Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

The Epiphany, Contemporary Service – 1/7/00

by Gregory S. Kaurin

Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Text: Matthew 2:1-12

 

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The Sermon:

The Holly and the Ivy

 

I want you to look carefully at today’s lesson and answer a few questions.  Matthew is the only one in the Bible who tells us about the visit of the wise men, so our lesson has the answer to each of these questions.  1) Looking at the lesson, how many wise men came to visit the Baby Jesus?  [It doesn’t say.]  2) Does Matthew call them “kings?”  [No.]  3) Look carefully, where does Matthew say they found the Child?  [In a house.]

The Bible never says how many wise men there were.  Two, three, eight, twenty?  We assume and later traditions tell us there were three, perhaps because of the three gifts. 

The magi were probably not kings.  They may represent “the nations” from a Biblical perspective, but in Greek they were called “magoi” which were often magicians, astrologers, and probably about as close to scientists as were available at that time and place.  They may have been eastern Persian/Median/Babylonian men.  They were Gentile outsiders—at least from Matthew’s perspective.

And finally, Jesus may have been one or two years old by the time they arrived at the house in Bethlehem, depending on when the star actually appeared.  If it appeared upon Jesus’ birth, it would’ve taken awhile to get from the East to Bethlehem.  Remember, Herod quizzed the magi, asking when they first saw the star, and based on that, he would later order his soldiers to murder babies how old?  [Two and younger.]

 

Now, I’m not saying all this just to dash some of our fond Christmas traditions and stories.  It’s possible that tradition has it right.  However, the old traditions can sometimes take over the message in scripture.  It is important to pare off some of the traditions we’ve added to the Bible text so that we can get a clearer sense of the message.

Because, even without naming them Melchior, Belteshazzar, or whatever, this story about the wise men is an amazing story!  For Matthew it was so important to show how Jesus was in line with the Old Testament.  The Child was born in Bethlehem, David’s city.  He would preach from a mountain like a new Moses.  This is the one of whom the prophets spoke.  This was the new King!

But one of the first things Matthew tells us is how Jesus was visited by …astrologers, Gentiles from the East, stargazers!   It’s odd.  The Jews and the disciples, the ones who ought to know more, are the ones who had the hardest time understanding Jesus and who he was.  The Bible keeps having these outsiders and ambiguous heroes that come in to point the way for us!

 

Well, to go along with the odd and ambiguous magi, the carol I’ve picked to go with today’s message is also a mixed bag of Christian and pagan mythology.  “The Holly and the Ivy” is a very old English carol.  It is slightly fragmented, in that there may have been more and much older stanzas and verses that have been remembered and passed on, or forgotten and lost.

The ambiguous message of holly and ivy goes way back to pre-Christian days.  [Pick up holly branch.]  Holly can produce berries that ripen red to feed birds in mid-winter.  Its leaves remain green and sturdy even in a freeze, defying the deadening effects of the colder months.  So, Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen would often put it up to celebrate the winter solstice, to encourage or take heart knowing the days would now lengthen and warm in the weeks and months to come.  They, like the holly, might survive.

Holly was considered by many to be masculine.  Men would receive branches of holly as a token for good luck and protection.  Women would receive stems of ivy, a more “feminine” plant for the same reason.  Holly was used as a ward against witchcraft.  It was brewed as a cough suppressant. 

 

Some of these old traditions were carried into English and Norse Christianity.  On Christmas Eve, virgins were sometimes given holly to protect their virtue against “Christmas goblins.”  They often decorated their homes with ivy, a favorite of elves and fairies, to give them a place to hide since such creatures were very good to have around the house.

 

“The Holly and the Ivy,” like Gentile astrologers, this is an odd, but important message for Christians.  Let’s sing the first stanza:

 

The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown,

Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown.

The rising of the sun, and the running of the deer

The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir.

 

The words to the carol are great for summing up the Christmas season, for heading into the season of Epiphany, and for the first Sunday of our calendar year:  "The holly and the ivy, When they are both full grown, Of all the trees that are in the wood The holly bears the crown."

 

The holly bears the crown.  Look at a leaf from this holly branch.  You can see how its points resemble a crown.  There is an old Christian tradition that Jesus’ crown of thorns was actually made of these pointed and painful holly branches and leaves, and that it was his blood that causes them to ripen red in the cold of winter.

“The holly bears the crown.”  The carol also means that holly points to Jesus Christ, like the star, a zodiac-like predictor leading Eastern stargazers with their own understandings of gods, to Israel, seeking some veiled new king.  They, outsiders, point to Christ, even if they were not entirely aware of what they had found.

I am not suggesting that there is any reason or value for calling Cleo or any 900 numbers to get your tarot card reading, or to start forming your lifestyle around the zodiac.  But Matthew's story makes gentile astrologers, what some consider the scientists of those times, the first to see Jesus as someone worthy of worship.  “At the sound of his name every knee shall bow;” and “If these were quiet the very stones would cry out!”  Christian, pagan, stone, star and holly all yearn to point to something, someone greater than themselves.  Under the star of Bethlehem, under the crown of the holly leaf, lies the Christ child.

 

And so in the carol we begin to hear the Christian message.   Let’s sing the next two stanzas.

 

The holly bears a blossom as white as lily flower;

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ to be our sweet Savior.

The rising of the sun, and the running of the deer

The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir.

 

The holly bears a berry as red as any blood;

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ to do poor sinners good.

The rising of the sun, and the running of the deer

The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir.

