Be like the Magi on a Journey

2 Christmas C  January 3, 2016

Jeremiah 31:7-14   Ps
Eph. 1:3-6,15-19a Matthew 2:1-12
 Lectionary Link

  Today is the tenth day of Christmas and what gift did your true love bring you?  If you received the ten Lords a-leaping then you’re already had such excitement that this sermon will be but a yawn.  And tomorrow you have the eleven pipers piping to wake you up to get you back on your post-holiday schedule.  Happy New Year. Today we have read narrative about the Wise men from the East, who brought the Christ child gifts. The magi from the East is a curious story that delights us at Christmastide because we've never been able to experience such a unique astronomical manifestation such as occurred in the star of Bethlehem.  We always do an Oliver Stone version of the magi during the Christmas pageant since for staging purposes we have the magi arrive at the stable.  Those producers do not want us to spend extra money on productions cost so we have to make minor adjustments to the script.  Kings are more interesting than “magi” or intellectuals because Kings wear more elaborate costumes.  How did the three kings traditions get associated with the Magi?  The writer of the books of Psalms and Isaiah wrote about kings coming and bringing gifts.  And Kings, of course, would ride camels and there had to be three of them since there were three gifts?  Well, the Gospel does not say that the magi were kings, and we don’t know if they rode camels, and we don’t know how many there were.  They probably traveled in a large group, a caravan for safety on the road.  And they didn’t arrive at the stable with the shepherds; they visited the Christ child at his home at a much later time.  So, if we are supposed to be about truth, are we worried about Christmas Pageant productions, let alone our famous songs about “We three kings?”  I’m not worried; there is much more to be worried about in this world than this.  Could it be that the magi were used by the Gospel writer to characterized learned foreigners and gentiles of faith who had made an honest search to come to know Christ?  They had read in the book of Numbers about the star that came from Jacob.  And like today, the word star can be a metaphor for a famous person.  And so they were interested in that “star.”  The Caesar had a comet at his birth; and Christians believed that Christ was more than a Caesar; they believed that all creation responded to the Christ. So this story is a statement about what was happening in the early church:  Gentiles from far and wide were accepting Christ as the Messiah and many Jews were not.  The Magi represented all of the foreigners who had found the birth of Christ in their lives.  This story of the Magi proclaims that the life of Christ was not to be locked up in Palestine.  It was not to be held captive by the religious ritual practices of the synagogue.  This story is a proclamation that God belongs within the experience of people of all of the earth; it was the birth of Christ coming to anyone who wanted it which made the message of the accessibility of God’s presence known.    

   Amongst the many lessons that are contained in the story of the magi, I would like to offer a reading of this story that centers upon the notion of the journey as a spiritual quest.  Since the Gospels are spiritual manuals for Christian disciples, it is not far-fetched to understand the journey of the magi as encoding important features of the Christian life.  

  The Christian life can be seen as a journey.  One important feature of journey is a time of dislocation from the familiar settings of one’s life.  Why are we often happy to get home after a vacation?  It’s because we enjoy the convenience and predictability of home life.  Life on the road is new and uncertain. But leaps in learning cannot take place unless we are exposed to new experiences.  New experiences help us to surpass old knowledge, old biases, old prejudices.  The Magi gave up the familiarity of home to make the quest for something new.  

  That brings us to the second point of the magi's journey: Their journey involved faith because it involved risk.  They were driven toward an undefined unknown, yet their hearts burned with hope and anticipation. One of the attributes that we like in children is their curiosity.  They have this insatiable drive, this quest for the new.  It often gets them into trouble but it enlarges their life experience.  The writer to the Hebrews, called faith the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.  The magi had this evidence of faith.  This deep sense of outcome before they even arrived at their goal.  We as Christians, live by faith, because we still have not attained to things for which we hope. Hope presents the vision; faith is the mobilization of our lives toward a positive outcome.  

   Next, the magi were star gazers.  They followed their star.  They were in touch with their environment.  They believed that the heavens declared the glory of God.  You've heard it said that there are two types of people: One sees the cup as half empty, the other sees it as half full.  How do you and I read our environments.  Do we see our environment as fatalistically working against us?  Or do we see ourselves as living and moving and being in God.  Do we see the ground of our lives as hallowed ground, a pathway to the new enlargements that God has for us?  Christian faith allows us to interpret our environment as a divine ecology.  In this divine ecology we begin to find God, in bread and wine, and water, oil, fire, in the beauty of nature, and in the people around us.  And we begin to read God's creation as important signs in our spiritual journey.  God’s creation was not made to be a distracting idol or a frightening hindrance to our journey.  We have seen the star.  The magi learned to read God's creation as signs to assist them in their spiritual quest.  

   Fourth, the magi brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  We may think that these are exotic gifts.  But I would call them native gifts.  They brought the obvious gifts indigenous to the place where they lived. There is a message for you and me: We should give to God the native talent of our own lives. God does not ask of us the exotic or the impossible; God wants only what come from our natural abilities.  God is delighted to receive the gifts that we already have.   And if we give what we have, we will find that we have more abilities and gifts than we have ever realized.

   Finally, what is the end of the magi journey?  It is to arrive at the birth place of the Christ, the Messiah, the King. Bethlehem.  What is the goal of the Christian life?  It is to be the very place of the birth of Christ.  We must be born again.  We must be the very place where the Christ child is born and experience the elevation our lives to a sense of dignity and worth, a sense of royalty.  The magi reached their goal.  In Christian baptism, we reach our goal when Christ is born in us, but that is only the beginning of the Christian life.  From the birth of Christ in us, we must return home by a different route.  We must bring that message to aid others in their spiritual quest.  

  Remember today, you and I are the magi, the wise persons.   Are we living up to this calling?  Let us today, comfort and exhort one another in this exciting journey of wisdom, hope and faith.  Amen.