Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

December 9, 2007

Gold: A Gift for a King

Matthew 2:1-12

Do you know which of the Magi's gifts was the most expensive? Actually, it was myrrh. Pure myrrh, at least at that time, was worth more per ounce than gold. But myrrh you have to explain. Myrrh, you have to tell people, "Well, this is where they got it. This is what it was used for." Gold is a gift that needs no explanation. We all understand gold. Gold is the standard by which most things are judged. In the Olympics, the medal, one where the person who wins stands highest on the rostrum is what? It is not the myrrh medal; it is the gold medal.

In the history of currency, the standard by which currencies of the world have been judged is the gold standard. There are still some people who would like to say that economic problems, the value of the dollar, etc. would be solved if we would just go back to the gold standard.

In the Mid-East in the time of Christ, and in some places still today, gold was the defining line in culture, in society. A person worth knowing, a person worth being, a person that you would want to associate with, somewhere somehow had at least some gold. It might be a coin or coins or jewelry but the people worth knowing, the people worth being around, had gold.

Gold may not cost as much as myrrh but there never has been a myrrh standard for currency. There has never been a myrrh medal in the Olympics. There was no myrrh rush in 1849 to send people to California. There is no myrrh rule of relationships that says, "Treat others as you would want them to treat you." And there is no myrrh rule of power. There is nobody who says, "Those with the myrrh rules," do they? Nobody says that. The streets of heaven are not paved with myrrh but with gold. Gold needs no explanation. We all understand that gold is the high standard, that gold is the excellence, that gold is the ribbon you want, the medal you want, the star you want if you are in kindergarten, the star you want put by your name on the poster on the wall. We all want gold.

For 1500, 1600, 1700 years, people have been trying to unwrap the gifts of three Wise Men—I say three, again as I have said in past weeks, we don't really know how many. We say three because of the number of gifts but people have been trying to unwrap the gifts of the Wise Men and explain what they stand for symbolically. One interpretation, one understanding, that has stood the test of time is that gold is for kings. If you were called some place to visit a king or a queen or someone of royalty, you never go wrong taking a gift of gold.

In ancient Parthia, it was expected that if you went into the presence of a king that you would take gold with you. It's the right gift and no king would be offended if you brought gold. It reminds us that when the Wise Men brought gold to Christ that they were saying, "Here's a king."

Advent and Christmas are a celebration. Everybody has a Christmas tie or a Christmas sweater, Christmas decorations or something that we bring out at this time of year, Christmas recipes, certain sweet things or good things that we cook, bake, share, and give to other people. It's a time when we go out and want the perfect gift for folks that we love. Christmas is a time of great festivity. So much of it is involved in remembering that Christ was born, in remembering that the shepherds did leave their fields, in remembering that the Wise Men came from the East and worshipped at the manger. But it is more than that. It is more than remembering. For Christians, it is an annual time that comes back around, that circles back to us, in which we renew, in which we re-live, and for four weeks we anticipate anew that Christ's birth would be real in our lives. If the call, if the experience, if the relationship with Christ has, in some way, grown cold or in some way become a little too worn in its handling, this is the time of year when we want to feel it again. This is the time of year when we follow through the course of the events leading up to Christ's birth and we want to almost put ourselves in the story so that Christ's birth would come anew to us. We attend pageants to renew the vision. We come on Christmas Eve and light candles and sing Silent Night because we want to actually re-live what we were not there for, to re-live Christ's birth so that it is afresh and anew of what happened once happens to us again.

The story of the Wise Men and Herod is really a story about who sees that Jesus is king. There is a lot of irony in this story. We don't know exactly who the Wise Men, the Magi, were. We often associate them with Persia and places like that, but we do know that they were non-Jews, that they came from afar, and they were the ones to see who Jesus is.

Herod, and the Jews around him, were nearby and they missed the whole thing. So when the Wise Men come to Jerusalem and speak to Herod who is called a king and who sits on a throne, there is no record that they leave him anything. The record is that they leave him nothing. Jesus who is this infant in a manger, a food trough that animals eat from, in the tiny city of Bethlehem, they leave him everything.

If Christmas is a time for re-living, if it is a time for renewal and asking God to allow us to experience the birth of Christ again so that our faith is built up once more, so that our connection to Christ is made strong once more, then this is the time when we want to say that Jesus is king. The language is not past tense, not that he was born a king, not that he was a king or was king of kings, but that he is a king and that he is alive in the world today and that I come to worship Christ, the king. Do I really see that or, like Herod, am I too close to it and I miss it? Do I really see that it is something that continues or do I only see it as something that was?

