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Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The Tale of Two Cities
Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
"We Three Kings," we sing as part of the Christmas carol repertoire.
It's a favorite of children, and of the little kid inside all of us, regardless of our chronological age.
The song's rhythms evoke the rocking and rolling of camels making their awkward but surefooted way in caravan across hundreds of miles from Mesopotamia to the little town of Bethlehem. It's almost impossible to sing it without swaying to and fro in the process.
The words introduce us to the Wise Men who made that journey to find a newborn baby boy, Gentiles on pilgrimage in search of a King of the Jews. It goes on to describe each of the gifts they offered Baby Jesus once they found him, and to elaborate on its symbolic meaning. Finally, it calls us all to worship him as the Risen Lord, worthy of glad alleluias from us and all people everywhere.
All well and good. And wonderfully so. There's just one problem.
There weren't three of them. And they weren't kings.
Even so, I had some fun by starting my sermon on their story with a summary of the traditions that rose up very early in the Christian era about these mysterious men and their marvelous gifts.
Then I got down to business with a new slant on this old familiar story -- the tale of two cities where the Wise Men came calling on the newborn Christ child. Both of them were "Cities of David," Judaism's great ideal of what a king is all about. But what radically different images of royalty they portrayed.
Wake up and watch out, kings of Jerusalem. A brand new kind of king is born in Bethlehem!
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posted by Jack Buckley at
5:20 PM
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