an alternative vision of light shining forth from the land itself and attracting both the attention and respect of the other nations.

To this radiant city on a hill the leaders of the world will come, proclaims the prophet, bringing the abundance of the sea and the treasures of the earth. Though it sounds less than appealing to us, all the camels of Midian and Ephah and Sheba will flock to the altar of the Lord. Perhaps most important of all, the affirmation of the people as both a royal and priestly nation will be made evident by the gifts that will be bestowed upon them: gold – a precious metal synonymous with kingship – and frankincense – a substance associated with the aroma of the sanctuary (Ex. 30:34) and a regular accompaniment to animal sacrifices in the Temple (cf. Lev. 2:1, 16; 6:15; 24:7). As Malachi 1:11 informs us, the latter was also a symbol of the divine name and thus an appropriate offering for the people of God.

How frustrating then to learn from more than a few Ouija board Christians that this series of verses can be understood only as a prophetic prediction of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem over five hundred years after the words were uttered. "Look," they will say, "it is all very clear: the light shining in the darkness (Is. 60:1) is obviously the star that will lead the nations – the Magi – to the Christ child; they will come riding on camels, just as the prophet foretold (60:5); and they will bring precious gifts to lay before the king. Isaiah even tells us what these will be: gold, frankincense, and myrrh."

Never mind, of course, that the third of these oblations is never mentioned – not in Isaiah, at least.

It is apparent that when writing his gospel the apostle Matthew went to great lengths to demonstrate the continuity between the birth of Christ and the messianic hopes of the Jewish people. In the two chapters that precede the Markan core of his text, there are a number of clear references – as well as a few important inferences – to what came to pass in order that "the scriptures might be fulfilled." It is all the more interesting then, with Matthew's great attention to detail, that we find this curious addition to the text of Isaiah 60. Whence, and why, this inclusion of myrrh in the story?

A simple response would be to propose that at the time of Matthew's writing the myrrh trade in the Near East was at its peak; the substance was valued among the wealthy and royalty in a way that it had not been five hundred years earlier. As myrrh was often used in conjunction with frankincense, Matthew simply felt obliged to bring his gospel up to date culturally. Certainly the Christ child was just as worthy of the highly-prized aromatic as any of the well-heeled citizens of Rome, so it was only right that he include it. But while all of this may be true historically, it is not sufficient to reveal the depth of Matthew's thinking on how the scriptures were not entirely fulfilled by the birth of Jesus. Indeed, to play on Hamlet's famous quip, "the myrrh's the thing" that reveals to us fully the God who was made known to the nations that night in Bethlehem.

Proponents of the so-called two-source hypothesis tell us that when writing his gospel Matthew (as well as Luke) used a copy of Mark as a reference – a literary foundation, if you will. This being the case, he was able to develop and explain to his Jewish-Christian community various aspects of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ that he found lacking in the earlier manuscript. His familiarity with Mark, for example, may have led him to reflect on what might otherwise seem like an insignificant incident that took place at the foot of the cross: "Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. And they crucified him…" (Mark 15:22-24a). He may have also been familiar with another tradition found in John where Nicodemus brings "a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds" (Jn. 19:39) to anoint the crucified body of Christ.

What seems clear in all this is that Matthew, in his account of Jesus' birth, directs his readers symbolically to the conclusion of his gospel by taking a few liberties with the Isaiahic text, and in doing so points us toward our own epiphany about the meaning of God's manifestation in the world. Introducing a substance associated with the embalming of bodies into the story of a child's birth may seem like a macabre literary device, but Matthew wants his Jewish-Christian audience to know precisely what they are in for if they venture any further into his text. Further – and this point is easily lost on us during the Christmas season – he wants them to realize that there is at least one way in which the coming of Jesus into the world did not fulfill what the scriptures had spoken.

Whereas the people of Israel looked forward to the coming of a righteous king, or perhaps a faithful priest in the line of Aaron – men, that is, who were worthy of the nations' gifts of gold or frankincense – what they did not expect was a messiah who would also fulfill the long-neglected vocation of God's prophet, with all the dubious rights and privileges accruing thereto, including an intimate knowledge of the funerary use of myrrh. As Walter Brueggemann has noted, Isaiah's prophecy, when compared to the events recorded in Matthew, is in fact nine miles off the mark. While the people of God expected a king to come in glory amidst the splendor of Jerusalem, what they got – and what the evangelist wants to establish emphatically – was a humble servant born just a short geographical, albeit a long theological distance away in the unassuming town of Bethlehem.

