1/2/25 Sermon
The question I get asked the most in my personal life is this: Does getting tattooed hurt? The answer is yes. Then there are always follow up questions like which one hurt the most or did any hurt less than others. Listen, they all hurt. Everywhere. Every time. It hurts to get tattooed. Of course some areas are more sensitive than others. I don’t recommend getting tattooed anywhere near your ribs. And while I don’t have mine done, I hear the top of your feet feel like murder to get tattooed. Then people ask if you can use some sort of numbing cream or pain-killer. Which you can and it does sometimes lessen the pain for a little. But, eventually it’s going to wear off and it’s going to hurt. It just hurts no matter what.
But there’s a secret to dealing with the pain. Your natural instinct is to try to block it out, to distract yourself, to fight against it, or to try and ignore it the best you can. And that doesn’t work. Partly I think because its a persistent pain. It’s not a sharp prick and then it’s done. It keeps going. And the longer it goes, the harder it becomes to ignore it or try and block it out. So, what do you do? Whats the secret?
You accept the pain. You observe it. You almost focus on it. There’s a moment when the needles first hit your flesh that your body almost immediately in a natural response tenses up. But then you need to breathe, relax yourself, observe the way it feels, almost study it, accept that its just part of your reality in that moment. And for some reason, the pain transforms. It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t feel great. It isn’t something that I particularly want to feel. But it somehow becomes more tolerable.
The question I get asked most in my professional life or as a minister is somewhat similar. It’s always worded a bit differently every time I’m asked, but it goes like this: If God is all loving and God is all powerful, then why do awful things happen? Then Why does God allow someone to plow a car through New Years Eve celebrations in New Orleans? Then why is my kid suffering with this illness that may take their life? If God is all loving, then how could this God let someone shoot up our 4th of July parade? Then why did my love one die? Then why do I have this illness? I think the core question people are asking me is if God loves me, then why do I suffer?
Maybe there’s a secret answer to that question as well, but I haven’t found it. The honest truth is I don’t know. I don’t have the answer to that question. I’ve been searching for that answer over half my life at this point and I’m still just as perplexed by it today as I was when I started studying this stuff. There are ways I can justify an answer or come up with what I feel are excuses. But I can’t tell you why there’s suffering in this life or why awful things happen. They just do… I’ve become skeptical of people who try to explain why.
But because that question of why we suffer and where is God in it seems so important and is so perplexing, I keep looking for answers. Like I said, I still haven’t found it but I’ve found something else - maybe something more important. And I stumbled upon it when discussing this very story of the magi with my friend Lucas.
We can skip the first two gifts. None of these are normal gifts you’d give a new born child but when we look at their significance and why the Magi gave them, they make sense. Gold is a foreshadowing of the new Kingdom - a sign of Christ’s place as Lord of Lords and King of Kings - it signifies his power and reign over a new kingdom. And frankincense was an incense burnt in the temple during rituals, worship, and sacrifice denoting that this baby was going to be of major spiritual significance. Essentially these first two gifts of gold and Frankincense show us who the child will be and his importance in the world - that essentially he’d be a great political and spiritual leader - but its the third gift - this one of myrrh that I find the most perplexing.
Myrrh is a gum resin extracted from a few small, thorny trees. It’s actually quite difficult to get. Essentially, they find these myrrh trees and hack at them, slashing them, wounding them several times until the thick sap begins to pool at the wound in the same way that blood builds and clots in a cut to stop the bleeding. But rather than allowing the resin to solidify, the extractor harvests it.
There’s debate about where myrrh first shows up in history. The name myrrh actually comes from this horrible story in Greek mythology and derives from the name Myrrha who is the mother of Adonis. You can tell the story isn’t going to go well because myrrh and Myrrha both mean bitter in greek. And according to the Greeks, this myrrh, this gum resin that comes out of the tree wounds are actually her tears.
And then if we go all the way back to the fifth dynasty of Egypt, the Pharaoh Sahure sent an expedition out to what is basically modern day Somalia, and when the expedition returned, they brought a bunch of exotic animals, plants, and people back with them. Among these treasures, they brought large amounts of myrrh. In fact, the only artistic rendering of a Pharaoh gardening is a mosaic found in Sahure’s tomb. He’s tending a myrrh tree. Myrrh became hugely important to Egyptian life and culture because they discovered what would become its primary use - an embalming agent. It possesses amazing antimicrobial properties and smells incredible apparently. It’s a strange gift to give a baby. Imagine bringing a vial of formaldehyde to a baby shower…
They give Jesus gold because he’s the king of kings. They give him frankincense because he’s the divine made manifest in our presence. The Magi know who he is and what he’s going to do. Then they give him myrrh - the bitter oil of preparing the dead. Because they also knew that one day a man named Nicodemus would tend to his lifeless, tortured and wounded body with this same oil. They knew that this too… this too… was a significant part of this new born baby’s story.
