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Well, there goes the neighborhood!

Can you picture the cast of characters assembled at one time or another around the birth of Christ?

Jewish mother. Jewish husband. Jewish shepherds, keeping watch over Jewish sheep in Jewish fields on a dark Jewish night, summoned to the Jewish town of Bethlehem by Jewish angels singing in the Jewish sky to welcome the Jewish Messiah predicted by Jewish prophets on page after page of the Jewish scriptures. Do you get the picture? It is a perfect Jewish Christmas!

Until the magi show up!

And there goes the neighborhood!

I mean, these are magi after all!

Not kings. That’s a legend. Not wise men either. And not three of them. That was just a number pulled out of the air by some well-meaning Christian some years later who figured that if Matthew’s Gospel mentioned three gifts – gold, frankincense and myrrh – then there had to have been three magi.

Not kings. Not wise men. Some undisclosed number of magi!

And there goes the neighborhood!

Because magi just do not belong in the perfect Jewish Christmas!

To understand this, you must remember that these magi are from the east! Now, when the Bible tells us this, it is not so much interested in letting us know what geographic direction they came from as it is in pointing out what religious and geopolitical significance they have! The magi are from the east – the place of Israel’s historic enemies. Do you remember how the Babylonians utterly conquered the nation in 597 BC? Well, the Jewish people remembered. It was indelibly printed in their collective memory how the armies from the east had swept into their land, reducing Jerusalem to rubble, cutting down all the trees, even burning the stumps so the city would never be rebuilt again, and dragging the people off into captivity.

The east represents Israel’s worst enemy and Israel’s worst national nightmare!

And who were the magi? Well, they were the caste of priests whose religion drove the Babylonian empire way over there, in the east! This was the religion that built up and supported the war against Israel. And even after the Babylonian dominance of the region faded, the cult of the magi – with their strange religious practices – continued on in various places throughout the EAST!

No wonder the Hebrew prophets railed against Jewish people associating with people from the east, warning them of the wrath of God against taking up the practices of magic and astrology and death rituals that were the religion of…THE MAGI!

Jewish mother. Jewish husband. Jewish shepherds. Jewish angels. Jewish prophets. Jewish town. Jewish baby born to be the Jewish Messiah. A perfectly Jewish picture!

And who shows up?

MAGI  .from…the EAST!

There goes the neighborhood!

And yet, we are told it was God who led the magi right to the doorstep of this perfect Jewish Christmas!

The story tells us God hung a star in the sky! And the magi followed the star all the way to Bethlehem!

We Christians observe this Christmas encounter with the magi with a feast day on the 12th day after Christmas, which was yesterday. We call it the Epiphany. Epiphany is a word that means manifestation or revelation, for in the inclusion of these magi from the east in the story of the perfect Jewish Christmas, we learn that God’s love revealed in Christ is not only for Jewish mothers, Jewish husbands, Jewish shepherds, and the Jewish people. God’s love is for EVERYONE – including MAGI FROM THE EAST – the most feared and distant people of all! Jesus came to save not just one group of people, but ALL people.

God loves the world!

And if that’s true, then we can definitely say, “There goes the neighborhood!” Because, you see, with the magi’s inclusion in the Jesus story, this is not the same old Judaism it used to be. In the coming of Jesus, the world receives a brand new faith! Judaism is no longer big enough to contain it! The old time Jewish religion that was good enough for savta (grandma) and saba (grandpa) is no longer adequate. A new faith has come!

Later in his life, Jesus will put it this way: “You can’t put new wine into old wineskins. The old wineskins will burst. So you have to make new wineskins for new wine.”

That’s just another way of saying that Jesus brings into the world a new faith that cannot be supported by the old time religion. Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men, and later, even the disciples of Jesus, all found it necessary to let go of many of their long-held religious convictions in order to embrace the new faith of Jesus.

And just as it was true for them, it is also true for you and me!

What would you think if I were to say today that even the Christian religion is not big enough to contain the new faith of Jesus? I know that may sound rather strange to your ears, but history shows it to be true.

For instance, in the earliest days of Christianity, there was a raging debate about whether non-Jews could be baptized as Christians. These first Christians had to convene a big convention in Jerusalem to settle the question. The traditionalists argued that the scriptures were clear about this – the promises of God are for the descendants of Abraham only! They cited the passages that proved it to be so!

But there were non-traditionalists in the crowd, too. And one of them – a radical young preacher by the name of Peter – stood up and said he saw it differently. In his ministry, Peter was witnessing Gentiles coming to the faith of Jesus and following the Lord. The Holy Spirit was being poured out on them, and their lives were overflowing with Christian love. How can such people be denied baptism, Peter asked? And then someone in the crowd who was an expert in the scriptures remembered that – along with passages that seem to exclude Gentiles – there are other passages that include them!

You see, this is the problem with people who like to go around quoting scripture. They never quote it all. They leave a lot of it out.  And what the traditionalists left out at that Jerusalem convention were things like the story of Ruth – the non-Jewish Moabite great-grandmother of King David. The Jewish nation was partly born through the womb of a Gentile woman! And not only that, but this Gentile great-grandmother of King David meant that Ruth is also the great, great, great, great, great something-or-another grandmother of JESUS HIMSELF!

The Messiah’s own lineage includes Jews AND Gentiles!

So St. Peter and the other radicals prevailed that day. Gentiles were welcomed into the Christian Church.

And there went the old neighborhood!

The old wineskin of that day had to be replaced by a new Christian religion that could accommodate the explosive new wine of the faith of Jesus, which – the young Church was starting to learn – welcomes EVERYONE into the love of God.

And the same new wineskin-making has been true ever since. The Christian religion at any time in history has been found to be too small for the explosive and expansive faith of Jesus and has been forced to change.

