Joy
Summary
Matt Crummy reflects on joy through the story of the Magi in Matthew 2:1-12. Beginning with Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks and the idea of liminal, in-between spaces, he explores how Advent situates us between Christ’s first coming and his promised return. The Magi become a picture of people who reorient their lives around what they love most, traveling far to seek the long-promised King. Drawing on Daniel’s role as chief of the wise men, Thomas Aquinas’s definition of joy as “caused by love,” and Augustine’s line that “our hearts are restless until they rest in you,” Matt invites us to pursue our highest loves, encourage these loves to bloom into joy, and let joy move us into worship and a renewed imagination for who Jesus really is.
Questions for reflection
Matt describes Advent as a liminal space—in between Christ’s first coming and his return. Where in your own life do you feel “in between,” no longer what you were but not yet what you will be?
The Magi reoriented their lives, time, and resources around seeking the newborn King. What do your calendar, energy, and attention say you are currently seeking most?
Matt suggests we “pursue our highest and best loves.” If you were honest, what loves are actually driving your decisions right now—and how aligned are they with Christ?
Aquinas says, “Joy is caused by love.” What consistently causes you to be “overjoyed,” and what does that reveal about where your heart is attached?
Augustine writes that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Where do you feel that restlessness most—work, family, identity, security—and what might resting in Christ begin to look like there?
Joy leads the Magi to worship: they bow down and offer costly gifts. How might joy in Christ lead you to respond with generosity, worship, or obedience this week?
Matt warns about letting “Herods” (other powers and stories) colonize our imagination of Jesus. What cultural stories or “heroes” most compete with your vision of who Jesus really is?
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So this morning, we're going to begin with one of my favorite pieces of art. I guess I'm taking a detour from German philosophers, which is a big step for me. This is Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. And the piece was sold to the Chicago Art Institute, Art Institute of Chicago. I don't remember the order there. In 1942, and it's still often on display there today. Actually, interestingly, this TV is almost exactly the size of the painting. I just realized today. So here's how the art museum describes the work. You can even keep it up, Johnny, if you want. It says," In an all night diner, three customers sit at the counter opposite a server. Each appear to be lost in thought and disengaged from one another. The composition is tightly organized and spare in details. There is no entrance to the establishment. No debris on the streets.
Or through harmonious geometric forms and the glow of the diner's electric lighting, hopper created a serene, beautiful, yet enigmatic scene. So we're not exactly sure what's happening here or what will happen. It feels kind of like a still frame from a movie, right? Sort of cinematic. A word you could use to describe this scene is liminal. Liminality, it's this concept of like a ritual space or a transitional phase in which a person is no longer what they were, but not quite yet what they will be. The liminal is the in between. Neither one thing and not nor the other. I don't know what the English is on that, nor the other. I'm going to look at my English friends. At least in part, this is the story of Advent. As Pastor Dominic has been guiding us this month, we recall that the word advent means coming or arrival.
And in December of each year, the church, capital C church, sets aside time to remember the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. It's a story of the arrival of hope and also the waiting for hope to somehow be more fully realized. Following the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, we await Christ's eventual return. We are in between advents. We live in a liminal space and time, the in between, either one thing nor the other. And I'd say we feel that in our world, a sense of being at home and yet not quite comfortable in our own skin as humanity. Here, but not quite there. Growing, but maybe not quite mature. Back to the painting for a moment here. American art curator, Sarah Kelly Oler, she unpacks Nighthawks this way. Nighthawks has long been positioned as the iconic painting of loneliness and alienation. The composition despair and the narrative is ambiguous.
Who are these people? What's their story? We can never know. We can't even access the space, but only stare in from outside. Hopper always denied that it was his intention to infuse the painting with urban enli. Although he did concede that unconsciously, probably I was painting the loneliness of a large city. What many people do not know, however, is that Nighthawks was Hopper's response to one of the greatest crises of his generation, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 7th, 1941. An entrance of the United States in the World War II. Hopper enjoyed walking in the city, but the experience had suddenly become markedly different during those grim months that followed. Fearing attacks by the Nazis, New Yorkers were subject to blackout drills and dimmed lights in public spaces. Hopper's walks were thus taken around the city literally and figuratively darkened by crisis. He later recalled how this darkness inspired Nighthawks and imagined what it would be like to come across a brightly lit diner in the middle of the night with people, the “nighthawks” within.
And then she closes her thought by saying this, which I think is interesting and maybe goes beyond art. She says, art has the power to speak to us across time, across culture, across moments, across crisis, enjoy and fear and love. In other words, in all that makes us human, it brings us together. So whatever kind of darkness we find ourselves in, whether external or internal, this fact may offer a shining beacon of light and hope that we all need at this time. Kind of feels like she wrote that during COVID. I could be wrong.
