Homelands - ADVENT FOUR

Checkpoint crossings are an inescapable part of life for Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Every morning before dawn, about 70,000 Palestinians from across the occupied West Bank pass through one of eleven Israeli military checkpoints on their way to work. They carry time-restricted permits that grant entry for the day, then require them to return home before the end of the day. 

The lines of workers are funneled into cage-like lanes—overcrowded, humiliating spaces that lack basic infrastructure and sanitation. One worker told journalists covering the checkpoints, “If you fall on the ground, you could die.”

In The First Advent in Palestine, Kelley Nikondeha reflects on her first time crossing the checkpoint through the wall that separates Israel from the occupied West Bank. She did not walk through the crowded lanes most Palestinians endure, but passed instead on a tour bus. Israeli soldiers boarded with rifles—an image she remembers as deeply unsettling on a journey to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, and yet her smooth passage revealed a privilege denied Palestinians. 

Since the 1990s, Israel has established hundreds of permanent roadblocks and checkpoints, staffed by the Israeli military forces. Beginning in 2002, in response to a mass Palestinian uprising that began two years earlier, Israel began constructing the controversial West Bank barrier—a massive concrete wall in urban areas such as Bethlehem and Jerusalem. 

Nikondeha recounts an afternoon spent with Naief, a Bethlahemite, who describes what it felt like to watch the wall being built. Having grown up freely traveling the 5.5  miles between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, he realized that his family would not be able to visit the Holy City for the foreseeable future.  

Each Palm Sunday, members of Bethlehem’s Christian community attempt to pass through military checkpoints to take part in the sacred reenactments of Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem. Only a small number are granted the permits required to make that journey. 

Naief still hopes for a day when the wall will come down—like the Berlin Wall—so that he and his family might once again travel freely to Jerusalem.

Naief’s hope for unhindered passage recalls today’s story from the Gospel of Matthew. A story of travelers who crossed borders and moved through lands shaped by the power and fear of an occupying empire, all in search of the Christ child. 

Matthew’s Gospel opens with the genealogy of Jesus. Earlier in this series, we spent time with that genealogy, paying special attention to the surprising inclusion of four women, including several foreigners. While the genealogy presents Jesus as the rightful heir of King David, it also signals the surprising character of God’s work, which will extend beyond the Jewish people in unexpected ways.

Today, we return to Matthew’s Gospel—with the story of the magi from the East. 

Matthew’s Gospel is often described as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments. Written with a Jewish audience in mind, Matthew carefully shaped his narrative to illuminate the meaning of Jesus’ life and message from within Israel’s story and hopes. 

The magi’s entrance into Jerusalem also introduces us to the story’s main protagonist. Herod, the Roman-appointed King of Judea. 

Whereas Luke opens with a wide-angle view of Caesar and the vast Roman Empire, Matthew zooms in on Herod,  the most immediate imperial foil to the coming Messiah. 

As we’ve already learned, Herod was known for his colossal building projects.  His palace, built high in the hills, provided him with a panoramic view of the countryside below. From within the walls, Herod monitored the people under his rule, tracking their movements and anticipating any resistance. 

Nikondeha quips that, “despite all the surveillance efforts… he never did see the star.” 

He may have been caught unaware, but as this story makes clear, Herod acted quickly to quash any hint of resistance to his rule. The political climate demanded constant vigilance. Eager to hold on to power, the powerful become paranoid.

The magi arrive in Jerusalem asking, “Where is this child? This new king of the Jews?” When Herod, the current king of the Jews, heard this, the scriptures say he was frightened. 

This is not the fear Mary felt when the angel Gabriel announced the birth of her son—a fear akin to awe, in response to an encounter with the divine. A reasonable fear in response to so many unknowns. 

No, this was the fear that comes from the threat of losing power and privilege.

Here we can see the politics of this story taking shape. 

The Magi explain, “We saw the star and have come to worship him.” 

In this context, worship is the familiar expression of political allegiance—to pay homage offered to a superior. 

That the Magi would reserve their tribute for this new king feels to Herod like a direct threat. Eager to identify this threat to his power, he begins plotting. 

Thus begins a familiar pattern. Fear begets violence. Violence begets fear, and the cycle continues. 

Herod, like many others, assumes this means that this child will rise to power and seize the throne. Jesus will indeed challenge the powers of his day, but not in the way anyone expects.

Hoping to use the Magi as unwitting spies, Herod summons them and sends them to Bethlehem, where it was prophesied that the Messiah would be born.  “Go and search diligently for the child,” he says, “and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 

The request sounds innocent enough, but it is laced with violence—a threat that would culminate in the latter half of chapter two. 

In the end, it is not Herod’s words that lead the Magi to Jesus, but the brightness of the star that guides them south. 

