O God of wonder, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

      To celebrate my ordination, my brother and sister-in-law gave me a framed print that says, “Three wise women would have asked for directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, brought practical gifts, and there would be peace on earth.” I thought of it as I was sifting through various commentaries on this Gospel text when I came across one by Dr. Letty Russell. Russell was one of the world's foremost feminist theologians and a longtime member of the Yale Divinity School faculty. In her commentary, she challenged her readers to “read against the grain of patriarchal assumptions, looking between the cracks of the story for the wise women who are bearing gifts for the Christ Child.” So I wanted to go back and look at the patriarchal assumptions and look between the cracks of the story – and I thought I’d take you with me for a brief tour.

      The first glaring patriarchal assumption has to do with the folks who came from the East asking about the location of the child. Our Bible translation renders “magoi,” (or magi) wise men. Our religious tradition translation renders them three kings. But the scripture text says nothing about kings, nothing about three, nothing about wise, indeed nothing about men. It’s not that translating magi as wise men is absolutely wrong, it’s just that there are about a dozen other acceptable translation possibilities s. Such as: members of a tribe from Persia or Babylon who were magicians, sorcerers, astrologers, priests, experts in the occult and the interpretation of dreams, enchanters, wizards, even jugglers or imposters (if you use the word in an insulting way).  The word is plural -- there were two or more of them. So looking between the cracks of the story, there’s no reason that I can find not to imagine women in the group of visitors who were looking for the Christ child.

      The next patriarchal assumption in the story is Herod’s. He was the King of the Jews when the visitors from the East asked a question that sets all his alarm bells jangling. If a child has been born to be King of the Jews, he assumes that this is a direct challenge to his own Kingship. A patriarchal assumption is that there can’t be two at the top. So Herod feels very afraid; presumably he likes being at the top, or he needs to stay at the top. His primary focus is on himself, on the threat he perceives, and on his need to control the situation. He says he wants to pay homage to the child, but what he really wants to do is annihilate that which scares him. When he realizes that his first plan to locate and kill the child king hasn’t worked, he’s willing to commit mass murder just to be on “the safe side.” Of course that doesn’t work either. It never does.

      It doesn’t seem to ever occur to Herod that the strongest, most enduring power is shared – that it’s mutual, collaborative and compassionate. Looking between the cracks, we see “the child with Mary his mother.” Mary doesn’t get any speaking parts at all in Matthew’s Gospel. But looking between the cracks, I can imagine that Mary and Joseph taught Jesus a lot of what he knew about living a life that is responsive to God’s love. Knowing that he was God’s beloved and teaching everyone he encountered that they were also God’s beloved became Jesus’ life work.

      There are many layers of patriarchal assumptions here, but three are enough for now, so the last one I’ll draw your attention to is the assumption that worship – or paying homage – is the ideal response to finding Jesus. The visitors from the East search for the child so that they can pay him homage and in fact, that’s what they do. They bow down to honor him. They open their treasury and give him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. That seems to our ears like the climax of the story – treasure! Indeed in our crèche scenes and Christmas cards, we often see the exotic visitors from Matthew’s Gospel story mingling with the crowd of shepherds and angels from Luke’s Gospel story. The next line in Matthew generally doesn’t even get included in Christmas pageant scripts. It’s hard to stage for one thing.

      But I want to suggest that the climax of this story is the next line. It is that “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road” – or by another way. Looking through the cracks we see that this is the amazing conclusion. The foreigners had gone directly to the big boss king when they arrived in Jerusalem. They made an agreement to give him the information he wanted. They were complying with the protocol of the patriarchy. But having experienced the joy of finding the Christ child and being warned in a dream, they changed their way. They went back on their word of honor. They didn’t keep their commitment to King Herod. I imagine that this involved considerable risk. Herod didn’t only murder babies. He murdered his own wife and three of his sons when he suspected that they weren’t loyal to him. So going home by another road meant putting their lives on the line.

      This is actually a recurring theme in Matthew’s Gospel. “For [in the Gospel of] Matthew, the ideal response to divine activity is repentance.... Jesus never upbraids people for failing to worship or give thanks in this Gospel, but he does upbraid those who have witnessed his mighty works and not repented.”(1) Repentance implies a change of mind – a change of way – the same word that is translated “road” here, gets translated “way” in other places in this Gospel – as in the way through the narrow gate that is hard and that leads to life (7:13-14), as in the way of righteousness which requires changing one’s mind (21:32), changing one’s heart.

      So today I want to challenge us to always read scripture against the grain of patriarchal assumptions and to look between the cracks of the stories. Look in the spaces between words and between lines. Always look for the women who aren’t given speaking parts, for the women who aren’t named, for the women who aren’t even mentioned. And I want to challenge us to look all around and between the cracks of our own stories and recognize God’s beloved – especially in those who have less far power than we have. I want to challenge us to look and see that we, too, are God’s beloved – each one of us is God’s beloved. And I want to challenge us to go home by another way today – to change our minds and our hearts – so that, as St. Paul writes earlier in Ephesians, “with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which God has called us, [we may know] what are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance” and so that we might share those riches.

      Doing that just might create an epiphany – a sudden realization of meaning about the essence of reality. You know, maybe this is so obvious it’s not worth mentioning, but it occurred to me that a remarkable star is something that is visible to almost everyone. And yet, the story is not about large crowds that came from the East – or even large crowds calling on the child Jesus and his parents from the surrounding territory. So I wonder –– did no one else notice this star?