This morning, we're looking at a different group of nighthawks, so to speak. Magicians from a different time and place and culture. Like the hopper painting, we can't access the space they inhabited, but only stare in from the outside. So let's take a moment and pray. Ask the Lord for help, and then we'll look at our passage this morning. God, this morning, we do need help. In many ways, sometimes it feels like we are on the outside looking in to whatever it is that you know. And we just need your spirit to guide us, illuminate our vision. Give us your perspective. God, we thank you just that we stand here, we sit here in your love. From that place, that safe place, we can explore your world. God, we pray you just give us grace. Help us to see you in a new way today, help us to see ourselves as you do.
Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Matthew two: one says, "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. Today, we're kind of skipping ahead briefly. In our advent journey, we're cheating a little to discuss an event that actually occurs after the birth of Jesus. But we're doing so to frame how just important, maybe unexpected, maybe crazy the arrival of Jesus truly is. This would be typically what you study in January, right?
If you're following the church calendar, epiphany. So as we celebrate during our Christmas Eve service this week, Jesus was born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph. And the maji are often depicted as the three wise men. They travel to visit Jesus. Here's a photo of a sixth century Byzantine wall Mosaic in Italy that just depicts the magi. And as you can see, the wise men, they actually wore Lula Roe leggings, which is very fancy and leopard print. Anyway, so they travel from eight or 900 miles.
It's weird how much that actually does look that. Eight or 900 miles away in modern day Iraq or Iran to see the Christ's child. And just to clear this up, they almost certainly were not kings kind of as we three kings would talk about. They were more likely royal advisors or counselors. And there's nothing in the text that would have us believe that were only three of them. And they almost certainly didn't show up on Jesus' birth the night of, right? As is often depicted in nativity scenes. So I'm sorry if I'm crushing your mental scene of what occurred here. Too much. But anyway, these royal advisors, they are Gentiles and they just show up in Jerusalem of all places to say to Jewish people in Matthew two, where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.
Okay, so you're not even Jewish and you show up claiming there is a new heir to the throne and you're already ready to worship him and a star told you to do that. I think this would feel a little bit like some corporate bros from like KFC headquarters walking into Chick-fil-A headquarters in Atlanta and saying, "Your founder, Truett Kathy, appeared to us all in a dream. And he told us you need to be open on Sundays now and you also need to make hamburgers, which I kind of wish they would sometimes. And also we're here to apply for a job." Right. Very weird. It would have been like enemy territory, right? So Herod. In the rest of Jerusalem, it says they were disturbed, but they took it seriously and maybe for different reasons, but it does tell you some of the familiarity with these signs.
They seem to receive it at least as plausible. Verse three says, "When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed in all Jerusalem with him." So the Magis show up and they create some buzz. But Herod, he needs to shut this down like fast. He can't have like a rumored Messiah upending his political and religious orders, right? And here's where we come to our first of three lessons for today. First, it is that we pursue our highest and best loves. There will be many people and things that will attempt to wedge themselves between Jesus and us or attempt to exploit our very devotion for their own gain, but we want to align the direction of our lives with what we love most, with who we love most, and we become aware and can even name these competing voices, hopefully. That means we have to take time to reflect on both what we love and whether our lives are somehow ordered in a way that actually reflects this.
I think it's good this time of year coming up in January, maybe to do that, maybe December. We revise our understanding of what it is that we're really after in our life. After all, if we're going to spend our time chasing stars, the end of that path better be something worthy of the very gift of your life. It's very precious time. Remarkably, the Magi got this right. They weren't only interested in stars for the sake of stars, although there's nothing wrong with that. I like stars, but they reoriented their very lives around the pursuit of the Messiah, one who was worthy of worship. They were seeking the savior of humanity, and I'm not even quite sure they understood what they were getting themselves into yet. Maybe this is a tough question for us in the 21st century. I think the temptation is maybe for us, at least for me, to become lazy or distracted in our pursuit of God, in our pursuit of maturity.
Does even the slightest inconvenience derail our response to God's good invitation? To love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love our neighbors sacrificially? In my life, I would say this attitude of distraction or even laziness, it tends to creep in when I stop seeing all that I have as a gift. You see the Magi, they were ready. They didn't know what exactly they were getting into, but they were going to encounter. They had prepared, they had studied, they had dedicated their lives for this moment. You could say their eyes were wide open. They were prepared. We read here about men who weren't even Jewish, Gentiles, traveling to meet the Messiah, potentially risking their lives and their reputations. If the pro soccer team enter Miami, called up my son Ambrose and said, "We need you to play alongside Messi in the MLS this next season." I think he'd probably be willing to walk from Iowa to Florida to make that happen, right?