A lot of times, I think, when we think about Jesus we sing about "King of kings and Lord of lords, from The Messiah and that great Hallelujah Chorus, we can all hum that cadence of that particular chorus. I think a lot of times what we really do is simply associate with the winner. This is the way, I guess, all humans are but we all want to be associated with the winner. If Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, what most of us would really like for this to mean is My faith trumps your faith. If you believe something else, particularly in the world today, we seem to feel like Christianity is pitted against Islam, we want to say, My faith trumps somebody else's faith. If you don't believe in Christ, here it is: King of kings and Lord of lords. Mine is over yours. We primarily think of this only with some sort of pride to say, My faith wins.

But what if Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords? If I am re-living that experience this time of year, then what gift do I bring to Christ? What gift is golden? What gift is fitting for the Christ who was born in Bethlehem and still reigns over the world today? What gift is golden? If I want to be a part of the story and if I want to experience it afresh, and if I couldn't be there on the first Christmas Eve, as I experience this Christmas, and I put myself in the position of the Magi, what gift is golden? What gift do I give to Christ, and not in pretend—this isn't make believe—this isn't like, Oh, let's pretend like we were there, but if Christ is alive and King of kings, what gift in the re-living of this is golden?

It would be really easy to go around the room and everybody would probably have something a little bit different. This would be my golden gift. Let me offer just a couple of suggestions. There is nothing in the text that says these things, but let me just say, if Christ is King, then a golden gift of mine to Christ would be obedience. It's very easy to say that Jesus Christ is Lord, but if Christ is Lord, if Christ is King, then that makes me a servant, doesn't it? If Jesus is my Lord, I have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord, then that makes me a servant. A golden gift would be the gift of my obedience. Servants obey their master and if Christ says, "Forgive," then I need to forgive. If Christ says, Love your enemies," than I need to love my enemies. If Christ says, "Visit the imprisoned and minister to the hungry," then I need to obey what Christ tells me. That would be a golden gift.

Another gift, it seems to me, would be my effort. Whenever a new administration, a new president, comes into office, they always talk about, "The agenda of this administration will be . . ." Every time someone comes to power in politics, they have a political agenda. They have something that they want to see accomplished. "In the first 100 days, we are going to pass legislation . . . ." The kingdom of God has an agenda. Christ has an agenda and that is to see people set free from the power of sin, to see people know that they have been forgiven and come to peace with God. If that is truly what the agenda of the kingdom of God is about, then a golden gift for me would be to give my effort to try to help people in the world know this.

This is one of the reasons why we emphasize missions at this time of year. For a hundred years or more, Baptists have used the Christmas season as a time to take up offering, to pray, and to emphasize the telling of others about Christ, and it's because we participate for real in the work of the kingdom now. If Christ is King, and I want to celebrate the renewal of this in life, then a golden gift would be my effort, my prayers, my work, like William Douglas having gone to Ghana and members of his family and many others of you have done, to actually participate in the work of what God wants through Jesus Christ who is King of kings.

I think if I really want to give a golden gift, I think I have to give a little gold, not as a symbol but as something real. A practice of mine at this time of year, not because I am a preacher but because I'm a Christian and it is a part of my faith, is to give something because it is a gift to be used by God in the work of the kingdom. I think I need to give a little bit of gold to show that I really mean these other golden gifts.

It's easy to pray in your home and say, "I'm going to give a gift of my obedience. I am going to give the gift of my effort." But when I give the gold, it's really a tangible demonstration to myself that I have meant this.

So at Christmastime, I would say, when you think about all the gifts you want to give, it's not make believe to think, "What gift do I want to give Christ?" It's not that he was born and I pretend like I was there. It's that Jesus Christ is alive in the world today as King of kings and I want to renew the experience and I want to give him a gift. I want to give the real, living Jesus Christ a gift, and what gift would be appropriate? I think a little gold would do.

We sang the carol and the stanza is so perfect. It says: "Born a king on Bethlehem's plain, gold I bring to crown him again, king forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign." In the present tense, Jesus Christ is King of kings. Christmas is the opportunity to celebrate again his birth and to renew our worship and our devotion through the bringing of gifts. They are gifts that come in the renewal of the heart or gifts that come in the tangible expression of something that we lay on the table, but it is real and he is king.

Copyright 2007. P. Joel Snider. All rights reserved

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