You may have heard me say, “consistency” is my favorite word. Don MacKay used to tell me, “I like you. I just wish you didn’t over think everything.” He was, of course, correct. Guilty as charged. I would suggest, in my own defense, I wish people tried harder to be consistent, to think more about what they say and do. Without fail, when I am speaking, acting, feeling, I am immediately thrust into the mindset, “am I being consistent?” If not, and I do often fail my own test, I immediately offer a confession to my conversation partner, “I know I am saying this but there are exceptions, and I live those too.” Confusion usually greets these streams of consciousness.
One area of inconsistency I often hear in conversations goes like this, “I am a sensitive person, I am easily hurt by slights, I need to know others value me.” And then, sometimes in the same conversation, “Those people sort of deserve what they get, after all, have you seen how they live, how they dress, how they look?” When someone who tells me how sensitive they are offers insensitive comments about others, comments that would devastate them were they directed their way, I am perplexed. Sometimes, I will remind the person of this inconsistency.
For me this is a theological question, a political question, as much as a social or psychological one. At core, if either you believe God shines God’s light on others as God shines God’s light on you, or you don’t. Either you believe everyone in this jurisdiction is afforded the same consideration as you, or you don’t. Sure, we middle class folks can dress this up as one of “fairness” but let’s be clear, some of us start this fairness text at Homeplate, and some at second base, third base (to use a sports metaphor). If you overlook your privilege, you can imagine we all started out in the same place. But reality is something different. And what’s even more perplexing, how we can use the exceptions for our children and relations that we would deny to others. I believe consistency is an excellent tool to remain humble.
In his commentary on Matthew, theologian and author Stanley Hauerwas observes that sentimentality is one of the greatest enemies of understanding the gospel, especially the Christmas story and the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. What parent hasn't gushed with pride watching his child play the part of a shepherd in a bathrobe or an angel with a coat hanger halo? The Gospel for this week disabuses us of all such Hallmark readings of the Bible. The story of the pagan magi worshipping Jesus ends in carnage when king Herod slaughters innocent children to strengthen his rule. This is an old story, retold many times in our own day, in which powers annihilate their opposition to protect their power; it's certainly not a story that you'd want to teach with a flannel graph in a children's Sunday school.
On January 6th western Christians celebrate Epiphany, which takes its name from the Greek word epiphaneia, meaning disclosure, manifestation, unveiling or appearance. At the simplest level, on Epiphany Christians commemorate the "appearance" of the magi from the east. The magi who traveled long and hard to worship Jesus with extravagant gifts remind us Jesus is not only a Jew; his Reign extends to all nations and peoples. In contrast to our propensity to privilege one ethnicity or people (usually "mine") over another, to view one's own people as exceptional to God and others as at best unexceptional, and to exclude other people who are different (usually "yours"), the pagans from Persia show that God welcomes the worship and the gifts of all people everywhere. This new reign of Jesus abolishes not only the barriers of nation, race and ethnicity. Jesus also transcends the boundaries of gender, religion, economics and class distinctions, for in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28); the magi were only the tip of a very big iceberg.
I have noticed a shift in our community approach to the “other” in these last ten years, a shift I find another example of being inconsistent. A decade ago, we welcomed new Canadians to our shores from Syria with sense that “they” were “we”, that what “we” craved by way of love, acceptance, affirmation, “they” did too. More recently, from foodbank clients to corporate executive, from the tables of Tim Hortons to the seats of Parliament and legislatures, I hear increasingly “us and them”. “If we are giving all these resources to those people, we won’t have enough for our own”. Tell me if you haven’t heard this. It’s inconsistent at a base level, by what metric does someone born to poverty, in a country torn apart by war and climate change, not deserve what we do, we who inherited this reality by the sheer luck of being born in Canada.
Now, I get it. We don’t have the resources to take all the world’s poor into our country. There are limits. There have always been limits. Sometimes we can’t do this because our resources are thin, our capacity compromised. I don’t think my progressive friends do themselves any favours by speaking as if abundance means unlimited means. Choices need to be made. Rather than speak of abundance vs. scarcity, I think we should ask, who is us and who is them? Are we who have enough prepared to make sacrifices for those who do not have enough? And if we believe “they” are “us”, do we really have a choice? Not as Christians. Not according to Jesus, who told the rich ruler, “Go and sell all you have give it to the poor” or “as you do this to the least of these, my family, you do it to me.”
Look around you now at the people next to you. Do you see Christ’s Light in them. Ponder the people you meet at places where you shop, eat, socialize. Many of them were not born here, you don’t know them, they don’t look like you, perhaps you struggle to understand them. Do you see Christ’s Light in them? And look also into your own heart. There in all of us is the Light. Maybe it is deeply hidden under confusions or falsenesses. But it is there, waiting to come forth anew. In the Christ Child this Light shines. Christ is our epiphany, our showing. In this story we see the Light of life.
The magi go beyond the boundaries of their homeland to find Light. Tragically we have often been given the impression that we have all the light we need, within our nation, within our religious tradition, within our cultural inheritance. But our Gospel story points to something radically different, that there is Light beyond our inherited boundaries, and that we need this Light, that it is given to complete the Light we have received, not to compete with the Light we have received. We need one another as nations and religions as much as the species of the Earth need one another to be whole.
Mary Oliver, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, in 'Six Recognitions of our Lord' writes of an epiphany moment. 'She says, 'I go back to…my own house, my own life, which has now become brighter and simpler, somewhere I have never been before.' I think the magi in returning home saw everything more brightly. The Light they had found in a distant land turned out to be the Light at the heart of their own land. But now they saw it as if for the first time. Shall we serve this Light together? Shall we bow to it in one another and every nation? It is the Light within all life.
And a prayer from Praying with the Earth:
May the angels of light glisten for us this day.
May the sparks of God's beauty dance in the eyes of those we love.
May the universe be on fire with presents for us this day.
May the new sun's rising grace us with gratitude.
Let earth's greenness shine and its waters writhe with spirit.
Let heaven's wind stir the soil of our soul and fresh awakenings arise within us.
May the mighty angels of light glisten in all things this day.
May they summon us to reverence.
May they call us to life.
Amen.