Hilton Head Island, SC – December 27, 2015
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 45:21-25; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 2:1-12
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem. – Matthew 2:1 (RSV)
Where East Meets West
It is a narrow strip of land, bordered on the west by the sea and on the east by a small, short, meandering, muddy river. This little nation is sixty miles wide at its widest, and less than two hundred miles long from north to south. Half of it is desert. A low, rocky mountain range runs through much of the land from north to south. Moist air from the sea drops rain on the west side of the mountains in the rainy season, but almost no rain falls on the east side, which is why much of that section is desert.
In ancient times, perhaps thirty to sixty thousand years ago, peoples on the move traveled through this narrow strip on the way to places about which they knew nothing, nor did anyone else know what might be beyond. Whatever it was, they hoped life would be better there or less tenuous or more prosperous. At some point, the ancient ancestors of at least three-quarters of the world’s present population traversed this little sliver of dubious terra firma on their way to other places. In modern American terms, I-95 ran right through it, and nearly everyone going anywhere had to go through it in ethnic and tribal migrations in prehistoric times.
Later, after civilization evolved, travelers going from the two centers of “western” culture, Mesopotamia and Egypt, used the ancient I-95 to go from what now is modern-day Iraq or Iran to modern-day Egypt. The larger area was called the Fertile Crescent. Anyone wanting to go from Mesopotamia to Egypt or vice versa could not go directly across what are now known as the Syrian and Jordanian Deserts; there were almost no oases with water in those deserts for people or for pack animals. They had to use the Fertile Crescent, and go northwest from Sumer or Babylon toward what now is the Turkish border, west between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and then south, either along the sea or on the east side of the mountains --- or the reverse. But one way or the other, everybody had to go through that one small, strategic, pivotal, narrow fifty-mile-wide strip. The place was called originally Canaan, then Israel, then Palestine, then Judea, then Palestine again, and then, nineteen centuries later, once more Israel.
In the long sweep of the earliest human evolution, from the lady called Lucy in the Olduvai Gorge in East Africa, after our species, Homo sapiens, came along about 200,000 years ago, nearly all of our ancient ancestors who moved anywhere moved north out of Africa. Then they either went farther north and then west, into Europe, or east, into Asia, the Pacific islands, and eventually Australia. Thus the land of Israel was always where East met West, and South met North. There was no other way to go by foot anywhere in the then-known world without going through Israel.
For centuries, from about 3000 BCE to the present time, armies marched through Israel. Traders went through it, migrants traversed it, refugees flooded through its narrow confines from time to time. The eastern Levant, but especially what now is Israel and Lebanon, was the primary ancient thoroughfare of the entire Eastern Hemisphere.
And then, according to two of the four Gospels, a baby was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king. And when that happened, according to one Gospel, Matthew, some people from somewhere East of Israel followed a star crossing the night sky until it came to rest over the place where the baby was born.
There are numerous historical, biblical, and astronomical problems associated with Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth. For one thing, stars don’t move in their orbits and then stop. For another thing, In the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, these visitors to Bethlehem are called “wise men.” What that might mean is left, perhaps deliberately, unclear. In other translations they are called “Magi.” The Magi were a group of Mesopotamian or Persian men who studied the movement of the stars and planets. From the word “Magi” comes our word “magic.” But the Magi weren’t people who pulled rabbits out of purportedly empty hats. They were more like what the New English Bible called “astrologers,” or what, in a more affirmative and positive light we might call “astronomers.”
Here is where astronomy and history become quite murky. From time to time I have read articles in newspapers or magazines which suggest that the “star” which the wise men/Magi/astrologers/astronomers followed was a comet or the confluence of two stars whose orbits appeared to merge in the night sky, or whatever. And elaborate explanations are offered to support the particular theses of the particular people who suggest these theses.
Whatever may have been be the actual circumstances of the men from the East and their search for the place to which they believed the star was leading them, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew was wanting as convincingly as possible to suggest that the birth of Jesus Christ was not just a local event, in Bethlehem, or a national event, in the Roman province called Judea, but a cosmic event, a universal event, an event which would change the world forever. It was where East would meet West, and God would bring together all peoples everywhere. From the opening verses of his Gospel to its close, Matthew wanted his readers to know that Jesus Christ would transform the entire world. And that would happen, said Matthew in the last two verses of the last chapter of his Gospel, because of what Matthew says the risen Christ told his disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always to the close of the age.”
In Christ there is no East or West, in him no South or North. From its inception, God never intended Christianity to be merely an ethnic religion, like Judaism, or a primarily Indian religion, like Hinduism, or what turned out to be geographically a Far Eastern religion, like Buddhism. Apparently God and Jesus himself meant for Jesus’ teachings to be spread throughout the entire world. Christianity was meant to be a world religion, the world religion, in the deepest, broadest, and fullest sense. At least that is what is the New Testament declares.
For that reason Matthew, and he alone, had the wise men come from the East to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The Gospel writer clearly meant to say that the birth of what he believed was the Jewish Messiah was intended for all peoples, not just the Jews. And in Bethlehem, East would meet West.
If you draw a line straight north from Bethlehem and Jerusalem to the North Pole, in general everything east of that line has an eastern orientation and everything west a western orientation. The line bisects Turkey, and western Turkey looks west and eastern Turkey looks east. Most of Ukraine looks west (as we have been painfully reminded in the last couple of years), and certainly Russia thinks and acts and is eastern. The straight line north from Jerusalem by chance bisects Ukraine from Russia almost completely. But the Greeks and the Balkans are western, Eastern Europe is western, the rest of Europe is western, and all of the Americas are western.
