A Fourth Church Sermon by Joseph L. Morrow

Sunday, January 6, 2019 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Joseph L. Morrow
Minister for Evangelism, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 8
Matthew 2:1–12

Lord God of the nations,
we have seen the star of your glory rising in splendor.
The radiance of your incarnate Word
pierces the night that covers the earth
and signals the dawn of justice and peace.
May his brightness illumine our lives
and beckon all nations to walk as one in your light.

Prayer of the Day for Epiphany, Book of Common Worship

In 2003, young Leah and Jonathan found themselves stuck smack dab in the middle of a war zone. Far from their home in North Carolina, the couple felt compelled to venture across ocean and deserts on a peacemaking venture with several other Americans in the country of Iraq as war broke out. But as the bombing campaigns began, their Iraqi and international partners thought it unsafe to stay in the country. So in a caravan of three vehicles they set off from the town they were visiting to the border.

Along the road, one of the vehicles hit a pile of shrapnel and immediately veered off the road and crashed. Then out of nowhere, another car pulled up to inspect the scene. Out of that car came Iraqis who put all the passengers of the crashed vehicle in their car and then sped away. Jonathan and Leah looked back down the road and feared the worst.

But it turns out their fears were unfounded. You see, at great personal risk, the Iraqis took the wounded to a doctor in a nearby town called Rutba, where their lives were saved and their injuries healed. Inspired by these modern-day Iraqi Good Samaritans, Jonathan and Leah Wilson Hartgrove returned to the United States and founded in the town of Durham, North Carolina, a Christian community called Rutba House. In fitting with what they learned from their Iraqi hosts, Rutba House offers friendship and a place to call home for people of diverse cultural backgrounds and economic situations, including those with nowhere to lay their head.

As Jonathan and Leah have discovered, whether they were the visitors in Iraq or the visited in North Carolina, visitors have a way of disrupting life as usual. Outsiders can save our lives or complicate them; bring healing or ideas and especially questions that can unsettle us. Sometimes they can even help us experience God’s love.

And that’s probably a good way to understand how the day of Epiphany visits us, breaking into our lives between the holidays and the rest of our year. Epiphany marks the moments where Jesus’ divine identity and redemptive mission are made known to a greater number of people, especially the peoples beyond Judaism. This ancient feast day of the church interrupts us as we’re arguing over whether it’s long past time to take down the Christmas tree. (In case you’re wondering that’s today.) It barges in as we commit to decluttering a home or are sore from starting to exercise again. Epiphany comes asking us to pause before we rush headlong back into our familiar routines and listen to this story about mysterious visitors who come to the see the Christ child. We aren’t given their names or even their number. Matthew never tells us they were actually kings. The Greek word for them, magi, could refer to astrologers, soothsayers, or royal advisors. History and tradition highlight their role as gift-bearers.

But we sometimes forget the obvious, that the magi were seekers. They left their homelands to find the answer to a provocative question: “Where is the child born King of the Jews?” It turns out they were not alone in their searching. As they traveled along, they found Jewish religious authorities and scribes who were also curious to find the purported Messiah. And Herod, even with questionable intent, also wanted to seek out this king, since Herod principally thought of himself as King of the Jews. So this Epiphany story turns out to involve many seekers on a quest after answers, security, glory, and fulfillment.

Some 2,000 years later, quests continue. Our society is filled with spiritual and nonspiritual seekers all on their unique journeys to discover greater meaning and purpose in their lives. Increasingly this soul searching happens outside of institutional churches or worship services, but it is vibrant as ever. When the recent graduate desperately wants to know how to make a good living and how to do good for others, the search is still alive and well. When the cancer survivor grasps for hope in the uncertain waters between remission and recurrence, the search is alive and well. And when people take their politics as religion when the church’s public witness is found wanting, the search for meaning is still alive and well. So the quest for personal and communal fulfillment that religion historically filled hasn’t disappeared but merely changed form.

The philosopher Charles Taylor says as much when he declares we live in a Secular Age marked by the fact that there are many options, including nonreligious and scientific ones, in our pluralist society to satisfy our existential hunger. Pluralism simply enlarges the pool of possible dreams to dream and questions to ask. And the rising number of younger Americans who are not affiliated with any religious tradition are creatively opening up new paths for meaning from CrossFit to dinner parties. As sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell document, many are comfortable “at the edge of a religious tradition, half in and half out.” Like so many others, they shop, as it were, for the way of life that most completes their sacred quest.

Now it might be all well and good that we embark on these separate journeys of self-discovery. But at some point a collision is coming. Not all these searches turn out well. Our journeys can take us through different waters of addiction or self-harm. They may be thwarted by the dead end of violence, greed, or vainglory. Our deepest dreams can cause great distress for others and result in grievous hardship. Herod saw the quest of the magi and the messianic hopes of his own people as threats to his arrogant drive for security and power. From what we know of Herod’s life historically and through scripture, he was quick to double cross any friend or kill any perceived foe to block and repel persons, ideas, or traditions that dared to question or oppose his desires. It can be tempting at times to see other seekers on the road of life, whether persons or whole cultures, not as companions but as obstructions in our way. Another person, religion, or culture becomes a threat to our welfare, desire for comfort, or dignity. Wherever we see outsiders rejected and dissent punished, the boiling rage of Herod is not far from us and neither is that dreadful destination that political scientist Samuel Huntington once spoke of as a clash of civilizations.