Anything, right? So are we trading in all of the incredible gifts the offers of God, of life, for something lesser than the one who created the stars? Or does Jesus simply live in a fable in the distant past? Is Jesus stuck in a manger on a mantle somewhere? Have you let Herods, the heroes of this world, colonize your imagination of who Jesus really is? You see, as others have observed, the world isn't disenchanted, we are. The Magi were brilliant scholars, not just some like Randos looking at the sky. From the book of Daniel, you may remember that the Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar, he had some troubling dreams and couldn't sleep. And so he called together his Magiians, his enchanters, his sorcerers and astrologers to interpret what he had dreamed. Ultimately, they couldn't do it. To make a very long story short, they call in Daniel, and he did it and gave God the glory.
This is what we read in Daniel two, verse 48. It says, "Then the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men." So Daniel, like the Daniel you learned about maybe in Sunday school, like Daniel and the lion's den, that guy, right? Becomes the chief magi of Babylon. So when we read about the prophecies of Daniel in the Old Testament, we need to envision a Jewish man who had been taken into captivity by the Babylonians in Persia and then rose to power as the chief wise man. Very weird. Often we think so small about what was happening in history. And in the books of Acts, we see this same root word from magis used to describe Elimus, the sorcerer, which is the root word for magi, magos, sounds like maga, right?
Different things. Who was a false teacher who opposed Barnabas and Paul. This is where we get our root word Magiian. So here's the key connection. Some people believe the Magi. These scholars, they traveled from the east and they were very familiar with the prophecies given to Daniel in the past. They had been handed down from previous Magi. And Daniel nine, we see none other than the angel Gabriel who later appears in the Christmas story speaking to Daniel. Daniel nine verse 20 says, "While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the Lord, my God for his holy heel while I was still in prayer, Gabriel. The man I had seen in the earlier vision came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said, Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding.
As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision. 77s are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. Know and understand this. From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Israel until the anointed one, a capital A, capital O, the ruler comes. There will be seven sevens and 62 sevens, it will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. So these Persian Magiians, enchanters, sorcerers, and astrologers, they may have been looking for a passage like this. We're actually just not sure. But against all odds, they were looking for something to direct their steps and this prophecy of a Jewish Messiah had probably been passed down to them.
Perhaps they had done the math in Daniel nine, and they were looking to the sky for the Messiah's arrival. We're just not sure. But we can learn something, I think, from these Gentiles. From these Magi, it is that we ought to seek that which is of greatest importance with perseverance. Even hard work, I would add. We pursue our highest and most virtuous loves. We regularly take time to review these very loves and how, if at all, our lives reflect these things. And the miracle of the incarnation is that not only were the Magii pursuing the Messiah, but his star proves that he was pursuing them. And in some way, that's our story today. Two, we let our love bloom into joy. Back to the passage in Matthew two, verse four. When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.
In Bethlehem, in Judea, they replied, "For this is what the prophet has written. But you Bethlehem in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel." Then Herod called the magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me so that I too may go and worship him." Wink, wink. After that, after they had heard the king, they went on their way and the star they had seen when it went ahead of them, Rose went ahead of them, sorry, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother, Mary.
They bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. Again, it says when they saw the star, they were overjoyed. I think this reveals maybe a little bit, maybe a sneak peek of their belief system. It gives you a sense of their yearning, their sense that they're finally exiting this liminal space, entering into a moment of revelation. Thomas Aquinas, he puts it this way. Joy is caused by love, either through the presence of the thing loved or because the proper good of the thing loved exists and endures in it. See how this point flows from our previous thought of love? We connect ourselves intentionally and continue to love. We pursue it. We go to it as the source of our strength, direction, motivation.
As a result, the presence of our beloved brings us joy. As a natural response, even just the thought of them makes us happy. Verse 10, when they saw the star, they were overjoyed. So like when I pull up the 10-day forecast right now and I see highs in the 50s, I'm overjoyed. And that's because it's a promise of something I love around the corner, sunshine, warmer weather. But seriously, what causes us to be overjoyed, it is such a helpful tutor to us. Teaches us where our loves are. And so, as those adopted by God, we long for our hearts to leap for joy when we think of our friend Jesus, the real Jesus like the Messiah, not a Jesus who can be manipulated by Herod or the ruling elites or defeated by death, the Jesus who loves you. Us, Jesus, Emmanuel God with us, with you, with Jews and Gentiles, with rich and poor.
Even with a young Jewish woman, they marry and Magiians from a very different place. So what's important to remember is that for the magi, this was just the beginning. It was like they were entering into a wider space. And we can only hope that this moment with Jesus led to a life of walking in the spirit and in truth, again, we just don't know. But for us today, we want a love that is both true and substantive, but also relational.
