Good evening, grace and peace, welcome to The Table. I’m so glad that you could be with us tonight.

Series Intro
Okay, so we are kicking off a new series this evening titled Epiphany: A Radical Invitation. The idea of
the season of Epiphany in the church calendar is that it’s a time to reflect on who Christ was and is, who
he reveals God to be, and what our response to that revealing is. In a sense, this is what an epiphany is.
It’s when something shines forth and sort of grips us. So you can see that in many ways Epiphany is the
perfect followup to the Christmas Season of Advent. Because Advent is very much what theologians
might call the Marian posture. Like Mary mother of Jesus Advent is all about waiting, receiving some-
thing from God that we do not work for or earn. It’s a season of contemplation and grace. But Epiphany is
different. It’s about our response as the church to the gift of Jesus.

Sermon Intro
Alright, with that in mind, the title of my message this evening is Tribes & Tribalism. Now, believe it or
not, I wrote the majority of this message last week, the one leading up to the New Year, so I did not yet
know what would happen this past week in D.C. However, I do think the Holy Spirit was guiding me be-
cause it feels timely. Now, if you were hoping I would hit the issue a bit more straight forwardly then you
probably haven’t seen my e-letter from this week. The devotional section was related to all things soft-
coup and our president so if you didn’t get that just let me know and I’ll send it your way.

Okay, our text tonight will be from Matthew 2:1-12. I’ve asked _____ to read that for us this evening.
“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to
Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it
rose and have come to worship him.”

3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called to-
gether all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be
born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8
He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, re-
port to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went
ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were
overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down
and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense
and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country
by another route.” — Matthew 2:1-12 (NIV)

Big Idea & Exegesis

So a huge problem not only for human beings throughout history, but particularly in our world today is
tribalism. I suspect this is driven in no small part by the information (and misinformation!) silos we in-
habit via social media, but regardless it seems to have been an issue and no end is in site. Now, to be
clear, tribes are not bad. Tribes can be community and relationship. Tribes can be a shared sense of iden-
tity, a feeling of being known, a source of common values and thus a common way of life. But like every-
thing tribes can be dangerous, and I believe they’re dangerous for at least three reason.

a) Echo-Chambers // They so quickly become echo-chambers of settled opinions where we all just know
that we are right because, well just look around — everyone in this tribe agrees! And we’re all ge-
niuses here, or at least we feel like geniuses because we’ve implicitly agreed never to disagree.
b) Arrogance // Tribes can be dangerous because they so easily devolve into a culture of arrogance, a
sense that our tribe is the best tribe, but really not merely the best tribe but, even more dangerous, the
only good tribe. Our motives are pure, our eyes are open, and we alone are the possessors and arbiters
of goodness and truth.
c) Exclusivism // Tribes can be dangerous because they become exclusive clubs for our kind of people.
Outsiders are not welcome!

Now, this brings up the question: what types of tribes are there? And of course tribes come in a variety of
forms. Tribes form along the lines of…

• Race
• Gender
• Nationality
• Politics
• Families/Clans
• Class
• Geography
• Religion

I mean, you can form a tribe around nearly anything which, in light of the dangers mentioned above,
might lead you to think, well let’s just do away with the tribes! These things are dangerous. But as I men-
tioned earlier, human beings are deeply and inescapably social, and we derive our sense of identity from
the tribes we inhabit. In fact, child psychologists will tell you that it’s important for kids to grow up in
tribes. You have the family tribe and that family needs a strong culture, strong values, and strong sense of
this is who we are, this is how we act, and here in this tribe you are loved and here you belong. That’s
great. Same on the religious end. Sometimes with kids we’re very progressive and we don’t want to force
religion on the children and so some of us might be very tempted to try the thing of not giving our kids
any religious input — we don’t want them to get tribal so we’re just going to let them decide for them-
selves! But again, child psychologists will tell you that while it seems wise, that cure just might kill the
patient, because it turns out that kids actually do better when they have an intentional religious tribe to
grow into because it helps them orient themselves in the world: this is who we are, this is what we be-
lieve, this is who God is, this is what is right and what is wrong, this is how we understand the world.
And heck, if you don’t give your kid a tribe, they’ll probably just end up finding some more dysfunctional
one to join anyway.

So all of this leaves us in a real pickle because on the one hand, it seems we can’t do without tribes. And
yet on the other hand, tribes can be so dangerous, so in-groupy and out-groupy and just UGH, the worst!

Story of NH Lucas & Cliques

I remember a few years ago at the last church I was at someone met with me and they very bluntly said,
“Your church has a problem.” And I said, “Oh, I’m sure it has a lot of them but go ahead and tell me the
one you have in mind.” And they said, “It’s the cliques. This church has cliques. Like this group of people
are friends, and then that group of people are friends. But the groups can be sort of hard to break into.”
And I said, “Yes, I can see what you’re saying. And I agree that we can always be better about keeping
groups open to outsiders, but I know the people you are talking about (this person had named names) and
honestly they aren’t insecure-closed-off kind of people” and so we began to process the need on the one
hand for there to be friend groups in the church, but then how to keep them open enough that they don’t
feel clique-ish. It was a hard and awkward conversation and the convo ended when she said “Well, I just
think it’s clique-ish.”

And I’ve thought long and hard about that conversation for a couple of years now, and honestly, it’s just
difficult. On the one hand, we can’t do without tribes. And on the other hand, tribes can be the worst.