But I believe God’s good news is that it does not have to be this way. The dreams and questions of others need not be threats to us. Like the magi visiting Christ, we can realize that our journey is actually dependent on those whose sacred quest is different from our own. While the magi had star charts and likely their own culture’s myths and legends to guide them, without knowing where the star settled and the identity of the one they sought, these travelers could not complete the journey by their own power. They needed scribes and priests to tell them the stories in scripture of a promised restorer and ruler to come from Bethlehem. Likewise, these religious authorities and public intellectuals needed the fresh insights of these traveling strangers to understand what God was doing in their midst. By seeing each other not as threats but as partners, they could see the plurality of God’s truth, that the promises unveiled in Jesus transcend any one group, culture, or even religion.

Growing up in interfaith communities and having engaged in ministries of bridge-building across faiths and cultures, I’m convinced that encounters like that of the magi across religious traditions help us grasp this truth and acknowledge that God is at work in those who are different from us.

Consider this: In the year 1219, almost 800 years ago, Europe and the Middle East were embroiled in warfare in which two faiths, Christianity and Islam, were perceived as threats to one another. Crusaders from Europe assembled a great army in the coastal town of Damietta, on the mouth of the great Nile River in Egypt. It was their first stop on a quest to take back holy land. Blocking their plans was Sultan Muhamad Kamil, the Muslim ruler of Egypt. After two years of a deadly and violent siege, that eccentric and humble saint of the church Francis of Assisi, who had been traveling with the soldiers, dared to broker a peace with the sultan, not with weapons but by preaching the gospel. Those in the Christian camp told Francis, “You’re being naïve. You don’t know what you’re up against. These are the enemy, the apostates.” But they let him go—ostensibly to make a fool of himself.

So Francis defenselessly crossed the battlefield. What happened next was extraordinary. Rather than kill or take him prisoner on sight, the Muslim sultan granted the Christian monk an audience. In the ensuing discussion, some say Francis asked to walk through fire to prove the truth of his gospel, but the sultan politely declined. Then Francis was allowed to observe the daily prayers made in the Muslim camp. Finally, the sultan let Francis publicly articulate and share his beliefs in the royal court with a court scholar to offer a response, a classic Islamic form of hospitable disputation. In the midst of a deadly conflict between peoples pursuing divergent paths, this was a rare encounter of equals where wisdom was exchanged and deep respect given.

While the war raged on until the Crusaders finally ran out of luck in battle, the Christian and the Muslim left their visitation forever transformed. The sultan went on to give bread to the Crusaders in retreat on the brink of starvation and was said to have been more welcoming to Christians in his country. And Francis, back in Italy and struck by the poignancy and power of Islamic forms of prayer, penned a letter to all the faithful, urging every woman and man in the world to pray. He even rewrote the rule of his religious order with instructions to go and live in peace among Muslims.

The transformation of the sultan and the saint from their encounter suggests, as religious historian Laurie Patton insightfully put it, that one religion needs another tradition to be more fully itself. Like the magi who returned to their homeland by a different road, for Francis and the sultan, there was no going back to the old ways or perceptions. By inviting each other into their lives and interrupting their preset agendas, they discovered what I believe is a discipleship beyond borders, where both followers of Christ and other seekers of truth, beauty, and justice school one another in hope, love, kindness, wisdom, and community.

But borders cannot be crossed without safe havens and brave spaces being provided. We need to be intentional about the social and intellectual space we carve out in our lives for different points of view. I was reared in a household that practiced this in an intuitive way. My mother’s home was a guesthouse that extended material and philosophical welcome to many kinds of people, from the Muslim uncle who regaled us with stories of world travel to the rabbi from across the street who expounded on Torah in our living room. For them and so many others there was always a spare room, a plate of food, an available chair for conversation, an open heart and mind. Around my mother’s house, a hospitable faith was practiced—one that was forever unfinished, waiting for some newcomer to arrive with a sacred message. This is the same faith of Francis, of Leah and Jonathan in Iraq, and of those magi visiting the Christ child. And an unfinished faith of this sort is perhaps a better gift than those of frankincense, gold, and myrrh. Perhaps the Islamic Sufi poet Rumi had the right idea then when he said:

This Being Human is a Guest House
Every morning a new arrival
A joy, a depression, a meanness
Some momentary awareness
Comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and Entertain them all!

So my prayer for you in this new year is that in your seeking may you always leave a spare room in your faith and may it always welcome and entertain God’s unexpected visitors. Amen.