Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12
When I tried, some weeks ago, to imagine what I might want to talk about on this Sunday nearest to Christmas, the word Sabbath came to my mind. Not an obvious thing to be thinking about in connection with Christmas maybe, not an obvious title for a Christmas sermon: Sabbath. But at least for me it seemed to strike a chord, which is a little strange in itself since I don’t keep a Sabbath and have never in my life kept a Sabbath and my only memories of Sabbath observance, which I don’t need to explain right now, are negative. Still it was a word that seemed to fit, and to make emotional sense, if no other kind of sense, and so I decided to go with it, to let the thought lead me wherever it would lead me.
I think I know one reason why the word would occur to me in thinking about Christmas. Just in terms of everyday life—forget for a moment about any deep religious meanings of Christmas—just in terms of the way we actually live, Christmas is probably about as close to being a Sabbath as anything we have in our culture these days. It is in fact one of the few times when we allow ourselves to declare a day of rest, pretty much for everyone. Businesses, offices, activities that go on pretty much all the time are likely to be closed on Christmas. The machinery of the world grinds to a halt. We collectively take a breath. No need, no point in feeling guilty or driven on Christmas. Nobody expects anything of you on this day, and nobody else will be doing anything. Time to just let go.
On a personal level too, those of us who otherwise are not determined enough, or not focused enough, or just plain not interested in keeping a Sabbath at any other time, we are given permission, or we give ourselves permission to keep a kind of Sabbath on this day. At some point we just declare everything done. Whatever cards have not been sent, whatever presents not bought, wrapped, or mailed, whatever checks not written, people not visited, baking not done—whatever was on our list of things to do, including setting aside some time not to do anything, whatever we have not gotten around to that we really meant to do—too bad. We’re done. It’s Christmas. It’s the Sabbath.
Or some may have a different twist on all this. My father in his later years was not burdened by having so many things to do. He was burdened by having too few things to do, too few things he was able to do that he had once done, burdened by the sameness of his days. For him those burdens were lifted at Christmas as children, spouses, and friends began to arrive. For him it was a Sabbath for a different reason. It was a time of being relieved of his burdens, but because of having more to do rather than less.
The burdens we each need to be relieved of come in many shapes and sizes, and Sabbath can take many forms. Sometimes Christmas brings a kind of Sabbath with it in natural, everyday sorts of ways: resting from our labors, release from some heaviness of heart, calling time out from whatever occupies or burdens us the rest of the time. Sometimes it’s a relatively simple thing. Sometimes not so simple.
Just the notion of laying our burdens down is, for me, something worth thinking about a little bit, because my sense is that we carry, that I carry, so many different kinds of burdens that we aren’t always aware of them. Some of course are easily identifiable, the kind of thing I’ve just been talking about. We are burdened by too much to do, or too little, perhaps by illness, perhaps by some trouble, some guilt, some anger, or regret that we just need to let go of. Sometimes all we need, or all we can expect, is respite, a Sabbath moment, before we take up those necessary burdens again. Sometimes our identifiable burdens need to be laid down once and for good, though that’s not always so easy to do. And sometimes our burdens are not so easily identifiable.
I have always implicitly understood the story of the kings (or wise men or magi) as a story that is about the laying down of our burdens. Well, not always. For a long time I know I heard this story—whether it was in the telling or in the hearing I can’t be sure, probably both—as a story that kind of underscored just who this baby really was. He may have appeared to the unwise or unfaithful as just another little baby, but the kings/wise men/magi knew him, and we know him too as much more than a mere human.
We know and affirm him as someone who the kings of the earth should bow down to, the king of kings. We know him as someone wiser than all earth’s wisdom, holier than all earth’s religion, very god of very god. And the gifts underscore all of this: gold befitting a king, incense used in the worship of gods, myrrh, a perfume for anointing the dead, to remind us that he would grow up to die for our sins. As the Christmas carol “We Three Kings” puts, king and god and sacrifice. It is a story of paying homage to God who comes to us clothed in human flesh, and the implication is that we should have the same posture as the kings—to give glory to God, in this case to give glory to God whom we recognize in the face of Christ.
This is a story usually connected with Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas, which means revealing, revealing Christ for all that he truly is, to all people. By the way on Epiphany Sunday here at Sojourners we will have a story involving the kings, “Amahl and the Night Visitors”, which offers a different and important variation on the story of the visit of the kings. In any case, this is how I heard the story for a long time, as a story where we were encouraged to recognize Christ, revealed in all his fullness and glory, a story that exalted Jesus as the one who is to be worshiped. That’s the way I heard this story for a long time.