I'm not speaking primarily here of romantic love, right? Speaking of the kind of relational love that we receive from and give back to God. Saint Augustine of Hippo in a passage is maybe that feels, I would say, deeply personal. It reflects on just how difficult it is for us to understand how love and joy and worship and belief and sin and sort of the restlessness of our own hearts are all ordered in this kind of liminal space as liminal people. It's kind of confusing, I think, to be a human being sometimes. He put it this way. "Great are you, oh Lord, and surpassingly worthy of praise. Great is your goodness and your wisdom is incalculable and humanity, which is but a part of your creation wants to praise you even though humanity bears everywhere, its own morality or mortality rather, death, right? And bears everywhere the evidence of its own sin and the evidence that you resist the proud and even so humanity, which is but a part of your creation longs to praise you, you inspire us to take delight in praising you for you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
Oh Lord, let me know and understand which comes first. Is it invoking you in prayer or praising you? And again, which comes first, knowing you or invoking you in prayer? Yet how can anyone invoke you without knowing you?
I think that's what we really want ultimately out of the Christmas story. It's like a gate we enter through. It's a little bit why we have the name Gateway, right? It's a beginning. You inspire us to take delight in praising you for you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. So here's what we do as we water that which we love, we look for sprouts. We long to see God show up in the ways that only he can. To breathe on our efforts, I cannot make a plant grow. I just can't. You can see evidence of some of that around here in the building.
We need God to somehow breathe on those seeds. We allow our restless hearts to feel something, to admit we don't know what's going on to feel real pain, to be moved by God's very acceptance, to rejoice in the sign of green shoots breaking through the dirt of our lives. We let our love bloom into joy. Do you see how the sprouts of God's plan were born in a baby in Bethlehem? How this is a great unworking of all the pain and evil we experience. Life, showing up in an unexpected way. Can you see the lengths he went to in order to make your joy possible both today and forever? Lastly, we allow joy to move us to worship. Author Theologian Jared Stacy, he said," If Caesar was a man become God, what are we to make of God become man? "That's a question ultimately I think you have to answer for yourself, but it helps capture how radical this whole situation is that we remember on Christmas Eve.
What are we to make of God become man? Let's check in on the Magi again here. Verse 10 says," When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary and they bowed down and worshiped him. "That's what you would give to a king, right? Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. So what we see in Daniel nine, we see in Luke two, we see in Matthew two and throughout the scriptures and the history of the Jewish people is revelation, God revealing himself in love. The great unfolding of the gospel, the good news is a story in time and space of love now made manifest in the prophesied child Jesus.
Remember, these Magi, they are Gentiles, not Jews. This was a great foreshadowing the beginning of a new era, a new covenant, a new humanity. And that's why I'm here to declare today still to you that it is still good news. That's why we gather it all. Remember the words of the angel to the shepherds in Luke two? Verse eight says," And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night and an angel of the Lord. "That's crazy, right? One fact in this whole situation is nuts. An angel shows up to guys out in a field. We can't just gloss over how crazy this story is. It says," An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown around them and they were what? "Terrified. The angel said to them," Do not be afraid.
I bring you good news. That will cause great joy for all people. "That includes the Magi. It includes us. I think that is the invitation of Advent is to join with them in worship.
In closing, let's look one last time at Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. So Hopper's scene, he offers some light in an otherwise dark, perhaps lonely, tense, alienating period, but it's this very human contrast of presence and alienation. I think that makes this such a beloved peace and ironically brings people together around it. Last year, my family saw the painting in Chicago, and here was the scene. See a group of people all gathered around to hear the tale of Edward Hopper's painting and see the real thing. You have people from all over the world, every tribe tongue nation that walk through the doors of the Art Institute each year in Chicago. And they're expecting some sort of encounter with the real, something that is more authentic somehow than Wikipedia, right?
It's why we still go to concerts or sporting events and so on. Even beyond entertainment, it's why we long to be moved by something transformational. These people, they didn't make the art, Hopper did. But in offering his gifts to the world, he invited them into his love. And we respond with love of our own. For people who love hopper, it brings us joy and admiration. It's somehow relational. So the Magi, they had heard tales of prophesied Jewish Messiah. They had studied it over and over for generations. They dreamt about it even. And when they had the chance, they dropped everything and pursued him even as Gentiles and allowed their joy to turn into worship for wonder to turn into worship at the glory of a humble king. They were moved by the gift of God who gives himself to us, with us and for us.
And they bowed down for the advent of joy and the promised renewal of all things. It's close in prayer. God, we thank you just for the good news. We thank you that you are Emmanuel God with us, that you have given not just a good idea, not just a belief system, but you've given your very self.
God, we just pray that we would receive that as a gift, that it is not something that we earned or need to protect, but that you protect us. You pursue us and we respond. God, we thank you for the gift of love. God, I pray just that we would find rest in you. In any area where we feel restless, God, I pray just that we would find peace. Pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