My friend Lucas who may be the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had, reflected a bit on this during his Christmas Eve sermon. He said the most profound thing. He said, “When we are born, we are all given a little bit of myrrh, whether we know it or not. Life will not always glimmer like gold or smell sweet like frankincense. It will involve hardship and difficulty, wounds and cuts, pain and bitterness as well. And that, I think, is the meaning of the third gift, the gift of myrrh.”
Why must we suffer? God knows I’ve had my share of myrrh - I’ve had my share of bitterness and suffering in my life. I’m willing to bet you have too. And if you’re like me, then we’ve spent a good amount of life trying to avoid it, trying to protect ourselves from it, trying to wall it off, block it out, and hide what is most precious to us from it. And yet the gift of myrrh, this strange gift of bitterness, seems to still show up on our doorstep like an amazon package we actually want someone to steal from us. And I don’t know why. I don’t know why suffering seems so integral, so unavoidable to the human experience. I don’t know why we all must accept this gift of myrrh. But I do know that even the creator of the universe, even God made flesh, wasn’t even exempted from receiving it. That for some reason, its that important, that essential, that intertwined with what it means to be fully human. It’s even the first noble truth of Buddhism. Life is suffering. In fact, all four noble truths of Buddhism address this suffering.
It’s amazing to me when I step back and reflect on how similar the questions I get asked personally and professionally are. Does it hurt? Yes. Both tattoos and life hurt. Will it always hurt? Sometimes and in some places more than others. Its inevitable. It’s inevitable. How do I stop it from hurting? I don’t know if you can. Even if you try to drug and numb yourself, it’s going to catch up when it wears off and hurt eventually. And so maybe how can we avoid the hurt is the wrong question. Maybe The better question is what do with do with the myrrh that’s given to us?
I wonder again if the answers aren’t similar… you don’t fight it, you don’t try to wall yourself off from it or ignore it. You don’t reject it and do everything you can to distract yourself from its reality and existence. But instead, you breathe, relax yourself, observe the way it feels, almost study it, accept that it’s just part of your reality in that moment. And it may not get any better, it may not be anything we want to feel or go through. But it somehow becomes more tolerable.
Since Christmas Eve, I’ve found myself wondering if these gifts are just a package deal. That if we want the gold and frankincense, do we then HAVE to accept the myrrh as well? And for reasons beyond my explanation and understanding, in my heart of hearts, I feel that the answer is yes. In order for the gold to truly glitter, in order for the frankincense to fully burn beautifully smelling fragrance, we have to also accept the bitter tears of the myrrh. And I’ve found myself wondering what it means and looks like to accept it for what it was given as - a gift. What does it mean to accept the gift of myrrh that we’re each given at our birth? To actually view it as a gift?
The first time my heart was broken, I was just a teenager and my girlfriend broke up with me. I was a wreck thinking my world was at an end and I’d never love again as most teenagers stupidly think. My mother was less than sympathetic asking me what dumb thing I’d done to cause her to break up with me. But my father sat me down and all he said was that it was good. Not for the reasons I think - not in anyway I’d understand in that moment - but it was good that my heart was broken. Because it showed that I truly cared and truly loved. Essentially my suffering showed me that some things and some people really matter.
To suffer with someone who is ill reminds us of our love for them. Does it make it better or do we suffer less? No. Yet, somehow love is a sacred gift.
To ache when we see acts of violence tear communities apart shows us the empathy we have for others. Does it make it less horrific? No. Yet, somehow empathy is a sacred gift.
To be outraged at the mistreatment of a person or group of people reveals to us that we understand what true justice is. Does it make that mistreatment any more tolerable? No. And yet a sense of true justice is sacred gift.
And when we put these sacred gifts together, when we put love, empathy and as strong sense of true justice together into action, we can ease the suffering of this world - maybe not alleviate it, but ease it.
Must we accept this gift of myrrh? Sadly yes. Whether we like it or not we will taste the bitterness of life. It’s unavoidable. That isn’t the right question. The question is always what will we do with it? Will we view it as a gift - to be accepted - dare I say embraced? Will we use this gift to aid us in realizing that it’s all precious - the gold, the frankincense AND the myrrh - realizing they enhance and enrich each other? Or will we naively attempt to wall ourselves away and miss experiencing the depth and fullness of the very things that make us fully human? After all, where would we be today if Christ refused the gift of myrrh? Without death, there is no resurrection…