What does all that mean? Let me suggest some generalizations to you. I think these observations are correct in the main, but definitely not in every nuance of what shall be said. The West thinks “me;” the East thinks “us.” The individual is uppermost in most Western nations; the tribe or group or state is uppermost for most Eastern nations. The West favors affluence; the East favors influence. The West came to stress democracy in its short five centuries of existence; the East has been more comfortable with autocracy in its five-plus millennia of geographical existence. Religion has less cultural and political influence in Western nations than in Eastern nations.
Why am I going on so long about this? It is because I want you to see that Jesus of Nazareth was intended by God to represent the spiritual and philosophical union of East and West. The visitation of the wise men is the biblical story to authenticate that notion. Nobody knows specifically where the wise men or Magi or as astrologers came from. Some scholars say it was Persia or Mesopotamia, or even as close as Petra in modern-day Jordan. Others claim they may have come from far-off Afghanistan or India or possibly China. Their origin is as mysterious as their exit; they came, they saw, they left. They were never mentioned again in the Bible, but we always hear about them every Christmas.
A thought occurred to me as I began preparing my notes to write this sermon. I am sure others have previously thought about this, but I never did.
Here is my thought: Because Jesus was born, and if Muhammad had never been born, Christianity would almost certainly be much more of a world religion than it otherwise is. There are at least half again as many Christians as Muslims in the world, if not twice as many. But if there were no Islam, the differences between East and West and North and South would be far smaller and less significant than they have turned out to be. Arabic language and culture still are a major influence on Islamic nations, but Christianity has never known any single language or culture or worldview. There is such a thing as Christian morality, but there is nothing like Sharia law in the countries where Christianity is the dominant religion (although for that matter, all-encompassing Sharia is quite rare in most “Muslim” states). As it turned out historically, Christianity is Western, and Islam is Eastern. The peoples who are fully committed to these two religions perceive reality very differently from one another. Had Muhammad never existed, the differences among these various nationalities and ethnic groups would be relatively minor, and East would have met West in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
However, it didn’t work out that way. Setting aside Africa, because it is a unique situation unto itself, Israel and Lebanon and everything to the west is western, and Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia and everything east are eastern. The very existence of Christianity and Islam, plus several other major factors, guarantee that there will probably always be two quite different and somewhat competing worldviews between West and East. Fundamentally, that is neither good nor bad; it just IS.
What did God intend? What does God intend? In my judgment that is impossible to say, although there are many in many different camps who would declare with unbending conviction specifically what they believe God has always wanted.
Because God created us, and because He created us to be free and essentially autonomous beings, He inevitably forced Himself to put up with ideas and behaviors and actions which He knew He would never allow Himself to change. But He believed so strongly in human freedom of will that He was willing to endure all of the divine burdens which that entails.
Do you suppose God is sorry He set us on the course of human independence? Is He disappointed or dejected or despondent? I don’t think so. I believe it is impossible from His own nature for God ever to fall into despair over us or anything else. To put it in very human terms (which we do all the time regarding God but probably should not), God couldn’t continue to be God if He ever allowed Himself to get too down because of our mistakes and misjudgments.
Nevertheless, I believe that in the person of the baby born in Bethlehem, and far more so in the life of the Man from Nazareth, God’s will was that East should meet West and North meet South. God wanted whatever differences humanity had to be modified and unified and diminished in Jesus of Nazareth.
That, however, was not to be. East and West are still divided between the two major world religions, Christianity and Islam. There are certainly similarities between the two. Both are monotheistic, although Islam believes the doctrine of the Trinity appears to promote three Gods, rather than one. Both trace major aspects of their origin to the Hebrew Bible. Thus Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all called “the peoples of the Book” in Islam. The ethics of Muslims and Christians intersect at many points. Their philanthropy is alike in many respects.
Nevertheless, whatever the words “West” or “Western” connote, there is much about the western religion of Christianity and its various cultures which the eastern religion of Islam and its various cultures disapproves. Conversely, there is much about Eastern, Islamic culture which Christians disapprove. Never in our lifetime has that been more apparent than now.
If East is to continue to meet West, and West is to continue to meet East, people of good will in both religions must learn to respect one another without feeling they must agree on most things with one another. God made all of us; it is we, all of us, who insist too much on focusing too heavily on differences rather than on similarities.
Currently half the world’s population is at least nominally either Muslim or Christian. For the sake of everyone else, as well as our own sakes, we must learn to love one another, even if we don’t like one another very much. It is inconceivable to me that God ever imagined there would be only one religion in the world, given the divinely-created diversity of individual human beings and the multiplicity of cultures and ethnic groups which we have formulated. However, it is even more dangerous than it is foolish to try to build barriers between religious groups.
If God wanted East to meet West in the birth of the baby in Bethlehem, which I believe He did, then it behooves all of us to do what we can to help West to meet East. At the present time there are many westernized Christians who seem somewhat more amenable to looking East than there are easternized Muslims who are amenable to looking West. Therefore it behooves Christians to take the lead in trying to unite East and West.
One of the most important means for doing that will occur when we go into the voting booth for the South Carolina presidential primary on February 20 and then in the general election on November 8. Have you ever thought about that? Well, think about it. For God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, for Muhammad’s sake, and for the world’s sake, think about it.