Follow the Story

News flash: sometimes people travel.  Maybe even you have traveled recently, to visit friends or family or explore something new during some holiday time.  And if you did travel, did you have to carry a passport with you, or proof that you are a citizen of some country?  Were you allowed to bring luggage with you, or were you forced to leave it behind?  Were your bags searched, or were you asked to provide an inventory of what was inside?  Did your luggage get lost along the way, and was it a bag of things you could easily replace at your destination, or was it a bag with medications or medical equipment that could make your journey truly life-threatening? 

I sometimes have anxiety about traveling, so it’s easy for me to think up questions like this.  And yet I know I exist with a good bit of privilege that makes traveling easier for me. 

Reading the stories of Jesus’s early life, there’s quite a bit of traveling going on, of various types.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is born in Bethlehem because—as far as this particular Gospel is concerned—Joseph and Mary just live there.  In Matthew’s Gospel, there’s no royal census requiring the Holy Family to move from Nazareth to Bethlehem, there’s no inn without vacancy, no shepherds or angels.  (Who knows which Gospel tells those stories?  Luke!) 

Matthew tells Jesus’s origin story beginning with Joseph and his conversation with an angel that confirms his fiancée Mary is pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and then after Jesus is born in Bethlehem, magi from the east show up in Jerusalem, the capital city, after having followed a star all the way from the Far East.  They manage to get themselves into Herod’s court to inquire about “the child who has been born king of the Jews.” 

Foreigners showing up in a palace asking about a potential threat to that king’s power—how is Herod supposed to respond to this?  Who are these people?  Even though we love to sing “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” these magi may be wealthy—as much as we can guess by the gifts they give—but they are not kings. 

These days, scholars suggest the magi may be Zoroastrian priests who are advisors to a king, and maybe they have scientific training in astronomy.  They are definitely foreigners who have traveled a long way; what’s Herod going to do about it?  Ignore them?  Build a strategic alliance?  Deport them?  Murder them?   

I found an interesting analysis of Herod’s actions in a Biblical commentary by none other than Martin Luther, who wrote this some 500 years ago:

“Herod treated [these men] as subjects when he commanded them to go to Bethlehem and bring him word.  He would not have done this if they had been kings or lords.  He would have invited them to dine and would have accompanied them on their way with royal treatment, for all histories say that Herod was a smooth man who observed the etiquette of courts.  Since he summoned them secretly, they must have been of much lower station.  And why secretly—was not all the land [Herod’s] and under his control?  Because he knew well that the Jews hated him, and had the interview been public, they might have sought to induce the Wise Men to mislead him that the new king might slip through his fingers.  He inquired as to the exact appearance of the star because he had already made up his mind to slaughter the innocents.  He thought to himself: ‘If a new king is born, the Jews will be glad.  They will hide him until he is grown up, then they will bring him to light and kill me.  Therefore, I must get ahead of them and inquire warily.  If he is hidden, I will catch him anyway by killing all of the children at the same time.’  To carry out this crafty decision he represented himself to the Magi as very humble and reverent and desirous of worshiping him.”[1]

I want to point out here how important it is to listen to different stories—Herod’s words, that he wants to honor this child, don’t exactly align with his actions, and that’s a crucial detail.  If it’s hard to believe a person’s words, you can almost always believe their actions. 

Matthew, in writing this Gospel, has an important story to tell about Jesus’s early years, which were apparently tumultuous after this encounter with Magi.  Since Herod did order the deaths of children under two years old in and around the city of Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph with their newborn fled to Egypt—traveling for their safety, seeking refuge.  That makes them refugees.  It isn’t until after Herod dies sometime later that the Holy Family returns to their homeland, but this time to settle in Nazareth.  

What might Mary or Joseph or even Jesus have said about their motivations for all this moving?  And who would listen to their stories?  And if these same events were happening today—a young family on the run for their lives—how might the story play out?  Would it depend on what citizenship they can prove?  Would they get stranded at various checkpoints in the Holy Land?  Would they have the resources to move to a new country and make a life there, or would they be left in a refugee camp, or maybe even turned away from a refugee camp? 

These movement details are important enough for Matthew to include in his gospel because these describe human experiences, which humans today are still experiencing, and God knows because in Jesus, God has been there too.  This is the story we are telling as followers of Jesus—God knows the challenges and the delights of being human, and since humans are created in God’s image, the degree to which we honor other humans is a measure of how we honor God. 

And this is difficult because we’d rather group people into categories of good and evil.  We want to assign values to people who are refugees or immigrants, people wearing ICE uniforms, people who are supporting government actions and people who are critiquing government actions.  But our calling as followers of Jesus begs us to discard the judgment and acknowledge the humanness of each one of these people. 

The ELCA created a document titled “Created in the Image of God: Affirming Our Shared Dignity” that has helpful suggestions about engaging in conversation with people of differing political viewpoints and learning to listen carefully to the stories that are told.  This document quotes from the ELCA’s newly-approved social statement “Faith and Civic Life: Seeking the Well-being of All” and listen carefully:

“For Christians, our identity in Christ as forgiven sinners undercuts polarization and urges love for every person as a creature of God who is not to be dominated and whose well-being we should try to improve. Our Christian identity encourages us to take seriously both our well-considered perspectives and the limitations of our knowledge, thoughtfulness, empathy, and goodwill. Our identity in Christ encourages a posture of prayer for those who disagree and careful listening to others whose well-considered perspectives may be quite different from our own.”

We’re not all telling the same story because we don’t all have the same experiences.  It’s important to honor those stories that are different from our own, shaped by life experiences we haven’t had, if we’re going to say that we follow a God who created all the earth—no one can be outside of God’s creation—and not only that, but all humans were created in God’s own image, with all the potential and possibilities that exist in the limitlessness of God’s creative power. 

To reduce humans to a single story is not merely ignorant or lacking in compassion but also dangerous, according to writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (CHImamandah enGOHzi AHdeechee), who was born and raised in Nigeria and has lived in the United States.  She gave a TED talk titled “The Danger of A Single Story,” where she shares one of her own experiences with encountering stories:

“A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S. The political climate in the U.S. at the time was tense, and there were debates going on about immigration. And, as often happens in America, immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. There were endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the healthcare system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing. I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara, watching the people going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I remember first feeling slight surprise. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind, the abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. …

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. … The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar. … Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”[2]

Friends, it is worth considering what stories we are telling about people in desperate situations, people who travel for various reasons, people with power like Herod whose words don’t align with their actions, and also people like the magi and even Joseph with the bold faith to follow the messages they receive in their dreams.  It’s worth considering what stories we tell about ourselves, whether we think of ourselves as heroes or as irreparably broken. 

As people of faith, we confess before God that we are sinners and we also receive the grace of God that makes us saints.  We are infinitely more complex than the stories that limit us, and God knows we are capable of growth and worthy of love and redemption. 

Jesus narrowly escaped death in his very early life, along with his young parents—can we see that same story playing out in our own world?  How will God call us to compassion for our neighbors who are immigrants and refugees, seeing in our neighbors the reflection of Jesus, humans made in the image of God? 

May God compose the stories that shape us and give us courage to hear the echoes of God’s story in the lives of people today.   May God make us bold and faithful participants in God’s own story of healing and redemption. 

Amen.

Pastor Cheryl

[1] Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Christmas Book, edited by Roland H. Bainton, 1948, Minneapolis: Augsburg, pages 55-56.

[2] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story” https://ed.ted.com/lessons/TXtMhXIA