Baxter doesn’t have problems with visitors. When someone comes into the rectory for whatever reason, Baxter comes out to greet him or her. He sniffs around a little, rubs against them if he can, and then looks longingly, hoping they are a source for another meal or at least an added treat for the day. He is very different than my previous cat. She would make a bee-line for the basement as soon as someone stepped beyond the threshold. She was a one person cat, and everyone else was regarded as a threat to be avoided. I think she had a bad experience with a stranger before I took her in, and she couldn’t get over it, even though she was safe and protected in my care. Baxter has been sheltered from such threats, and so he thinks everyone who comes his way wants to make him happy, which in his world means, FEED ME!
The Epiphany, especially in the Western tradition of our church, is about Jesus meeting some strangers in the story of the Magi. These characters were not part of the household of God as it was drawn in the Jewish tradition. They were gentiles—people from far lands with strange dress, customs and different religions. They probably spoke a different language and ate different foods and dressed differently. They started out on a dangerous journey without a set destination. They didn’t fit with the people of first century Israel, but they ended up there because that is where their quest led them. They saw a new star, an omen of something new and promising arising for them and they followed it. They ended up at the place of the Christ Child offering what they had as gifts to honor Him.
With the tragic events in the news the last few weeks, we are perhaps even more suspicious of strangers than we tend to be in the normal course of things. What are they concealing? Why don’t they act, talk, look and live a life style like ours? Is their strangeness a sign of their unstable and sinister character? How do we rid ourselves of these strangers who threaten our peace and security?
The Epiphany story warns us to be careful in answering these questions and the suspicions they raise. Don’t come to easy and quick conclusions. Be alert, but don’t reject people who are different just because they are different. Be fair to the stranger. Treat him or her by the same rules that we use to keep order and safety among us all. Most of the destructive persons who have brought heartache and death in the recent tragedies were part of our neighborhoods, went to our schools, played with our children, worked in our communities. They were not strangers, but loners, without hope for a new and promising future, driven to make their mark and gain notoriety by taking life rather than giving it.
Maybe that is our first clue on how to create a secure environment for ourselves. We need to protect, uphold, enhance and contribute to each other’s life from the womb to the tomb. Rather than push another's life aside to get ahead, eliminate it for our convenience, destroy it for our safety, or conquer it for our financial or national interests, we bring to others what we have to offer and hope they will take it into their own lives as a gift. This is the difference that marked the Magi from Herod. Many holy innocents died because Herod felt threatened by the newborn king whom he didn’t understand. But the Magi’s quest for the promise of a better life and their gifts to the author of life live on each year as we celebrate the Epiphany. Herod created a tragedy, but the Magi won a triumph for the human spirit’s search for God. Strangers opened the door for the incarnate God to show Himself anew, born not just for the chosen few but choosing all to be born again in Christ.