Exegesis & Big Idea

I think you see this tension around tribes play out even in the biblical text itself. If you think about it,
when God wanted to reveal himself he chose a man Abraham in Genesis 12, and then he said Abraham I
am going to make you into a great nation — a Tribe! — a people who eventually became known as the
Jewish people. In fact, they were literally known as the 12 Tribes of Israel — 12 tribes who combined to
form one mega-nation-tribe. And then in the New Testament, one of the very first things Jesus did once
he began his three years of ministry was to call 12 people — the number btw is interesting in how it paral-
lels the story of Israel — and these 12 people would go on to found a community, a tribe, centered on Je-
sus known as the church. And what was and is this tribe constantly tempted to do? We are tempted by the
exact problems we talked about earlier: echo-chambers, arrogance, and exclusivism. Every tribe is
tempted by these things. And when we succumb to them we have now slipped into tribalism! Tribes at
their worst. Which is why it seems not insignificant that for all of the tribalism in the Bible — and no
doubt you can find it! — the Spirit of God in God’s wisdom keeps humbling and opening up the tribe.
And sometimes it’s very obvious, as when Jesus tells the pharisees for example, “You are so caught up in
your religious-ethnic-cultural pride you can’t even see how far from God you are, in fact the prostitutes
and the sinners are going to enter the kingdom of God ahead of you!!!” In other words, the very people
they excluded as outsiders, are going to become God’s insiders. So that’s pretty blatant, a slap in the face
of their tribal pride. But at other times it’s more subtle, and I believe this passage in Matthew 2:1-12 illu-
minates that. Did you catch who it was that made the long journey to worship the Christ child? It was not
the reigning king in Jerusalem, Herod. Clearly. It was not the high priest of Jewish religion at that time.
Who was it? Who discerned the birth of the single most significant baby ever to grace the earth? The
Magi.

The Magi
What is a Magi? Here's a definition. Magi: sorcerer, or magician. I love that God does things like this. I
just love that wizards, Harry Potter, met Jesus. Btw, they were almost certainly not kings — that’s part of
a much later tradition that seems to be myth. I love how Christian writer Nadia Bolz-Weber put it when
she said, “We three kings of Orient are…not in the Bible.” Ha! So who were the Magi really, they were
astrologers, scientists, priests, wizards from the East. They were certainly foreigners, pagans. And yet, it
was they who discerned the times. It was they who had the eyes to see. It was they who were sensitive to
the Spirit and who came, and gave gifts, and worshipped the Christ. What am I getting at? It seems that
God’s circle of welcome is always bigger than ours. We keep trying to shut the tribal doors, while God
keeps kicking them back open. We keep thinking that we are the know-it-alls who have nothing to learn,
while God keeps dropping hints that sometimes it’s the outsiders who get it first. And this is no one-off
story. If you’ve ever read the Bible then you know, that for all of it’s strong tribal tendencies, for all of
it’s talk of election and the people of God, if you follow the trajectory, you see that the circle of welcome
keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Application
So what does this mean for you? Let me put it like this. The first half of life is about finding a a tribe and
gaining an identity. It’s important. You need it. Your kids needs it. You’ll need it your whole life. We all
need to belong. We all have to orient ourselves in the world. And I’m not just talking about joining a
church — though that is arguably one of if not the most important tribe you’ll connect with. But this is
about all of the tribes. You need to find good, healthy, vibrant tribes. But the second half of life is about
preventing your tribe from turning into the worst version of itself. What’s the worst version? Arrogance,
echo-chambers, and exclusivism. In other words, to be faithful to the Spirit of Christ, there will come a
time when you will have to be the voice in the wilderness that demands your tribe eat a slice of humble
pie, and shut up, and listen, and learn, and acknowledge that our stuff stinks too. There will come a time
when you will have to be the one demanding a seat at the table of your tribe for whoever is considered the
stranger, the outsider, the non-believer, the sinner, the pesky question-asker because that just might be
how the Holy Spirit chooses to show up in your midst. And it’s the only way your tribe isn’t going to de-
cay into a stultifying, petrifying arrogant echo-chamber. The worst kind of tribalism.

This Week
And make no mistake about it, what we saw earlier this week in D.C. was the results, the manifestation of
that kind of tribalism. An echo-chamber gone off the absolute deep end. It’s not just sad, although it is
that. It’s dangerous.

So where’ s the hope? I think Christ shows us a better way. You see Christianity is a strange tribe, a tribe
that is no-tribe, a tribe whose doors are to remain open to the Other. Let’s be those kind of people.

In your tribe, keep the doors open to the wizards in your midst. You say, “The wizards!” It’s a metaphor:
the outsiders, the strangers, the one’s no one else wants around, the unexpected visitors, because some-
times God gives you gifts of insight and wisdom that you could receive no other way.

Don’t let your tribe devolve into arrogant know-it-alls, into self-righteous political, social, religious phar-
isees who have nothing to learn. And let’s not kid ourselves, this week it was the political right who’s
stuff stinks but next time it could be the left or the moderates. Stay humble. Stay a learner.

And let’s do that same thing in our church, I mean for goodness sake it’s in our name — The Table —
let’s keep expanding the circle of God’s welcome to everyone. Because Jesus has come not to coddle in-
siders but to welcome outsiders. That’s our job church. Let’s live it.

Prayer