About a thousand years ago, Christian armies swept into the middle east to reclaim the Holy Land from the surging population of Muslims who claimed it as their own sacred territory. Millions of Muslim people – including women and children – were killed by the invading Crusaders. And the memory of those Crusades is a part of the anger that fuels the fire of radical Islam today.

The Crusades were a part of the Christian religion of the day. But let me ask you, “Is it the faith of today? And even more importantly, is it the faith you see in Jesus?”

In the early days of America, slavery was practiced in this country, and it was supported and enforced by a Christian religion that held that slavery was a divinely appointed institution of God. After all, there are passages in the Bible that say so!

It was the Christian religion of the day. But let me ask you, “Is it the faith of today? And more importantly, is it the faith you see in Jesus?”

In 1998, the late John Shelby Spong – the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark – picked up this theme of a constantly changing Christianity. He wrote a controversial book called, “Why Christianity Must Change, Or Die.” The book caused quite a stir! The idea of Christianity having to change seemed to many to be akin to giving up everything we believe in! To some, this was sheer betrayal!

And yet, ever since the day the magi from the east showed up in Bethlehem of Judea, the religion of our mothers and fathers has had to change…or die. To have a Christianity that excludes Gentiles, or that murders innocent people because they belong to a different religion, or that embraces slavery as the will of God, or that opposes scientific inquiry if it contradicts the Bible, or that oppresses women, or abuses children, or heaps guilt on people, or justifies war, or ignores poverty, or that claims to be the sole possessor of all truth under penalty of eternal death to all who disagree is to have a Christianity that is a long, long ways away from the faith of Jesus.

So to follow Jesus, you have find a new kind of faith that dares to challenge your religion – no matter what religion it is!

What would such a new faith look like today?

Well, first it would look like Jesus!

I am amazed at how many people there are who claim to have a biblical religion, and yet their religion does not even remotely resemble Jesus. One of my Associates told me once about a leading fundamentalist who he heard preach that what the church needs today is more Bible and less Jesus! Can you imagine that? What he was getting at is that Jesus tends to be loving, accepting, and affirming of the beauty and value of peoples’ lives. Jesus is just too loving! Jesus is just too soft! But the Bible, in various places, gives the impression that God is ticked off with the world and ready to blow it up! So you’d better straighten out, pal! Lots of people have a faith with more Bible in it than Jesus. Do you?

Many Christians once said that AIDS is God’s punishment poured out on homosexual people. Many voices claimed that the terrorist attack on September 11th was the result of God’s anger at our nation for various offenses ranging from removing prayer from public school, to teaching the theory of evolution, and even to letting women wear pants and work outside the home.

Well, there may be a lot of Bible in all that, but is this the faith we see in Jesus? And is this really the kind of faith that will make the world a better place?

Let Jesus become the central focus of your faith. Let Jesus be the filter through which you interpret the Bible. Let Jesus be the standard by which you measure religious ideas. Let Jesus be the role-model you use to determine how loving, forgiving and accepting of others you should be. The new faith for this new day will look like Jesus!

Another thing this new faith will look like is that manger scene in Bethlehem. What a funky crowd of people were assembled there! Shepherds! Magi! Mary! Joseph! That’s sort of like bringing together a bunch Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists, along with some Jews, Muslims and people who don’t even know what religious brand they are (if any). You see the whole message of the Epiphany experience is that God’s love in Christ crosses every border, passes through every division and every distinction, and assembles human beings for the purpose of taking care of children!

I mean, that’s WHY God led them to Bethlehem – to take care of the baby!

And if you and I are going to take care of the children of this world, we’re going to have to find ways to get together with people who are very different from us in every way but this – they love their children, too.

When one of our church members was growing up in Clinton, Tennessee, the courts ordered integration of the city’s schools. The Klan showed up to stop it. So the Baptist minister and other caring adults took the hands of the black children and walked them to school. That minister later was beat up pretty badly for his efforts. But that inspired others to step forward. Our member’s father and a number of other people who cared about the children of the city – the white children AND the black children – got themselves elected into public office to make sure the city remained committed to racial equality.

The children of this world need us to step beyond the walls of our individual religions to find a common faith that will make the world better for them. Look at who God gathered that day long ago to care for the baby Jesus! Let your new faith look something like that!

And then one more thing. The new faith of Jesus has one law, and one law only. Love your neighbor as yourself. I know this sounds too simple, especially to those of you who got addicted to theology and can’t accept a truth without dividing it down into a thousand parts that renders it meaningless.

But this is the law that Jesus said supercedes all other laws! The faith of Jesus is not complicated! It is as simple as loving your neighbor! For loving your neighbor is how God wants you to express your love toward Him. When you love your neighbor, you are loving God, and that fulfills the Great Commandment, and all the other commandments, too.

You see, if you immerse yourself in a religion that’s full of woulda’s, coulda’s and shoulda’s – laws and precepts, sub-laws and sub-precepts – complex theology, principles and doctrines – you’ll find it easy to find some religious reason why you should exclude some people from your life, and from God’s love! You’ll find reason after reason to construct walls dividing you from the rest of the world! You’ll build yourself a nice little religious neighborhood, and give it a fancy religious name, and fight as hard as you can to keep other people out.

Especially people like the magi!

But when you drop all that religious mumbo-jumbo and take up “love your neighbor as yourself”, there’s only one thing you can do when magi from the east show up at your door.

You have to open it, and welcome them with the love of God in Jesus Christ.

And when you live that way, there goes the neighborhood! The old time religion begins to fall apart. But what emerges in its place is a new world in which the children of God become brothers and sisters, and together with a God whose will is to transform this world of ours into a place of hope and peace and love and life, we march on toward the kingdom of heaven.

That’s the neighborhood I want. What about you?