I am a little hesitant to admit it, but whenever I hear the story of the Magi visiting the Christ child I cannot help but be reminded of the Monty Python film, The Life of Brian, in which a version of this story is comically rendered. Believing themselves to be in the presence of the long-awaited messiah, the wise men offer their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, to the infant Brian, much to the bewilderment of the boy's mother. As the three kings are about to leave, she thanks them for their tribute, making special note of how pleased she is with the gold and frankincense. The myrrh, however, she could do without and even tries to give it back to the visitors, feeling that such a gift is inappropriate for her new-born child.

But in this lies the "joke," if you will, and Matthew is especially concerned that his readers get it. The myrrh's the thing, the gift that reveals the God of the Israelites for who God truly is: a Creator willing to empty Godself and take on the form of a vulnerable child, thus becoming one with all of humanity and creation. We lose sight of this significant aspect of Epiphany if we, following Isaiah's lead, focus our attention primarily on the gold of Jerusalem's kings and the frankincense of the Temple priests. The good news must finally, and paradoxically, be rounded out by the messianic role of the rejected prophet, suffering in solidarity with both a broken humanity and a steadfast God, always mindful of the ever-present fragrance of death

Bizarro-World

Luke 2:1-20

John 1:1-14

About five years ago, in one of my periodic attempts to purge myself of excesses, I made the happy decision to do away with that luminescent demon we all know as television. I found that I was just wasting too much time in front of the infernal contraption, allowing myself not just to be entertained by sit-coms and such, but also to be informed in my thinking by many of the major news networks. Admittedly, I was only spending about four or five hours a week in front of the tube – an insignificant amount of time compared to the national average – but this was enough to help me see clearly what most of us have long suspected, and what some researchers have now concluded: there is a kind of "soft terrorism" associated with our television fascination. Not only is it a universal soporific, it insidiously compels us to fall into step with the unquestionable dictates of the herd mind.

Every now and then, though, I get a taste of what I have been without. In airports, for example, to appease the masses, there is usually some kind of news or sports channel blaring above the heads of travelers waiting to board their flights. Sometimes I will sit beneath one of these squawk boxes in disbelief at the sheer amount of information that is hurled at us at fast-ball speed. With so much stimulation, it's hard to be critical about what you're hearing, so the networks encourage us not to try. Just sit back, be entertained, and if you can adequately parrot back what you have seen and heard, you can count yourself among the well-informed. Stay away from it for a while, though, and you will soon come to see it for the bizzaro-world it actually conveys.

I know television is an easy, and perhaps an unlikely target for Christmas day, but I have been a little dismayed at how often this techno-toy is implicated for its ill effects in a book I have been reading: Linda Sax's, The Gender Gap in College: Maximizing the Developmental Potential of Men and Women. Though it is not the central focus of her research, Sax nevertheless points out time and again the direct correlation between the amount of time that students spend in front of the tube and their diminished capacity for leadership, creativity, and critical thinking skills. Based on my own experience, I would add to this a tendency simply to accept the party line as gospel – whether it is offered by the Fox News Channel or CNN. In bizarro-world, for example, the corruption on Wall Street is able to be overlooked for the good of the general economy, for after all, the perpetrators are the "masters of the universe" and answer to a different authority. The trick of pedagogy then becomes how best to deconstruct this fabricated worldview and propose a viable, and even hopeful, alternative.

As we read the lectionary texts for Christmas, it is easy to overlook the masterful pedagogy offered by both John and Luke. We have become so familiar with the account of the angel appearing to the shepherds, for instance, that we have shielded ourselves from the unsettling force of its original impact. Indeed, when I hear this text read from the pulpit, I cannot help but be drawn back to my early childhood years, sitting as I did every holiday season in front of the tube, taking in all of the familiar dialogue of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Perhaps you’re like me and cannot shake the image of Linus clutching his blanket and reciting the age-old story from the Gospel of Luke. But the innocent narration of a child only obscures the revolutionary character of the text, for it was intended in the first century not only for comfort but for challenge, for exposing the Roman Empire as the bizzaro-world it actually was. The key to the disruption, of course, lies in Luke's use of the term "good news" (euangelion).

Many of my students are often distressed to learn that the evangelist here is not much of an historian. From their perspective, there is no way that Augustus (d. 4 BCE) could have died a full ten years prior to the date when Quirinius was appointed governor of Syria (around 6 CE). They are used to the notion that if it appears in print, or any other medium for that matter, it must surely be fact, and therefore true. To suggest that the Bible is a bad history book is to undermine completely their faith in God. But Luke is not interested in history here; on the contrary, he is establishing in no uncertain terms the grand political context into which Jesus was born.

Luke, the Gentile physician and companion of Paul, would have known well that the audience to whom he was writing was familiar with the grandiose claims that Octavius, the august Caesar, had perpetuated about himself during his reign as emperor. Here was the true "savior," or so the propaganda proclaimed, a Lord whose illustrious presence in Rome was "good news" to be declared throughout the imperial provinces. Luke's medical background probably led him to place special emphasis on the way that "salvation" (soteria) was employed in this political context. Augustus – a demi-god himself, according to the lore – had been able by his power and glory to secure the very well-being, the health and wholeness, of the empire.

