NRS Matthew 2:1
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6 'And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'" 7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage."
9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Dear Friends in Christ, grace and peace to you in the New Year from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

My father-in-law Jack Maher was a great guy. I loved him very much and I wish you could have met him. Jack was born and raised in Chicago, and as a young man he worked for a division of the Spiegel Company. They moved him around the country quite a lot, and when World War II broke out, he and Betty, Carolyn's mom, were living in Baton Rouge. As Jack went into the service, Betty stayed put in Baton Rouge, and when he came back from the war, Jack got a job with the Standard Oil Refinery (now Exxon), where he worked until he retired in, I think, 1976. They threw him a little retirement party, and as he showed me some of the pictures they'd taken, he said to me, "You know, Mike, I worked in this office for like thirty years, and even as I retired, there were people who still called me 'that d------- Yankee'." He just shook his head.

Well, I guess that was just one of those backward Louisiana things, because I know you'd never find any such attitude in the Great State of Texas. Everybody here knows that the whole Texas identity is really a blend of many people from many cultures, races, and language groups. After all, the Texas War of Independence was mostly the brain child of out-of-state Auslanderen. But in places not so enlightened, people can be, well, a little clannish. That's a word my mother used for people who were closed in on themselves, and whenever she used the word, she would bunch her fingers up, like this, suggesting that they were, you know, thick. Coming from her little enclave of South Louisiana Cajuns, she would have known. Ooh, talk about clannish!

You know, I sometimes hear or read these news reports from Iraq where they talk about different tribes and tribal leaders, and I wonder if we're really all that different. Except for Native Americans, we don't formally organize ourselves into tribal groups, but we have our ways of distinguishing insiders from outsiders. The way we walk and talk, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the churches we attend, all form a kind of code for who's in and who's out the bounds of our particular tribe. It's pretty much a universal human phenomenon, and not surprisingly, you can see evidence of it in both the Old and New Testaments.

The Gospel of Matthew, the basis for this year of Sunday Scripture lessons, was clearly written with a specific tribe of early Christians in mind. Matthew begins his gospel with a distinctly Jewish genealogy of Jesus that starts with father Abraham, continues through King David, and concludes with Joseph husband of Mary, mother of Jesus. Continuing this emphasis on the Jewish pedigree of Jesus, Matthew typically underscores most every word, act, or incident in Jesus' life with an Old Testament proof text to bring home his picture of Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish hope and expectation. So you don't have to be a great biblical scholar to conclude that Matthew was writing to and for an audience with a strong Jewish heritage, that is, people who needed to see Jesus as one of their tribe, as a savior to whom they could relate. It's Matthew's Jewish focus that makes this morning's gospel all the more remarkable.

This Sunday is called the Feast of the Epiphany, from the Greek word for revelation or unveiling. In many parts of the Christian world this is the day when families exchange Christmas gifts, remembering the Magi who brought to Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew doesn't tell us much about these visitors from the East. He doesn't number them three, and he doesn't identify them as kings, or for that matter, call them wise. Those are details that come from much later Christian tradition. So who or what the Magi are is really anybody's guess. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus identified them as a caste of Persian priests skilled in dream interpretation. Modern scholars mostly label them as astrologers, people who looked to the stars in order to predict the future. When they arrive in Jerusalem, they obviously know enough Bible to inquire after the newborn King of the Jews, but for Matthew's purposes, all we need to know is that these Magi were not Jews. Which is to say, they were not the chosen, not the elect, not the children of Abraham and therefore not the heirs to the promise of salvation. They were, in tribal terms, what we'd call pagans, heathen, or in Hebrew, the goy'im. And yet, amazingly, it is to these outsiders, these strangers from the East that the Lordship of Jesus is first revealed. Not to the chief priests and scribes, not to the Pharisees and Sadducees, not even to King Herod the (so-called) Great or to anybody in the royal household in Jerusalem, but instead, Matthew tells us that the very Son of God was first made manifest to and worshipped by foreign star-gazers.

Think about that for a minute. Even as Matthew takes such pains to establish Jesus' tribal credentials, in the birth of Jesus Matthew tells us that God could care less about tribe. God doesn't care about pedigree or heritage. God doesn't give a flip about whether you're a native this or a natural born that. Neither does God pay any particular attention to any of the markers we focus upon as tribal identifiers, like race, gender, national origin, ethnic heritage, native language, economic class, or these days, sexual orientation. God loves people (let's say that altogether!), however we might label them, and in Jesus God is intent on creating a human community that transcends tribe. God's passion is for a people who share God's passion for mercy, and justice, and the righteousness born of that baby first worshipped so many centuries ago by Magi from the East.

In Jesus, God gives the world a new way to join together, which explains the political subplot to the birth of Jesus. When the Magi tell Herod that they have seen the star of the newborn Jewish king, Herod became, not surprisingly, deeply disturbed. Herod, you must remember, was a client king of the Roman Empire. He derived all his power and authority from Rome, whose express, explicit political agenda was to unite the world under the lordship of - Anybody? Anybody? -- Caesar. Contrary to what you may have seen in the movies or watched on TV, the Romans were actually pretty broad-minded about how you might come under the gentle and benevolent rule of the one they hailed as "the son of God." Otherwise, they could be - hmmm! - persuasive.

But God has another plan. Rather than bringing the world together under the banners of clan and tribe, or forcing the world together by dint of arms and coercion, God's plan is to unite all the peoples of the world through a little baby, "who, though he was in the form of God," says Paul, "did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross" (Philippians 2: 5-7). No wonder Herod was so frightened.

The lure of the tribe is a strong one, and one we have to resist with all our might and main. For Jesus Christ did not come into this world to form us into just one more interest group or political bloc. However we may have tribalized it, the church of Jesus Christ is still God's sign to the world that his love knows no limits, recognizes no boundaries, and accepts no conditions.

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.