May Almighty God, who led the Wise
Men by the shining of a star to find the Christ, the Light from Light, lead us
also, in our pilgrimage, to find the Lord. Amen.
On
Epiphany, we celebrate the manifestation of Jesus to the world, as the Holy
Family was visited by visitors from the East. And in their encounter, there are
several things for us to take note of and build upon in our own faith journeys.
The first thing we see about the magi’s encounter with God is that it did not
go according to the plan. It’s often the same for us too, isn’t it? These wise
men were astrologers, journeying from a far away land because of a sign that
they saw in the night sky. But notice that they don’t follow the star all the
way to Bethlehem. No, instead they show up Herod’s palace in Jerusalem.
Bethlehem and Jerusalem are about 6 miles apart, roughly the distance from here
to the Rowan County portion of the Yadkin River. Not bad by car, but by camel
that’s a least a an hour off. What we see in the magi is that they missed
finding God on their first attempt. They thought they were following the signs,
they thought they were on the right path,
they even had a divine sign in the star, and they still managed to miss
Bethlehem by a decent margin.
And not only
that, they were a few years late. Now remember, we’re reading Matthew. It’s
hard to keep it straight, but there are two accounts of Jesus’ birth. One in Matthew,
the other in Luke. Luke is the shepherds and angels, the census, and manger.
Matthew though is different; Matthew has the wise men and the flight into
Egypt. If you did a Christmas pageant based only on Matthew, it would be very
short. Now I say all of this to remind you that the wise men didn’t come to
visit the baby Jesus in the manger, because in Matthew, there was no manger.
The word used for “child” in Matthew means “young child,” not “baby.” So here
are the magi, they show up and ask, “where is the one that has been born.”
Well, at this point it’s been a while since the birth. Again, they show us that
sometimes we not only miss finding God by miles, but also by years.
And why might
this be? I think it’s interesting that they went to Jerusalem and King Herod to
find the Messiah. From a distance, they probably saw the palace on the horizon
and thought to themselves, “surely the Messiah, the King of the Jews, must be
there.” But they were wrong. God wasn’t to be found in the expected places,
with the power, on a throne. Instead, God was found in a tiny little village
called Bethlehem- a dusty little town, not the big capital city. The wise men’s
arrival shows us that when we’re looking for God, it pays to look in the
unexpected places and that often, we’ll be off a bit in our first attempts.
Though the magi
were a day late, they we not a dollar short. They came bearing gifts for Jesus.
What the wise men show us is that when we have an encounter with God, we bring
all of ourselves. We’ll start with the gold. This symbolism is pretty easy to
figure out. Gold is our worldly substances. Money is supposed to be a wonderful
tool that allows for free trade and value to be assigned to objects and our
labor. But really, don’t we worry about money more than we enjoy it? We worry
about paying for that bill, we worry about our car because we can’t afford to
get it fixed, we worry about college debt, we worry about taking care of our
aging parents and the cost of senior living centers, we worry about the
paycheck being enough, we worry that we won’t have enough money for the
vacation we’re planning, we worry about the rates of return on our investments.
We worry and we worry about money.
I’m not asking
you for more money tonight, have no fear. Financial security is something that
is very important to all of us. Further worry about money isn’t the solution. But
God wants us to know the freedom that the magi have in giving- the freedom of
not worrying; the freedom of having power over our money instead of it having
power over us. I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again and again. If
you want to know if you have power over your money, try to give it away. When we
have an encounter with God, the magi show us that we bring all that we have,
including the gold.
Frankincense is
a bit more of a stretch. Frankincense was often used in worship services; it’s
an incense used to provoke awe and wonder. As the smoke rises to the ceiling or
the sky, so do our thoughts drift towards God. Frankincense is a symbol of our
intellect. It was St. Augustine who said “O Lord, our hearts are restless until
they find rest in thee.” Our deepest yearning is to be known by our Creator and
to, in return, know our Maker. This is something really important to me. I’ve
always been an academic sort of person, I enjoy thinking and debating theology,
fun reading for me is reading about religion. And I think that’s the mission of
the Church, or at least part of it. I think we can all agree on the importance
of discipleship. Let’s not forget what discipleship means. Discipleship means
learning- it means being a student. And if that’s what it means, everyone once
in a while, we need to take a look at our report card. What kind of grades are
we getting, do we have too many absences, have we dropped out? So this year you
might take up reading the Bible each day or becoming a regular participant in
Christian Formation programs at St. Luke’s as a way to offer frankincense.
And the third
gift is myrrh. Myrrh is a fragrant ointment that was used in anointing the
dead body upon burial. Sort of an odd gift to give to a young child, isn’t it?
But it’s a foreshadowing of what the Messiah will endure. And it’s a reminder
to us that we need to offer our suffering and sorrow to God. If God can use our
gold and frankincense, how much more can God use our vulnerability and pain?
Whether it be divorce, the death of a loved one, a job loss, an estranged
familial relationship, whatever it is, God wants it. God can make all things
whole again, but only if we hand them over. Let us remember that God loves us
intimately for who we are, not for how we present ourselves. God wants our joys
and sorrows, our successes and our failures. So let us not be ashamed to bring
our myrrh to an encounter with God.
And finally,
the magi show us what life is like after an encounter with God. First, they
leave. It was likely a wonderful experience to see the Messiah, to spend time
with the Holy Family, to be witness to something so powerful as God’s Incarnate
love. But they couldn’t stay there forever. You know when you have those
wonderful experiences in life, you try
to hang onto them, don’t you? After a wonderful meal, you linger over dessert
because you don’t want to leave. After seeing a moving concert, all you want to
do is sit there in awe. When drinking an amazing bottle of wine, you both want
to enjoy sip after sip, but you also don’t want to finish your glass. After a
romantic date, you want to stay up all night, because you don’t want to fall asleep
and have it end. It is in our nature to try to hang onto to those holy moments.
It is only natural to want to stay in those places where we’ve closely
encountered God.
But we can’t
stay there, and the magi show us that. There is nothing at all wrong with enjoying
the time, but we do have to continue on with life. Eventually, we have to go
back to our world. But we do so as a changed person. And this, I think, is the
best part of this whole story and has the most to say to us. If you remember
nothing else from this sermon, remember this: the magi went home by another
road. Our passage ends by saying “they left for their own country by another
road.”
You see, they
had to go differently than they came. They had an encounter with God. And if
you have a genuine encounter with God, it changes you. You have no choice but
to go home by another road. You can’t walk in the same way that you came. You can’t
leave, saying the same words that you used on your way there. An encounter with
God is a paradox of sorts.
The poet W.H.
Auden wrote in his Christmas Oratorio that when the magi encountered God, they
said “here and now, our endless journey ends.” They can finally stop searching
for more wisdom; they no longer need to be in want for anything else. But the
shepherds in that poem, when they encounter God, proclaim “here and now, our
endless journey begins.” And so it is. In an encounter with God, our endless journeys
end and begin.
In Christ, we
have found what were looking for. And in Christ we have found our purpose. It
is that which we have always been looking for and that which we will always be
seeking to follow. If we have encountered God, something must change. We must
be changed people. Change can be hard, but God beckons us to living transformed
lives.
The magi show
us what an encounter with God is about. It’s about persevering, because we know
that we might be late and go to the wrong house at first. It’s about bringing
all of our being to the encounter: our possessions of gold, the incense of our
intellect, and the myrrh of our brokenness. And as wonderful as the experience
may be, we have to move back to the world to share this grace with others. But
as we do so, we will be changed people. The question for tonight is this-
how will this encounter with God change you?
