The Other Christmas Story

Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12: Matthew’s Christmas story is the story of two different human communities: Jerusalem, the big city center of the elite, and Bethlehem, with its rural peasants.   In 2019, you don’t have to be from the country to be marginalized, and you don’t have to be from a big city to be arrogant.  So for us, it’s less about urban verses rural, and more about world view.  It is still a choice between two stories.  A choice between the story that leads to death and darkness, and a story that leads to light and life. Political powers still claim to be our savior, our redeemer, and our lord.  This is truly fake news in the worst sense of the word, and it is precisely how political power tempts us.  It is also what the followers of Jesus reject, for if Jesus is Lord, Caesar and Herod are not