Foreign Magi Symbolized Community Innovation

 2 Christmas C January 5, 2025
Jeremiah 31:7-14 Ps
Eph. 1:3-6,15-19a Matthew 2:1-12

Lectionary Link

Plato's notion of perfection for the world of Forms was to be perfect is to be changeless.  How can something be perfect if it changed?  Such perfection may be but like a mathematical tautology, perfection by sheer definition.  Let's say for the purpose of this math problem, x = y.  Nothing can falsify such a perfection because of the prior definitional condition.  Let's now say for the purposes of humanity who live in a constantly changing world, where everything that we experience lives under the conditions of change, let's definitionally say that there is something outside the conditions of change which does not change; and let's call this changeless entity God.  And yet by stating within the conditions of change, that there is the Changeless One, can we guarantee that the perceptions about the Changeless One don't change?

Salvation history is about the changing human perceptions regarding the One who is supposed to be the Changeless Perfect One.

The famous Cardinal Newman, who had been an Anglican cleric in a church which said that the Roman Catholic Church had experienced too many changes after the apostolic age and the age of the Early Church Fathers, to be a reliable witness of the early pristine Christian Witness, came to convert to Catholic traditions of the Roman Church and their pieties by writing about doctrinal innovations within Catholicism with an ironic saying: "To be perfect is to have changed often."  But of course there had to be standards for valid innovations, like votes by Church Councils and Synods, and through papal statements, or innovation by the rules of church tradition.  Our modern world's notion of equal justice for all persons has come to challenge the church's limitation of participation and affirmation placed on people in past cultural settings.  Persons with faithful reasons have observed that ancient cultural social practices such as slavery and the subjugation of women seem to be enshrined in Scripture and traditional church practices, require innovation to practice what dignified love and justice means for all people.  Repentance means getting better, which means innovation or renewal is a constant work of God's Spirit.

The Bible records continuous innovation in the understanding of God.  The story of the Magi is used by the Gospel writer to assert the validity of perhaps the largest paradigm shift to happen in the communities which once were associated with the Temple and the synagogue.

The New Testament writes the validation of the innovation of admitting Gentiles into full participation in the communities which professed Jesus Christ as their Messiah.  To admit Gentiles into the Jesus Movement communities, there had to be significant innovations in community practices which had been embraced by people who were members of the synagogue and Temple-based Judaism.  Gentile followers of Jesus were not required to follow the dietary purity rules or the circumcision requirement of Judaism, as well as other practices associated with faith adherence to the rules of Judaism.

This major innovation as well as the innovation of a dynamic monotheism involving holding Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together as Godhead, resulted in the eventual separation of the Jesus Movement from the synagogue.  This innovation also allowed a different kind of evangelism for the diverse people of the Roman Empire who had to live with the supreme authority of the Emperor and in a society which had a Pantheon of deities which co-existed with the cult of the Emperor.

The Gospel writers believed that this insight of openness to the Gentiles was from the beginning of the life of Jesus.  Therefore, we can find that the story of Magi presages the coming to worship Jesus as the Christ by foreigners as at the heart of the founding of the Christian faith.

Before the Gospel of Matthew came to written form with an account of the Magi, St. Paul had written the Gentiles into the salvation timeline.  The Gentiles were part of the Abrahamic covenant and the Gentile followers of Jesus Christ were fulfillment of the Abrahamic faith achieving a greater universal acceptance because the followers of Jesus were freed from the strict ritual adherence which gave Jews their unique identity.

We can talk about a changeless God all we want, but the writings of the Bible trace the changing and unfolding perception of God by people of faith.  There are people today who like to think that the Bible is now the changeless perfection of God now in textual form, but we need to remember that we do not worship the Bible as textual perfection; we look to Christ as the eternal Word of God who became flesh in Jesus, and who still becomes flesh in us today as we seek to love God and our neighbors.

The application of Word being made flesh in the continual application of love and justice, means that we are always innovating.  We need not declare our efforts to love as being final or infallible; we but hope that they will inspire more love in the future, more innovative application of love into new occasions in peoples' lives.

Let us not try to pigeon-hole a changeless God into our changing efforts to make the eternal word and love of God actual in our life situations today.  Let us accept dynamism of the innovation of God's love and word today to draw wise foreigners to know that love as well.  Amen.