It’s Epiphany kids, Jesus and the wise guys men. Stuff happens. Stop what you’re doing and READ!
Matthew 2:1-12; Ephesians 3:1-12; Psalm 72:1-7,10-14; Isaiah 60:1-6
It’s always kind of interesting that in Matthew’s gospel the first people, besides his parents, to see Jesus are gentiles. Now y’all might be saying, but didn’t the shepherds show up first? Yes they did if you put all the gospels together, but remember that the shepherds aren’t in Matthew’s gospel and the Magi aren’t in Luke’s. Of course this whole thing with the Magi is mostly interesting because of who the gospel is written for.
If you’ve ever really paid attention to the four gospels, you’ll notice that they all say different things in different ways. There’s really two major reasons for this, and that’s that they all have different goals, and in writing ancient histories, events and statements don’t need to be exactly in order like our histories do. It’s ok to fudge on chronological order in order to make one’s point. It’s also ok to leave some events out if it doesn’t fit with your stated purpose.
That’s part of the fun of having four gospels, because they each have a little bit different goal. Yes, they’re all telling the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, but they all tell it in a different way to different people. John’s gospel seeks to both fill in some blanks in the first three, and seems to be aimed at educated Greek readers. Luke’s message is primarily that Jesus is sent to save the oppressed in the world. Mark is writing to Gentile readers who don’t know much about Jewish customs, and he’s trying to put them into the story and lead them to making a choice at the end. Matthew’s goal is to show Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, and references a number of Old Testament prophecies that Jesus fulfilled.
Matthew does a pretty good job of this, too. He opens the gospel with a genealogy establishing Jesus as a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Judah, of the house of David, and directly descended from the monarchical line. He references Jesus’ birth to a prophecy in Elijah, and the location of the birth to one from Micah. The slaughter of the holy innocents is linked to a prophecy of Jeremiah; the flight to Egypt was prophesied in Hosea; his life in Nazareth linked either Isaiah or the Psalms. And that’s just in the first 2 chapters.
So with Matthew trying so hard to show Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, why in the world are some Gentiles the first ones to see him? You’d think that Luke would talk about the Magi, and Matthew would talk about the shepherds. But I think Matthew is remembering what one of the purposes of the Israelite people was: way back in Genesis 12, when God called Abraham out he said, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Abraham wasn’t supposed to just be a blessing to his people, but one to ALL people. Later, Jacob is blessed in a similar way.
Yet Israel over the years forgot that they were supposed to be focused outward — they were more concerned about themselves than about the people they were supposed to be blessing. I think Matthew knew this, and showed that even though Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, he’s also the savior of the whole world. Matthew’s is the gospel which has the great commission in it after all, “Go and make disciples of ALL nations…”
So it starts to make more sense why this gospel written to the Jewish people has gentiles as the first people to witness Jesus’ birth. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, but he is also so much more. Jesus is for all people — he paid the price for everyone’s sin, not just the Jews’.
So what does this mean to us today. Sadly it seems that we Christians are in about the same boat as the Jewish people around Jesus’ time. We seem to have forgotten that the gospel is for all people, and we don’t do a great job of blessing those around us. We, and I’m very guilty of this too, don’t go out and make disciples. Sure, if someone should happen through the doors of the church we’re open and welcoming, but how many people have you invited to something in the past year? I’m at 4. And that’s pretty darn pathetic.
As Christians we are called, like the Israelites, to be a blessing to the people around us. The best way that we can bless them is to love them as Christ has loved us. That takes many different forms, but since it’s the first Sunday in the new year I’m going to set forth a challenge, it’s going to be a fairly simple one, and it’s going to be for me as well, but here it is: Invite a different person each month to come to some kind of church event. It could be Sunday morning; it could be quilting. Invite someone to youth group, or the Thursday evening service. I encourage you to keep each other accountable with this, too. For that matter, keep me accountable. Knowing God’s grace is just too big a gift for us to keep it to ourselves.