Dog Kisses

Ephesians 1:3-14 and Matthew 2:1-12

Have you ever gone to pet a dog and been greeted with a big, slobbery lick to the face? While we may not enjoy the slobber, there is definitely something heartwarming about the experience. Researchers believe there may be a number of reasons that dogs will lick someone. There’s a likelihood that the person smells a certain way and the dog wants to then taste that person. For example, human sweat has a particular odor to it that can vary by person, but it is salty and dogs like that. I know my dogs do. Other times, a dog might lick you to get your attention. Our dog Wishbone does this a lot, particularly with April. She will be working on something on her computer, and Wishbone will come sit next to her and lick her hands so she has a very difficult time typing, which is exactly what he wants. He wants her to stop doing her work and pay attention to him. It can be really annoying, but also kind of endearing. Dogs lick for a variety of reasons.

I was at the gas station a couple of weeks ago, and there was a woman at the pump next to me who had what looked like a doberman in the backseat of her car. When she went to pull the gas pump out of the tank, the pump handle caught on the gas tank door and gas sprayed out all over the car door and puddled on the ground. The woman looked panicky. She opened the car door, seemingly searching for something to clean up some of the gas that spilled, and the dog jumped out of the car, licked from the puddle of gas, and took off running. Wanting to help, I took off after the dog. He ran a block or so before I caught up to him. I found him walking around in circles and then he collapsed on the ground. I had to pick him up and carry him back to the woman’s car. Don’t worry though. He was all right. Turns out he just ran out of gas. Dogs lick for a variety of reasons, but when they lick us, it definitely feels like a sign of love and affection. They trust us. We are important to them. And they lick us to let us know that. They slobber us because they care.

In our passage from Matthew 2 for this morning, we read about the magi who came to Herod from the east. They came to find the child who had been born to be king of the Jew. They tell Herod that they observed the child’s star and wish to pay him homage. We aren’t given a lot of information about who these magi are. There has been a lot of speculation over the years, but no definitive answer has been discovered. The traditional answer is that these magi were likely either wise men or kings from the area that had previously belonged to Babylon and Persia. Tradition has also led to us imagining that there were three magi. Now, it’s certainly a possibility that there were only three, but it could be that there were many more than that. The reason we chose three is because the magi brought three gifts to the child: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The truth is that none of those details really matter all that much. What matters is that they learned of Christ’s birth and they desired to find him to pay him homage.

However, when Herod learns of this, he is frightened, likely because this future king is a threat to his power. Herod decides he needs to do something about it, so he calls the magi to himself and asks them for the exact time when the star had appeared. Then, Herod sent them to Bethlehem of Judea to find the child and report back to him where the child is so that he might also go and pay him homage. The magi go to Bethlehem following the star and find Jesus with his mother Mary at the place over which the star had stopped. The magi kneel at the feet of the child, pay him homage, and present their gifts to him. Then they leave and return home. The text tells us that they were told in a dream not to return to Herod, so they go home by another route that won’t take them near Jerusalem.

As I studied this text this week, one phrase stuck out to me more than the others. It appears three times in these eleven verses. The phrase is “pay him homage.” That was what the magi came to do, what Herod said he wanted to do, and what the magi actually did in the end. So what does that even mean? If we go simply off of the NRSV’s translation, we would need to know what homage is. According to Webster’s Dictionary, the primary definition of homage is “a feudal ceremony by which a person acknowledges vassalage to a lord.” If we go by that definition, then the magi come to Jesus in order to acknowledge the boy Jesus as their lord. They are subjugating themselves to Jesus. It would also mean that Herod told the magi that he wanted to subjugate himself to Jesus as well. Given Herod’s role and authority and power, subjugating himself to a child would have seemed pretty hard to believe I would think. We learn in the end that Herod was not really ever planning to do that. He wanted the child found so he could destroy him.

There is a slightly different definition of this phrase that I want to look at as well. If we go back to the Greek, we see the word proskuneo. Proskuneo is a word that appears 60 times in the New Testament and is most often translated as “worship.” Jesus uses this word nine times in his conversation with the woman at the well, and he says that a time is coming when the true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth. What I discovered about this word that I find really interesting though is its etymology. Proskuneo is derived from pros meaning “toward” or “against” and kuneo, which is a derivative of the word kuno which means “dog.” Putting these together, it seems that proskuneo means something like lowering oneself like a dog to lick the hand of their master. I think that we could interpret that idea in a couple different ways, but I’d like to focus on just one of the interpretations this morning.

If we think about dogs licking their people and consider how that might apply to the worship of Jesus, I see two things I want to talk a little about. First, worship is an act of giving, but is not entirely selfless. Think about a dog licking its human. Yes, the dog is showing affection and love to the person, but they are also hoping to receive affection and love in return. When we bow down and worship Jesus, it is an act that signifies our love and devotion to Jesus. We are paying him homage and promising to serve him. But we do so with the hope (and perhaps the expectation) that we will in return receive something back from Jesus. Maybe that is peace in our hearts or protection from the troubles of this world or forgiveness of sins or eternal life. We worship as an act of devotion, but it is never entirely selfless. We are always hoping for something in return. We kiss Jesus’ hands with the hope that he will comfort us and show us some love in response. That is human nature, but I also think it is a part of what worship is.

Worship is not entirely selfless, but worship is about following. The magi were not Jews, they were not well-versed in the prophecies of a coming Messiah. Yet they saw a star and recognized a significance in it. And they decided they needed to follow it. They left their homeland and journeyed to Jerusalem to learn more about this child. When they found out that Herod didn’t know anything about the child, they went out in search of him. They followed the star to a house in Bethlehem and found the child with his mother. While journeying like this was probably not foreign to the magi, the purpose was different. They chose to follow a star that led them to a child who was prophesied to be the king of a people not their own. They followed God’s leading in order to worship this newborn king.

We know this king. We know the amazing things that Jesus did in his life and through his death and resurrection. We have heard his call. We have seen his star. Will we follow where it leads? Will we continue till we find him? Will we bow down and, in joy, offer him our gifts? I love to see the excitement my dogs express when I’ve been gone for a while and return home. Or when they see me walking outside, even though they saw me inside just a few moments earlier. I want that to be the way I feel when I come to worship God. I want to be excited to draw near to my God. I want to offer him my worship with love and affection, like the kisses my  dogs give to me. May we all find that joy as we seek the Lord! And may our hearts respond with love for God and love for our neighbors! Amen!