January 4, 2009
Epiphany
Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe
--
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
* * *
Wise men. The Other. The one who is outside of the familiarity of our experiences. The one who is defined by the unknown and foreignness from us.
Judea under the Roman military occupation was a harsh place to live for the local inhabitants. Other than those who were part of the political and religious systems of power, life in Judea was a life under siege, a life of poverty and threat. There was a palpable sense of fear and hatred against foreigners, especially those who represented the Roman Empire. There was a sense of a clear and present danger experienced by all colonials living under the Roman military might. The history of the people of Israel, after all, was a continuing saga of military defeats, revolts against the foreign occupying army, and mass exiles. Fear of the Other, for those in Judea in Mary’s time, was deeply rooted in their life and the lives of their ancestors.
It is difficult to trust strangers and foreigners when much of your life and much of your nation’s history of relating with foreigners resulted in conflicts, war, and subjugation. Why would you welcome strangers when you are afraid? Thus, King Herod was “frightened, and all Jerusalem with him” when they heard of the news of the new born king of the Jews. An impending Roman Emperor’s edict to replace Herod? A possible coup d’état? Images of violence and mayhem pierced through the imaginations of the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Fear was the primary response at the news of the birth of Jesus in Jerusalem – a city that was the centre of the religious and the political universe of the people of Israel. Offerings of gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh was the response from those from the East, those considered the Other, who recognized the child Jesus as a “ruler who is to shepherd people of Israel.”
Fear of “the Other,” is not unique to our time. Xenophobia – fear of those from other nations – seems to be a constant in human history. Current attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military and the counter attacks on Israel by the Palestinians is current example of fear of the Other. Another example of an extreme form of Xenophobia is the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 where close to 1 million Tutsis were murdered by Hutu militia.
Racial cleansing and genocide – atrocities stemming from fear of the Other – do not usually happen between two ethnically unrelated groups living far away from each other.
Underlying the differences and accentuating the otherness of one’s neighbours often results in violence and war. What is really sad and ironic is that the neighbours who label each other as the Other often share more in common than differences. Emphasizing the Otherness often happens between two racial ethnic groups who share very close, if not the identical, racial ethnic heritage and homeland.
Palestinians and Israelis, most of them, are closely related to one another in terms of ethnicity. Tutsis and Hutus have been intermingling for more than 600 years and the physical differences of the two groups are more arbitrary than scientific. And yet, there seems to be no end to violence based on the fear of the Other in the world when in fact those we often level as the Other are our neighbours and blood relations.
Seen through the lens of fear, the whole earth is inhabited by the Other for one to be afraid of and to despise. Seen through the lens of fear, the entire earth community is nothing but a wasteland where everyone experiences being a stranger in a strange land.
My first real experience of the Other was when I moved in 1967 from a city to a small village near a de-militarized zone that divides Korea into two nations. Although I was used to moves as a child of a military officer, it was the first time I was conscious of heartache in saying “good-bye” to my friends and classmates. I was 7 years old. By then I was getting used to living in the same place for more than three years and having friends. I was getting used to my neighbourhood – the streets, houses and stores along the way to school. And then we moved.
It was the first time I understood what geographical distance meant. Besides the heartache of losing friends, moving from the urban capital city of Seoul to a remote village in the countryside was a shock. The small village was made up of farmers. The entire population of the town was less than 100.
My new home – a house with mud walls and a thatched roof – was in a village that was surrounded by rice paddies and mountains. There was no electricity outside the army base. No neon signs. No brick houses. No buildings higher than a storey tall. No pavement and no asphalt covered streets. There were no cars other than military vehicles and buses that came once or twice a day depending on the conditions of the buses. People walked or rode on a cart pulled by a cow.
Farming was done manually using wooden ploughs tied to cows. A very selected few folks in the village used small tractors they pushed with hands. There was, I think, a market set up once or a twice a month. And once a year, after harvest time, a theatre company will come to town and set up the moving pictures inside a large tent. Night meant the Milky Way strewn in the sky. Day meant experiencing nature at its natural state transformed by just a bit by farming.
I was a stranger in a strange land. I was an outsider – a city kid of an army officer. I was a stranger to my school mates as they were to me. It was my first real conscious experience of being the Other. It was the first time in my life experiencing being with people in close proximity and yet not really feeling part of their life or community.
Gospel writer Matthew recorded that it was the strangers, foreigners from the East of Judea, who searched out and paid homage to the child Jesus as the King of Jews. This is a story from their experience of the Other. It was these wise ones from afar who recognized Jesus as the King of Jews and joyfully offered gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. It was the Other who were messengers of the good tidings that the Messiah, a ruler who will shepherd people of Israel, was born as Mary’s child Jesus in Bethlehem.
