From East to West

FROM EAST TO WEST Is 60:1-6; Ps 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Eph 3:2-3, 5-6; Mt 2:1-12. Over the Christmas break I came across a news item that I suspect startled a lot of us. Two members of the United States Congress put out their Christmas cards with a photo of their families — parents and young children — each holding a weapon and standing in front of a Christmas tree. I understand the rough and tumble of our current political atmosphere but, I confess, this reached a new low from my point of view. Such a Christmas greeting to commemorate the birth of Christ, the Prince of Peace! Children manipulated by their beaming parents to hold deadly weapons? No matter what one’s political persuasion might be, such ugliness, in my book, rates as a “sin that cries out to heaven.” Could there be any greater contrast between the meaning of that horrific Christmas tableau and the spirit of the feast of Epiphany we celebrate this Sunday? As we all know, the feast takes its cue from Matthew’s infancy narrative where “magi from the east” come to pay homage to the newborn “king of the Jews.” “Magi” was a term used for astrologers who had searched the sky (a popular pastime among the ancients) and noted a “rising star” gracing the heavens, and took it as a portent of someone marvelous about to be born. Matthew describes them as coming from the “east” — a generic term probably referring to Mesopotamia where today are found the modern countries of Iran, Iraq and Syria. There is some irony for us to think of people from lands we might brand today as chaotic and even dangerous being the first to worship Jesus. We might also note that Matthew looks west as well, to Egypt, a land often depicted in the Bible as hostile and oppressive. But in Matthew’s account of the Holy Family, Egypt assumes its other biblical role as a place of refuge and safety in times of distress. So both East and West beyond the boundaries of Israel find favor in Matthew’s account, and this reveals the deep meaning of this feast. Matthew anticipates at the very beginning of Jesus’ earthly life the wide embrace of the Gentile world proclaimed at the end of his Gospel when the risen Christ commands his disciples: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” The prophecy of Isaiah found in the first reading has a similar expansive spirit. The God of Israel was not a “tribal” God, concerned only with his beloved Israel. God was the “God of the nations,” and Isaiah foresees a time when “nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance.” People will come to offer homage to God, “bearing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming the praises of the Lord” — a text that surely inspired Matthew’s account of the Magi. So, too, the responsorial Psalm 72 is exuberant about the universal reach of God’s love: “Lord, every nation on earth will adore you. For God shall rescue the poor when he cries out, and the afflicted when he has no one to help him. He shall have pity for the lowly and the poor; the lives of the poor he shall save.” In the second reading from Ephesians, Paul also glories in the universal scope of the Gospel: “The Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. Alleluia!” All of this is to say that the spirit of Jesus and the spirit of our Christian faith celebrated at Epiphany is expansive and generous. Despite our differences and our boundaries, despite the conflicts and tensions that separate the peoples of the world, the Christian vision is that we are all “one” — all created by and for the God of peace revealed through our Scriptures and embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. Of course, there are legitimate reasons for our cautions and our boundaries. We are not asked to be foolish or naive about the dangers in our world. But the pull should be in the direction of transcending our differences and reconciling our grievances. Like the Magi, we should come bearing gifts — not brandishing weapons.