For Isaiah Jerusalem was the center of the world, God’s world. That was where the camels would bring the gift-bearers with their gold and frankincense. Matthew uses the same image to place the infant Jesus at the center of God’s world. It’s no longer a place that matters, it is a person.
The Feast of the Epiphany is usually understood as celebrating how God revealed himself through Jesus to the whole world – the word comes from the Greek for “manifestation”. The magi (from the East) represent the furthest parts of the known world, in the same way as for Isaiah Midian, Ephah, and Sheba were the most exotic places he could think of.
This symbolism of a child receiving homage from exalted foreign visitors is very powerful. However it is only the beginning of the story of God’s revelation via Jesus to the whole world. Immediately after this visit the family is forced into hiding in exile. Jesus then disappears from view for 30 years and when he starts his public ministry it is about as local as it could be. The world-wide promise implied in Matthew’s nativity account is nowhere to be seen.
Christianity started as a minor variant of a very local religion in a backwater of the Roman empire. Most of the first Christians saw themselves as Jews with a similar attachment to their religious and cultural heritage as any other Jew. It seems unlikely they had any idea of converting the world – at first. The person who led them to a deeper understanding of their place in God’s plan was Paul. We know this both from Luke’s accounts in the Acts of the Apostles and from Paul’s own writing. In the passage we read today, he tells how: “the mystery was made known to me by revelation… that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” This revelation was very controversial and the debate it caused has been labeled the first “Council of the Church” (the Council of Jerusalem), described in some detail by Luke in Acts.
The implications of this revelation still challenge us today. It seems that we have a natural tendency to define ourselves by our differences from others. The inclusiveness that is God’s way, as understood by Isaiah and Matthew and Paul, is not obvious or always easy to accept. The Church has often defined itself by declaring what is excludes – these were the “anathemas” used in all those Councils (after that one in Jerusalem) until one in Rome at the Vatican in 1962! It seems it is easier to say what you are against and who is on the outside, than to accept all those nations arriving, confusing things for us.
Revelation is never finished. It wasn’t complete when Isaiah understood that Jerusalem was the center of the world, or when the magi found the Christchild and returned home, or when Paul won the argument at the Council of Jerusalem. God’s revelation doesn’t arrive as a package which we simply receive and hold on to. It is something that we have to work with – it’s more like a set of tools than a finished item. Isaiah worked at it, as did Paul, and Matthew, and many, many others. This is sometimes described as God continuously revealing Himself to us – the action comes from Him, not from us. But we still need to do something – unwrap the package, if you like.
We may not receive revelation in the way Paul did, but just as he had to fight for what he had understood, so do we. Revelation is indeed a free gift from God, but we have to work with it, to make something of it, to use it to change our world.