That a star should lead them is fitting, for the Magi were skilled astrologers—members of the elite religious caste within Persian Zoroastrianism. They were wisdom seekers trained to discern meaning in the heavens.

That the Magi were not Jewish should come as no surprise. Matthew’s genealogy has already prepared readers to expect that righteous Gentiles—those outside Israel—will play a role in this unfolding story.

Matthew wants his audience to see themselves in the Magi, rather than in Jerusalem’s religious elite or in Herod, the so-called king of the Jews. That last one may have come easily, since Herod was a brutal ruler whose power came not from his people, but from the occupying empire. His rule cultivated deep resentments among the people. 

The arrival of the Magi, then, reminds us that God’s work has always extended beyond the boundaries of any single community.

As one commentary put it, “What the magi identified in their cultural and religious practices pointed them to the Messiah and compelled them to act.” Despite being foreigners from far-off lands, “Their worship is accepted, not reviled. Their stories are respected, not denigrated. And their gifts are received, not rejected.” 

In this story, we catch a glimpse of a holy exchange across cultures and religions.

Perhaps this story serves to amplify the message that God’s work is not confined to our categories. That God’s love exceeds all of our human concepts. That God’s love truly is universal. 

For as scripture tells us, the entirety of this story began with God’s love. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” 

It is people from a foreign land and another religious tradition who point to God’s unexpected movement among us. It is outsiders who rejoice at the arrival of Emmanuel—God with us.

This story is often told simply as a story of worship—of non-Jews coming to know Jesus, with the quiet assumption that they abandon their own religious traditions. That reading has been convenient for evangelical theology. But Nikondeha presses us to see something more: the deeply political nature of worship.

The magi came from Persia, a land with its own long history of conquest and occupation, much like Palestine. Like the Jewish people, they also resented Hellenization—the imposition of Greek culture—but unlike in Palestine, that resentment did not give rise to a peasant revolt against Greek economic exploitation, as it did in the Maccabean uprising.

Still, many elites, such as magi, carried with them a spirit of resistance to the Hellenization of their homelands. They held fast to their traditions and identity, even as others yielded to the pressures of imperial power.

As Nikondeha writes, “The Magi travel in a spirit of solidarity, hungry for hope they might carry back to their own homelands.”

And as they arrive in Bethlehem, joy overcomes them. 

Nikonhdeha wonders what their encounter with the infant Jesus would have meant within their own religious tradition. Like many in the ancient Near East, Persians believed that kings were connected to divinity. To recognize a foreign king, then, was to challenge not only one’s political ruler, but one’s god. 

Perhaps a spectacular celestial event caused them to hope that regime change was possible. Traveling west meant entering unfamiliar and even hostile territory. It would have required courage. And yet, in the stars, they discerned a reason for hope.

They didn’t go looking in Judea for a king for themselves, but perhaps for one who would act as a bulwark against the cultural imposition and economic exploitation of the Roman empire. A leader who could strengthen their hope. If transformation could take root in Judea, then perhaps it could take root in Persia as well.

As Nikondeha suggests, it is the Magi’s resistance against the empire in their own homelands that becomes the catalyst for their encounter with the Holy Family.

After their encounter, a dream warns the magi of Herod’s evil intentions. At that moment, they are faced with a choice. They can cooperate with violence, or they can refuse it. 

They choose to refuse. They do not return to Herod. And so they return home by another way. 

All along the West Bank barrier, bold and colorful art gives voice to the hopes of the Palestinian people.

 Images like the protester throwing a bouquet of flowers instead of a Molotov cocktail; a small child patting down an Israeli soldier; a dove carrying an olive branch while wearing a bulletproof vest. Each illustrates a longing we all recognize—for a life of peace, safety, and dignity. 

Slogans like “Love Wins” and “Here God’s Children are on both sides of the wall” amplify calls for peaceful coexistence. 

Portraits of martyrs, olive trees, poppies, and the keffiyeh—the woven scarf emblematic of Palestinian identity—bear witness to a deep love for a people and a landscape. They are love letters to a homeland. 

As in many long struggles, art provides an alternative route to resistance. It is a way of telling the truth when other avenues are blocked. It creates beauty within the greyness of occupation. It makes room for lament, where trauma can be transformed and goodness. It gives a platform to those who have never stopped loving and stewarding their homelands. Art provides a creative, non-violent means of striving for liberation.

Advent proclaims that God does not come through domination or force, but through fragile hope and fierce, rule-breaking love. 

Just as the Magi followed a star rather than a king, so these images point beyond walls and weapons toward the possibility of peace. They testify that even in places shaped by occupation and trauma, love endures, hope persists, and God continues to invite us still to travel by another way.

Sermon preached by Rev. Delaney Piper on December 21, 2025.