Matthew 2

You rarely see a children’s pageant based on Matthew’s story of escape from a raging despot.

Is Matthew so embarrassed by Bethlehem’s lowly status in Micah that he feels the need to punch it up a little?

Do they later say to their friends, “How could we not have known?”

In welcoming the Magi into her home, Mary opens the door to the whole world.

And six stars they offer for our own

For which he needs to invent some prophecy

It must have been a strange sight: grown adults, prostrate before a toddler.

Before Mary can cut the tags off the brand-new frankincense, the weeping starts.

The glorious and impressive features are only half of the story.

Theology is not popularly understood to be a landscape where dreams are welcome.

It’s all too much like a fairy tale.

Epiphany is the ultimate bad-guy story.

Epiphanies come to us in all shapes and sizes.

Grief is like a lead-weighted blanket that can never be fully lifted.

Genealogies suggest a beautiful inevitability even amid political impossibility.

Matthew connects Jesus to the overarching narrative of the Jewish people—as well as to the smaller story of Matthew’s immediate community.