This was the official doctrine, the word come down from on high and broadcast by all the reputable media outlets. Some, who had a special connection to this master of the universe, had even come to believe it, but others – the outsiders, society's debris – had their profound doubts. But in the absence of any other narrative they had little else to hope for. Here, however, is where Luke is able to ply his genius, using all the familiar vocabulary – "good news," "savior," "Lord" – but in reference to one whom Rome would clearly regard as an anti-hero: a Jewish babe, wrapped in strips of cloth, taking in the first breaths of life amidst the earthy smells of a stable. Removed in dignity and esteem from the powers-that-be, he is nonetheless the incarnation of God, according to the evangelist, and the fact that he comes into such a vulnerable space reveals to the world something essential about the divine nature.

Though it is difficult to realize amidst the chaos of our culture, Christmas is a time for us to take a step back and account for how we have allowed ourselves to be co-opted into the bizarro-world of empire. Do we strive to be our own masters of the universe, aspiring to achieve the material wealth that we believe will afford us a new lease on life, a corner on health, a hold on salvation? Or can we affirm instead that we are called in some way to live precariously in this world, in faith, in vulnerability, in the kind of well-being that befits our truest humanity, as revealed to us in the one who was most truly human?

The full impact of another text – this time from the Gospel of John – is also lost on us during the season of Christmas, partly because of its familiarity and partly because of its inadequate translation into English. It is instructive to read it in conjunction with Luke's birth-story. The Word, John tells us, who was with God in the beginning and through whom all things were created, became flesh and "lived among us" (Jn 1:14), and thus provides the most perfect example of God's unique love for the world. Jesus embodies God's willingness to be intimately bound up with humanity. But how much more compelling to learn that there is a significant nuance added when we read the passage in Greek: "…the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us."

The implications here are abundant, but at this juncture in our history I take solace in the fact that while the so-called masters of the universe manage the funds that make the money that keeps our world moving on apace – or so the official narrative has long proclaimed – the creator of the cosmos chooses instead to be revealed not as a scion of wealth and privilege, not as the ruler of empire, but as one whose home can be found among the shepherds of the field, among the "dusty ones" in the desert.

And this is the wisdom that we are called to ponder and affirm at Christmas. It is in the weakness of God that the earth and all its inhabitants shall come to know true health, or in the idiom of our tradition, "salvation." I do not deny that this is enough to suggest its own kind of bizarro-world, but it is the nature of the Kingdom that we as disciples of the Word must constantly seek. And now the task is all the more urgent as the once-unquestioned alternative has – like imperial Rome itself – crumbled so thoroughly on its foundations.

Potato Stamp Epiphany

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

One of the great benefits of teaching religion to college students is the sneak-peak I get every so often of what the church might look like in twenty or thirty years. Every Monday night, for example, a campus group known as Common Grounds meets at my house to discuss issues of faith, politics, community service, or whatever seems most urgently to present itself at the time. Last night the gathering was pretty low-key and, I must admit, geared specifically toward my own desire to celebrate the Advent season in an old-fashioned way. We all sat around chatting, drinking tea, listening to Leon Redbone sing holiday carols, and decorating homemade Christmas cards with potato stamps. There was nothing exceptional about it, really – it was pretty much a reversion to our days of childhood when we had the luxury of such frivolity. Yet the evening was extraordinary on one account: it offered me one of those cherished intimations of the Kingdom of God in our midst.

I suppose it is common on most college campuses, as in the church or society at large, for people to segregate themselves into cliques according to their mutual interests. In our small community the associations are predictable: the athletes hang out together, as do the art and theater majors. Even the Christian ministry minors have a tendency to congregate around their shared values. Everyone seems content to remain safely cloistered behind the imaginary walls that have been constructed by their tribe. But interestingly that was not the case last night (or on other nights with this group). In many ways what I witnessed bordered on the miraculous, because those who were gathered around my kitchen table, potato stamps in hand, were perhaps the most diverse collection of human beings I have seen in a very long time.

There were a handful of rather conservative Christians present, but they were balanced out by several students who might be considered more progressive. Those of varying sexual orientations were represented in the mix, and among the believers there was even an agnostic or two. But everyone was enjoying their common creative task, without conflict and with much laughter. Somehow – and pastors here take note – the student leadership of Common Grounds has been able to create a safe place where a diversity of opinions and perspectives can be honored as part of the complex fabric of a vital human community. Many of those present last night might have had little problem seeing their time together as a unique incarnation of the body of Christ. Some may have even been comfortable calling it "church."