But it’s not the way it has spoken to me most deeply. This story touches me most when I hear it as a story not so much about Jesus as about the kings/wise men/magi, which is to say about us. In my reading of the story, now, the visitors bring gifts not so much because Jesus needs to be exalted or revealed for who he truly is as because we humans have burdens we need to lay down, whether for a time or forever. In my reading of the story now, Jesus is not the king of kings who all earthly kings should kneel before, he is not king or god or sacrifice. He is a quiet, holy presence in our midst who invites us, and who provides what we might today call a safe space for us to lay down or lay aside all our pretenses and to see ourselves more for who we really are. Here is my version of the story, or at least one way I have come to read it.
There were these three kings from the east—we’ll say there were three even though the Bible doesn’t actually say. The Bible also doesn’t answer certain other questions like where they were from or whether they knew each other. It says they were from the east, but that’s a big place, and my assumption is that they didn’t know each other, at least not very well. Kings are busy people, occupied pretty much with their own separate kingdoms. Sojourners might have co-moderators but kingdoms are not generally ruled by co-kings, and my thinking is that being a king is probably a lonely thing to be.
So I picture these three kings each independently catching sight of this star and setting out in search of something and finding, first of all, each other. Finding each other not as fellow kings to be treated as enemy or ally, not coming together to create a king consortium or to arrive at a Kingdoms of the East Free Trade Agreement (KEFTA), but instead discovering one another as people in search of …well, something. I imagine—and maybe this is a romantic reading in to the story—but I imagine the kings finding each other in way that we humans too seldom find each other, not as customers, clients, colleagues, or collaborators but as common seekers after love and meaning, stripped of all our costumes and disguises. Before they ever arrived at Jesus’ side, the mysterious invitation of Christ through a star had stripped the kings of the roles, which burdened them.
And then when they finally arrived at the side of the child where the star had led them they were able to complete the process, which had already begun. They were able to lay down the burdens they carried, the trappings of their power and privilege, the signs of their competence and control, the tools of their trades. It was not so much to extol Jesus that they laid down their crowns at his feet. It was not so much to proclaim him king or god, but to lighten their own load, that they laid their gifts beside Jesus. He gave them, even in his infancy, an invitation to lay down whatever had been weighing them down, an invitation to be free. That’s more the way I hear the story now.
Somewhere I ran across a piece where the writer was making a distinction between our daytime selves and our nighttime selves. We are our daytime selves when we are doing our best to be competent and in control. We are our daytime selves when we are doing our best to be productive, efficient, and strong. This is our no-chink-in-the-armor self, or at least our coping self, our just-trying-to-keep-it-all-together self. Our nighttime self is that person we might allow ourselves to be after we have stopped striving for the day, after we’re done with the phone, the e-mail, and the t.v., after we’ve stopped trying to be somebody…else. It was their daytime selves that the kings deposited on the floor around Jesus. It was their nighttime selves that had an encounter with the holy one. It was not so much that they traveled a long way and then found god. It was that in the midst of their travels they had an encounter with a holy presence who told them that it was safe to lay their burdens down, to forget “who they were”, to sit and rest, and weep, and laugh for no reason, and think, and pray, and stare at the stars, and be wrapped in wonder.
In the language I’m using today, I think more in terms not so much of our daytime and nighttime selves but of our weekday and Sabbath selves. And what I’m thinking is that I need to make more space in my life for my Sabbath self. Somewhere I once saw a philosophical one-liner. It said: “For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.” While that may not be adequate as a complete philosophy of life, it has a kernel of truth that’s worth hearing.
For some of us Christmas may in fact provide a Sabbath time when we make some space and take some time for our Sabbath selves. But whether it in fact is or isn’t, the coming of Christ does invite us, I believe, to let go of what burdens us. It invites us to an encounter with the mystery that is at life’s center. It invites us to pay attention to our nighttime, our Sabbath selves.
Not that there is anything wrong with being competent, with striving for all the good things we may choose to strive for, or with coping with whatever in our lives needs to be coped with. That is the meaning of Sabbath, not just to rest from our labors but to rest in order to return to our labors. Still, may we seek the Christ, not only to discover who he may be for us, but also to discover that part of ourselves, and that part of others, that is valuable not because of our usefulness to someone or something but just because of the holiness at the core not just of Christ’s being but of our own.
And may we also seek to discover something else as well: in a world of failed striving and broken dreams, in a world of false promises and phony visions of happiness, in a world deeply and sorrowfully divided between rich and poor where peace seems a very distant dream and both poverty and privilege weigh heavily upon us, in this very world that God nevertheless makes her dwelling place, may we find within that world and within this life a grace that comes when full healing in any nearby sense is not possible. May we find a peace that passes understanding, not at the end of our journeys but in the midst of them, not because we have arrived at the reign of God but because by the grace of God, we are on the way. May we each in our own way discover that peace to which Christ invites us. A blessed Christmas to all. Amen.
Jim Bundy
December 23, 2001