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Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
These verses from Matthew’s Gospel are familiar in carol services and nativity scenes leading up to Christmas but their significance is often missed. The Collect for Epiphany, the season that we have just entered, helpfully corrects that and underlines the significance of the passage for us:
O God, who revealed your only Son to the Gentiles by the leading of a star, mercifully grant that we, who know you now by faith, may after this life enjoy the splendour of your glorious Godhead, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
These wise men were Gentiles, and the fact is picked up by the most Jewish of the Gospel accounts. The Old Testament had always pointed forward to the One who would bring God’s blessing to all peoples (“and in you [Abram] all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” . There are glimpses of its fulfilment in the Old Testament with Rahab, Ruth and Naaman, as well as the repentance of the Ninevites in Jonah 3, and many prophecies, but the Jews at the time of Jesus’ earthly life, including his closest followers struggled to accept that the blessing brought about by their Messiah would also be of benefit for the hated Gentile world around.
This slow acceptance by the recipients of God’s grace and mercy of what the word of God had always said has continued down the centuries and includes the Anglican Church which itself has been largely constituted from Gentile peoples. During the colonial period churches were usually established to care for the spiritual needs of the colonisers and traders, and only later were indigenous populations offered the benefits of Christ and his passion, and later still if they were to hear the gospel in their own languages.
We should not be surprised if this same slowness is still an unfortunate feature of God’s people in the 21st Century Anglican Church, but neither should we be satisfied or complacent in the face of this phenomenon. Matthew’s Gospel finishes with the Great Commission with its command from the risen ascended Lord Jesus Christ, who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth to make disciples of all nations, together with the wonderful promise: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Having ourselves received the undeserved mercy and grace of God’s gift of salvation in Christ not to share Him with others, in obedience to his command, and with the promise of his enabling accompaniment, is a mark of ingratitude that calls into question the nature of our understanding of the gospel of Christ.
I give grateful thanks to God for those who have made Christ known to me. I am moved at the sense of indebtedness of many Anglicans around the world to those from Britain and Ireland who did proclaim Christ faithfully to the nations, and their sadness at the trajectory of the ‘Mother Church’ in departing from the gospel as they had received it and passed it on to others.
In addition to those that God has placed around us and our churches who need to come to worship the Messiah, we need to be praying for an ongoing missionary movement by Anglicans to peoples everywhere who do not know our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let us not forget the Jewish people through whom the Gentiles received the gospel but who now need to know their Messiah: “for God has the power to graft them in again.” .
A final plea, that as we should not neglect the Jewish peoples through whom we Gentiles received the gospel, nor should Anglicans who have received the gospel from European Gentiles neglect the 732 million Europeans , most of whom have no knowledge of the Christ revealed in the Scriptures.
Bishop Andy Lines
Anglican Network in Europe