The experience – what I think I will call my "potato stamp epiphany" – was made all the more poignant by the fact that earlier that day I had received an e-mail from my friend, Toddie Peters, alerting me to an occasional paper that had been published earlier this year by a Presbyterian elder named Beau Weston. Its title seemed a bit presumptuous but compelling all the same: "Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment." I cannot adequately summarize here the entire thirty-three-page document but I can say that negative reactions to Weston's thesis seem well-founded. In his analysis of the Presbyterian Church (USA) over the past half-century, Weston draws a correlation – some have even said a causal connection – between a decline in church membership and the introduction of new structures of governance that have allowed the gifts and voices of previously unrepresented groups to be recognized. Implicit in all of this, it seems, is a longing to return to the good ol' days when the white male hierarchy of the church suffered little in the way of challenges to its authority. As I read the paper I could barely believe what I was seeing, but there it was in black and white (and I paraphrase liberally): diversity in the leadership of the PC(USA) has been the pact with the devil that has led to its present decline, the disestablishment of its power.

I think it is instructive here to consider the question of our ecclesial future in light of the words of Third Isaiah. Indeed, the theme of "rebuilding" is explicitly present in our First Testament reading for this Sunday. Standing amidst the ruins of a broken city, the distinction of the people's past barely a distant memory, God's spirit rests upon the prophet and compels him to speak of hope. Yet in the absence of the once glorious Temple, deprived of a righteous king in whom they could place their trust, the breath of God reveals through Isaiah a new vision of how things were going to be. The rebuilding, he suggests, will begin from the ground up, from the strengths and insights of those whose voices had long been ignored or forgotten.

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor… (Is. 61:1-2a)

I find it interesting that it is not entirely clear who is being anointed here. Commentators are fairly certain that this is not some misplaced coronation hymn, as was once claimed. Another possibility is that the speaker is a symbolic representation of the people of Israel, the collective, the suffering servant whose vocation was to declare to the world through their humble, even despised station in life that the Lord was doing "a new thing" (Is. 43:19). The people of God would indeed build up the ancient ruins and raise up the former devastations, but it is clear from the prophet's words that they could not rely simply on the established and exclusive order of their past. But in this precarious uncertainty lay their hope.

It is true that there was not simply one theological voice that was being cultivated in Judah at this time. Though reconstruction followed the lead of Ezra and Nehemiah, there were nevertheless some among the people who saw in the reestablishment of the status quo a threat to God's freedom and mystery, and thus a challenge to God's authority. In short, they were not content simply to fall back on tradition, and especially on one that had been so obscured by their recent captivity. Rather, they sought intimations of divine wisdom not only in scripture but also in nature. So when Isaiah appeals to shoots springing up from the earth, the implication is that God's work in creation provides a glimpse of how righteousness and justice might eventually be established in the land: not according to human design but by God's immeasurable providence. From the scorched earth of ruin new life would indeed spring. And from our modern vantage point we can now observe that if there is anything to be offered by the wisdom of the earth it must include the insight that true vitality lies not so much in the monoculture of establishment but in the polyphony of diversity, in dynamism, in the ability to balance the conversation among many voices.

Recently I have had the opportunity to spend some time with Phyllis Tickle's new book, The Great Emergence, which is basically an eloquent elaboration on an observation made by the Right Reverend Mark Dyer, that "about every five hundred years the church feels compelled to hold a giant rummage sale" (p. 16). Both Dyer and Tickle, among others, believe we are currently in the midst of packing up the things we want to divest and polishing up the things we want to preserve. As I read Weston's analysis of where the PC(USA) is as a denomination, and how we came to be in this place, I could not help but think that his idealization of past ecclesial glories should be one of the first items to be placed on the discount table, with prices slashed dramatically.

For if there is anything I have learned from my "potato stamp epiphany" it is this: given the faith and openness demonstrated among many of the younger members of the body of Christ today, and given the inscrutable wisdom of the Spirit, we cannot even begin to imagine the direction the church might take in the not-so-distant future. Who knows? Perhaps one day we will find communities of Christians who are open to including agnostics in their fellowship. Maybe liberals and conservatives will eventually come to co-exist in the same community. God forbid! We must not limit the power of the Creator to do "a new thing." Shoots will spring up among the ruins; life can return to a barren land.

So while Beau Weston's paper certainly disturbs my admittedly liberal sensibilities, I do not perceive it to be a significant threat. Rather, it is the dying gasp of a five hundred-year-old model of authority, an indignant yet toothless objection to finding oneself on the hard luck end of a rummage sale. But I am grateful for one important insight here. Weston has helped me to realize this Advent that while we anticipate the coming of Christ, in humility and in glory, we also await with eager longing the revelation of the children of God in the form of a radically renewed image of the church.