 

 

With obvious allusion to Christ, the stanzas begin: "The holly bears a blossom as white as lily flower.”  “The holly bears a berry as red as any blood.”  And in the last stanza we’ll hear, “The holly bears a prickle as sharp as any thorn." 

These stanzas are talking about Christ.  How quickly our carols and hymns move from Jesus' birth to his death and resurrection.  One of my favorite Christmas hymns is, "What Child Is This?"  It includes the stanza, "Nails, spear shall pierce him through, The cross be born for me, for you."  (It's sad the number of modern hymnals that have edited out this stanza.)  Our hymns are not just nice ditties, they are creedal--they sing our basic beliefs.  In them, the birth and death follow each other.

It’s like our Creeds.  They speak of Christ's conception, his birth, and then skipping completely over 30 some years of the life and ministry of Jesus they immediately describe his suffering, death and burial. 

It's true to life that just as one angel closes her eyes in death, another down the hall is opening hers in birth.  Life lies alongside of death, and God sanctifies the whole of human life, and death, in this incarnation of Jesus Christ, from the infant, to the man on the cross.

Imagine our God, pure and “white as lily flower,” needing to be fed from a mother's human breast, needing to be cleaned, clothed and comforted by human hands.  Imagine our God, needing to be protected from the fear and wrath of a jealous king.   Our God lived in frail skin that was born, bruised, bled and breathed his last.  The love of God is summed up neither in the birth, nor the death and resurrection—these must be taken together, one with the other. 

This is why God's presence offers comfort and assurance: He listens, really listens, because he understands, ...really understands.  He was born, and he felt the prickle of life’s thorns.

 

The holly bears a crown, and with that, the holly bears a prickle.  Sing last stanza.

 

The holly bears a prickle as sharp as any thorn;

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ on Christmas day’n the morn.

The rising of the sun, and the running of the deer

The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir.

 

The Holly and the Ivy.  It’s kind of strange that ivy is only mentioned in the carol, and then forgotten.  Did you notice that?  There may have been more stanzas about ivy for this poem.  If so, we’ve lost them.

 

But ivy also speaks of hardiness and endurance.  The ivies climbing over Princeton University's walls were planted in 1866 and have never needed to be replaced.  Near Montpellier, France, there are ivy plants known to be over 400 years old!  This is what inspired Charles Dickens to write:

 

Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,

And nations have scattered been;

But the stout old ivy shall never fade...

The brave old plant in its lonely days,

Shall fatten upon the past:

For the stateliest building man can raise,

Is the ivy's food at last.

Creeping on where time has been,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.[1]

 

The ivy stoically survives and outlives our own visions and plans.  Though unthinking, the ivy is often more successful in its purpose: to grow.  Through winter and spring it carries out its instructed mission, "Live, grow, survive and re-grow." 

A poet can see the ivy's wonderful attachment to an eternal truth that we only sometimes experience, God's love for life and re-creation.  The ivy’s ability to survive does not place ivy above real life.  It endures life.  Chopped short, it must painfully re-grow and put out new tendrils--sometimes attaching itself to its own lifeless dried stems.  It is not above the winterkill; the ivy suffers it, and then grows on.  Old wounds become part of its newer form.  The ivy includes the past years as it stretches into the new year.

____________________

 

It’s like our Christmas and each New Year include celebration.  They include pain and loss.  We can only make realistic New Year resolutions, we will heal better, and we can celebrate better when we know things don't have to be painless or perfect in order for us to set out again.  Stories, memories, happy and sad, tragic and miraculous must be recalled and told.  Learning from past experience does not make us any more perfect, just more honest.  Keeping resolutions is not about keeping them perfectly, but as we are able. 

In spite of well-heated homes and well-insulated lives, the loss and theme of winterkill still has a place in our lives.  The pain and losses felt during the holidays need voice.  The people we have loved and lost, still have names that need to spoken, out-loud. 

I am not just speaking generally or vaguely.  Many of you miss somebody, people that have names.  Some of those people may even still be alive, lost to other kinds of tragedies and decisions.  Take a moment now, (close your eyes if you wish), and remember some of those people.  Allow yourself to feel their absence as a real presence...

 

…Charles Dickens, in one of his Christmas articles wrote of the importance for including all emotions and memories as we face the New Year.  Let me end by sharing his words with you:

"Welcome old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly!  We know you and have not outlived you yet.  Welcome old projects and old loves, however fleeting. ...Before this boy, there stretches out a Future, brighter than we ever looked on in our old romantic time, but bright with honor and truth.  ...Shining from the word, as rays shine from a star, we see how, when our graves are old, other hopes than ours will be young, other hearts than ours will be moved.

..."Welcome everything!  Welcome alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-hearted!

..."'Not the shadow?'  ...Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces towards [that Shadow] that City [of the Dead] upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts bring those we loved, among us.  City of the Dead, in the blessed name wherein we are gathered together at this time, and in the Presence that is here among us according to the promise, we will receive, and not dismiss, thy people who are dear to us!

..."Entertaining angels unawares, as the Patriarchs did, the playful children are unconscious of their guests; but we can see them...  Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not discard you!  You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!"[2]

"...We will shut out Nothing!"

 

 

Let us pray:  Holy Christ: Your birth gives holiness to human life.  By it we know that God comes to us in imperfect flesh.  So with more boldness, we remind you of your promise to be with us always, even to the end.  On behalf of this congregation, I beg you teach us to feel that promise kept in this New Year.  Amen.

 

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