Feast of the Epiphany, January 3, 2021 – Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3A, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

In our country’s contentious relationship with Iran, there’s been a little bit of saber-rattling just recently. The Iranians, perhaps understandably, are angry because of our black ops operation that took out one of their major military leaders in the recent past. And President Trump has been tweeting ugly things about any possibility that they might try to retaliate. But one of our major military commanders has tried to damp down the conflict by moving one of our major aircraft carriers out of the Persian Gulf. This is nothing new. This has been going on between ourselves and Iran since we helped to dethrone the Shah of Iran way back when I was a youngster. We thought we were doing the right thing, saving the world from a despot. We played ourselves right into the hands of insurgents, who eventually developed into what people now refer to as ISIS.

But that part of the world has been in conflict for a long, long time. In fact, over four thousand years, there has been furor in what historians call “The Fertile Crescent,” the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In biblical times, the main participants were one nation, referred to in the Bible as Assyrians. Take off the first two letters, AS, and you have Syria. Back then Assyria combined all of today’s Syria, plus bits and pieces of other land around it. They were in conflict with another group of people called the Babylonians, or the Persians. Right now, what’s left of ancient Persia is basically Iran, with a little bit of the land around it; what’s left of ancient Assyria is present day Iraq and some of the land around it.

But Assyria and Babylonia enter into the biblical story around 700 BC, when the Assyrians conquer the northern province of Israel. The Northern Province, in Jesus’ time, was called Galilee. That’s where Jesus was from. Now, since it’s right on the border with Assyria, in order to make a living, the Jewish people in Galilee had almost daily contact with the pagan Assyrians right across the border. The Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom.

The southern kingdom made a disastrous alliance with Egypt. When Egypt was conquered by the Babylonians and the Assyrians, then the southern kingdom also went into exile. It was a terrible time. And there are three writers of the book of Isaiah, who, among the three of them, lived across a century and a half. Their main job was to keep warning the kings to stay away from alliances with pagan nations in order to not break the covenant with God. But every time the kings failed, then the prophets had to offer some sort of comfort and hope to the people. And today’s first reading comes from the third of those writers, talking about the challenge and the opportunity of coming home to rebuild their nation. Which brings us right into today’s gospel.

In order to understand what the flashpoint was, the point of conflict in the story, you have to know why Matthew wrote his gospel, and for whom. Both Matthew and Luke wrote around the same time, but St. Luke wrote for pagan Christians, telling them the story, without a lot of the Jewish lore that belongs with it. Whereas Matthew told his story to Christian Jews, and they had several major problems. The first was that, by the mid-eighties, most families and communities of Jews had made up their minds whether or not Jesus was the Messiah. And the conflict split families right down the middle. If you’ve ever been involved in a conflict in your family, or family of friends of yours, and the conflict goes very deep, you know how painful that is for everybody, to have two sides of a family disagree fundamentally about something. It tears families apart.

And that’s what was happening. Matthew had this congregation who was grieving over the loss of relationship with dear ones over the question of who Jesus was. In addition to that, these people were very upset that, as more and more pagans adopted the way of Jesus and were baptized, they would lose their identity and the great story from which Jesus came, would be lost to time - they would lose their identity and their culture. As a result of that, the third problem was that they did not want to break the Eucharistic bread with people who were pagan Christians. This was a scandal. That people would not worship together and share the Lord’s Supper together. It was a terrible danger for the infant church, to have people refusing to receive communion with other people. That’s why Matthew writes his gospel. He presents a very Jewish Jesus who, nonetheless, tackles all of the Jewish hierarchy to make them understand that it is time for a change.

And so, what was the flashpoint in today’s gospel? It’s right there in Herod’s palace. Herod was an unfaithful Jew, and knew very little about the Jewish scriptures. So, when these pagans arrive in his court, looking for a Jewish king, he has to consult the Jewish authorities. And it’s interesting what happens. Who are these people, these Magi? They are Persians. They are the enemy. The ones who once enslaved the Jewish people. But, while those Jewish people were enslaved, they began to adopt some of the pagan practices of the Persians, and incorporate them into their literature. The reason why we have angels in the Old Testament, is because Angels are borrowed from Persian mythology, and placed into the stories of our Jewish ancestors. And, although they despise the pagan gods, the Jewish people are rather friendly toward Persian mythology because its god is a god of wisdom. So these people who arrive in the court are both friends and enemies at the same time. They are despised, but they are important. And Herod asks his scholars about the promise of a Messiah, and they are taking great risk in telling Herod the truth. No one likes to tell a despot the truth. So, when the Jewish authorities tell him, “Oh well, our scriptures say it’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen in Bethlehem,” they’re taking a great risk. But the second risk, they’re not willing to take. They will not go, and look themselves, to see if someone has been born in Bethlehem. And so, what’s happening, is that the Jewish authorities are too comfortable with their view of things, the way it’s always been, to take a step forward. There’s the conflict right there.  The conflict in the minds of these people, in the hearts of these people.

What does Matthew tell us is the solution to the conflict? He places it in the very last line of the story. “They received a message in a dream not to go back to Herod, so they went home to their own land by another way.” Go home by another way.

We are in the midst of a great number of conflicts right now. But we cannot help being human beings. We cannot help being Americans. We cannot help being Catholics. Those three identities place us in the middle of conflict. What Matthew says to us today, is the same thing he said to his troubled Jewish Christians way back when. Go home by another way.