Feast of the Epiphany - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2009

Matthew’s story of the visit of the Magi to the new-born child was his way to bring out imaginatively, right from the start, aspects of the significance and purpose of Jesus’ later life and death. It is a message that is so poignantly, and frustratingly, highlighted by its opposite that is happening in Israel and Gaza right at this moment while we’re here reflecting.

Today’s First Reading from Isaiah, along with the Responsorial Psalm – their mood, their message and their images – provided the material for Matthew’s narrative construction.

Writing at a time when the dispirited and struggling survivors of fifty years of exile in Babylon. They had just recently returned to their homeland, Isaiah dreamed of a glorious future.  His was a dream of universal peace – though a peace, nevertheless, in which Israel would be top nation.  The nations come to your light and kings to your dawning brightness … the riches of the sea, the wealth of the nations come to you … Everyone will come bringing gold and incense and singing the praise of the Lord.

The Psalm, from an earlier period, thought of that glorious future in terms of a just and powerful king: The kings of Sheba and Seba will bring him gifts. Before him all kings shall fall prostrate, all nations shall serve him.

At the time that Matthew composed his visionary narrative, he was clearly aware that Jesus had been rejected, condemned and humiliatingly crucified by the local Roman governor in Judea.  So much for all the nations serving him! What, then, was Matthew up to?

For Matthew and the early Christians, Jesus’ death did not negate his significance or his message.  Rather, it was the message – it illustrated the message.  Jesus’ death was not just the price but the greatest proof of his message: Jesus promised peace; Jesus taught peace.  More than that, Jesus’ death made peace – universal peace – graspable.  Lasting peace has only one possible basis – not military might, not coercion, not bargaining, not smart diplomacy – but mutual respect and love.  That’s its greatness – but it’s also its greatest problem.

Who can love? Who is strong enough to be able to love, and to accept the vulnerability and powerlessness inherent in all love? Jesus was.  His death illustrated that.  It also illustrated the mind and the power of God who enabled, supported and empowered him.  There will be peace when and as we let God make us strong enough to love.

While I was down in Melbourne last week with my sister, I came across a quotation from a book by Daniel Berrigan, an American Jesuit and a committed peace campaigner: He wrote: “But what of the price of peace? I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted by the wasting disease of normalcy, that, even as they declare for peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction … of their comforts, their homes, their security, their incomes, their futures, their plans?  ‘Of course, let us have peace’, we cry, ‘but at the same time let us have our normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact…’  And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all cost – at all costs – our hopes must march on schedule … because it is unheard of that good men and women should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost – because of this we cry peace, and cry peace, and there is no peace.  There is no peace because there are no peace-makers.  Peacemaking is hard.  Almost as hard as war.”

Reading Berrigan, I feel guilty.  Reading the Gospels, I feel guilty.  But, of itself, guilt, or rather shame, just paralyses.  We sin – and God forgives sin.  If only we would believe that, God’s love would begin to set us free, would change us, would empower us to love like God – and peace would be spread irresistibly.  That is what resurrection is about.

That was the hope that inspired Matthew’s story of the wise men from the East who, falling on their knees before the infant Christ, did him homage.  Or, as the Responsorial Psalm put it: Before him all kings shall fall prostrate, all nations shall serve him … In his days justice shall flourish and peace till the moon fails.