Epiphany 7 January 2024 Matthew 2:1-12
One of Matthew’s central themes is that outsiders often respond to the Good News about Jesus better than insiders. Lowlife shepherds sang while Priests and Levites were a “brood of vipers.”
There is not a lot of reliable history about the Wise Men, or where they came from, or the “star” they followed, or the reaction of King Herod. There is some, enough to make for some interesting homilies, a few diverting conversations about astrology and some no-kidding astronomical events like comets, supernovas, or planetary convergences around the time of Jesus’ birth. But there just isn’t much persuasive power in that. Not many come to Jesus because of an odd supernova.
But what about Matthew’s idea that outsiders sometimes have spiritual insights as good, if not sometimes better, than insiders? Do non-believers sometimes spot God in places where the faithful miss Him?
Romans, even before the time of Jesus, were aware of spiritual wounds in their worldview that they couldn’t fix. The poet Vergil, who wrote the great epic poem of the Roman tradition, made furor, “rage” the central problem of The Aeneid. It shows up in line 11 of Book I – Tantaene animis caelestibus irae? “Are there such rages in divine minds?” At the very end of The Aeneid is the big fight between Aeneas and Turnus. The wounded Turnus taps out, and Aeneas wins – he gets the kingdom, he gets the girl, and furor is tamed. But then Aeneas notices that Turnus is wearing the sword belt of Aeneas’ friend Pallas. Turnus had won it fair and square in an earlier fight, but Aeneas can’t stand to see it on Turnus, so in a tantrum of rage Aeneas kills the wounded, defenseless man. The End. That is where The Aeneid concludes. Furor wins. It is curious that the Romans still made The Aeneid their great epic poem, but that may be an indication of how seriously they took the problem of rage in their world, how big a problem it was that they couldn’t find a solution.
Maybe then it is not completely surprising that the Romans, little by little, found in Jesus an answer. Maybe that is why we still quote the Roman centurion Cornelius at every Mass: “Lord, only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”
In our own time non-believers are asking questions like, “Why is it that today we have more health, more food, more time and more wealth than any time in history, and yet we are more unhappy than ever before?” The suicide rate in the U.S. among youth aged 15-19 has increased 47% since 2000. In Britain 90% of youth aged 19-29 say their lives lack meaning and purpose. Toronto neuroscientist John Vervaeke has coined the term “meaning crisis,” and observed a “wisdom famine” throughout the West. He points out that the pervasiveness of zombies in popular culture, monsters typified by mindlessness, ugliness, homelessness and violence, are a particularly disturbing sign of the anxiety and alienation from which youth see no escape. Is it any surprise, then, that atheism as a movement, particularly in the English-speaking world, has virtually collapsed, and many are showing a renewed interest in Jesus as a solution? Oxford psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, in his massive two-volume study The Trouble with Things, included a chapter arguing for a divine “something” underlying our minds and the cosmos, and refers to the Christian story of Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection as the most powerful story about God that he can think of.
Outsiders often respond to the Good News about Jesus better than insiders. Lowlife shepherds sang while Priests and Levites were a “brood of vipers.” Non-believers are now spotting God in places where the faithful have missed Him.
Maybe there are still Magi out there, coming from a very great distance to find the One born to be King of the Jews.
Maybe we ought to be telling our story a bit more loudly so they will find us, find Him.
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