People of Israel experienced how God often chose strangers and foreigners as messengers to help them. Rahab was a foreigner who recognized God of Israel as the God and helped Joshua and his people to “settle” in Canaan – the land they believed God promised to their ancestors. King of Cyrus of Persia – Cyrus the Great – was another whose spirit God “stirred up so he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom” to declare the end of the Babylonian captivity of the people of Israel. [Ezra 1:1-4]
People of Judea in Mary and Jesus’ time understood that foreigners and strangers, the Other, were often messengers and actors of God’s salvation. They understood that God also called prophets and leaders outside their own racial ethnic communities. They understood that God’s salvation transcends narrowly defined racial ethnic boundaries.
The wise ones from the East, people who were the Other, followed the star and found the Messiah in the child Jesus, while those in Jerusalem, those who were Jesus’ kinfolk, were trembling in fear of the news of his birth.
A collection of reflections of Ryszard Kapuściński, a celebrated foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, recently published a book entitled The Other. Kapuściński shares his insights on the Other garnered from a lifetime of travel and encounters as a journalist with people in Africa, Asia and Latin Africa.
There are three things Kapuściński shared on Herodotus – a Greek historian in the 5th century who is regarded as the “Father of History” – that captured my attention:
“All people are different and it’s natural that each (cultural group of) people to think its own ways are best.”[i]
“Herodotus wanted to know (the Others) because he understood that to know ourselves we have to know Others, who act as the mirror in which we see ourselves reflected; he knew that to understand ourselves better we have to understand Others, to compare ourselves with them, to measure ourselves against them.” [ii]
“Xenophobia, Herodotus implied, is a sickness of people who are scared, suffering an inferiority complex, terrified by the prospect of seeing themselves in the mirror of the culture of Others.”[iii]
Kapuściński’s ideas are strongly influenced by Emmanuel Lévinas, a French philosopher, whose experience as a Jew in Eastern Europe and later in France heavily influenced his philosophy that “The self is only possible through the recognition of the Other.”[iv] Kapuściński asserts that “‘genuine’ individualism – the recognition of selfhood – can only be brought about by contact with and recognition of the Other, the being who is external to oneself and yet a reflection of oneself.”[v] For him, knowing oneself comes from knowing the Other.
A faith community is no exception to Herodotean assessment: that each community is different and that each community thinks its own ways are best. There is a strong tendency to act out a belief that one’s own faith group or a congregation is the best. I often found it strange that a faith group – a community that is formed for nurturing transformation – is often the most resistant group to change itself. It is also painful to see people around the global communities use religious beliefs as weapons to label their neighbours as the Other and wage war with one another rather than seeking to find commonalities so all can live in harmony.
Wise men left their home – a familiar place and a place of belonging – to search for the Messiah. They answered the call from God and followed the star of their passion and found the place of homage and of God’s presence. Perhaps those wise men were wise because of the risk they took to seek the Promised One by leaving everything that was familiar to them.
I wonder what that homage would mean for those of us here. How would we seek and search for God’s presence in our neighbourhood? Or in another land? How would we recognize Jesus in our life?
What about Mary? How do we learn to be like Mary whose faith and wisdom helped her to receive and accept the gifts of wise ones from the East – strangers and foreigners – who proclaimed her child as the Messiah? How do we recognize the gifts of strangers – gifts of the Other – who help us to fully know who we are in our encounters and interactions with them? How do we learn to receive from the neighbours we encounter in our ministry together?
It is not too often we get to experience deep connections with those we encounter in life. Perhaps it is because we are too afraid of strangers. Perhaps it is because we are too afraid of seeing who we might be in the eyes of the others. Perhaps it is because we do not really believe that we can connect with others and be heard.
I met many people throughout my life. My encounters with people in the remote village in South Korea helped me to understand my relation to nature and the beauty of God’s creation. My encounters with people of different faith communities helped me to deepen and widen my understanding and experience of God. My encounters with strangers who became my friends helped me to nurture empathy, compassion and belonging. But those I felt the deepest connections to were the ones who treated me with kindness and compassion; who helped me to see who I am by opening themselves to me; connections where I experienced knowing that I was understood. These are the connections that nurtured me as a human being and a fellow sojourner in God’s Creation.
The story of the wise men from the East and their encounter with Mary and her child Jesus tells of how God’s grace transcends the lines that divide human community into groups of the Other. The story of the encounter helps us to understand how our daily encounters could help us know more about who we are in relation to God and to our neighbours. It is about deep connections amongst strangers who became part of God’s community through their encounters.
May we continue to seek out the Other and discover who we are. May we be the Other and be the mirror to those searching for God’s presence.
Amen.
--
[i] Ryszard Kapuściński, Intro. By Neal Ascherson, The Other (London: Verso, 2008), 4.
[ii] The Other, 19.
[iii] The Other, 19.
[iv] The Other, 4-5.
[v] The Other, 8.
No comments:
Post a Comment