(1) In the time of King Herod, after Jesus
was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, (2) asking,
"Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at
its rising, and have come to pay him homage." (3) When King Herod heard this, he was
frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; (4) and calling together all the chief priests and
scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. (5) They told
him, "In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: (6) 'And you,
Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from
you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.'" (7) Then Herod secretly
called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared.
(8) Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, "Go and search diligently for the child;
and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage."
(9) When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star
that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.
(10) When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. (11) On
entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid
him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh. (12) And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,
they left for their own country by another road.
- Matthew 2: 1-12
Today's scripture is one of the most familiar stories in the Christian tradition:
astrologers from the East see a new star in the sky and, believing that the birth of a
star signifies the birth of a new king, set out to find the baby, bringing gifts to honor
him. They journey far, expect to find the prince in a palace, but find him instead in a
simple home in Bethlehem. Having knelt before the baby king Jesus, and been warned not to
return the same way they came to him, they take another road home they had never taken
before.
In these 12 verses, Matthew tells not only an old story, but the story of our faith
journey, as well. We too, have searched the night sky for meaning: whether lying on the
beach as the sun goes down, or sitting in a mountain clearing, or looking out the window
at stars framed by silent trees.
We too, like the wise men leaving home to find a king or Harry Potter going off to
Hogwarts to find an identity, have also left the safe comfort of our earliest faith on a
quest to understand our place in the world and discover something worthy of our ultimate
loyalty.
Like the wise men of old who initially sought the new king in a palace instead of a
humble house, we too have looked for love in all the wrong places: looking for ultimate
meaning in big houses and fancy clothes, in corner offices and plaques on the wall, in
tidy answers to messy questions and in rigid lines of good and evil, us and them; only to
find that in the face of spiritual hunger and the large questions of life, such false
deities are a thin gruel of illusions and lies that starve our soul.
As did the wise men, we have sought God among the trappings of the world, and instead
found the baby king among us in well-worn chairs and well-lined faces, in simple gifts and
the complexities of simple love.
He's not what we expect.
We want God to save the world with a mighty flourish, but Jesus says, "Feed my
sheep."
We want God to be impressed by the world's accolades, but Jesus asks, "Do you want
to be healed?"
We want God to take our side, no matter what, but Jesus says, "If they ask for
your shirt, give your coat as well."
We want God to fix all our problems, find us parking spaces, make us happy and life
easy, but Jesus says, "Rise, take up your pallet and walk."
We want God to punish our enemies and with a righteous hand, save us from evil. But
crying out from a cross, Jesus moans, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do."
No, this Jesus is not what we expected when we went seeking God and followed that star.
Yet as those wise men knew, so too, do we that this is the one who will save the world,
and save us; the one for whom we have waited an eternity; the one to whom we will give our
loyalty, our life, around whom we will build our meaning and purpose; through the prism of
whose love we will see the world and our place within it, the one in whom we will live and
move and have our being, and by whose resurrection we know that we belong to God
When the wise men found the baby Jesus, they found even more than they had bargained
for, as do we. Alert now to lies that would destroy God's work, they went home a different
way. We, too, are changed, more able to see through the world's illusions and lies and to
see both the world and our place within it from God's perspective.
In Jesus' birth, we know that the God whose mysteries have been experienced in
countless ways across the centuries, the eternal God, the one God beyond all gods, beyond
our hopes and needs, beyond our images and idols, beyond even our most faithful
constructs, this God now hallows life by becoming human. Even more clearly now, we know we
cannot denigrate ourselves, or others, or any part of creation without also denigrating
the Creator who made it and hallowed it with the Divine breath in human form.
As Sr. Joan Chittister writes in How Can I Find God?, "Everything we are,
everything that is said to us, everything that happens to us is some kind of call from
God. In fact, everything that happens is God's call to us either to accept what we should
not change or to change what we should not accept so that the Presence of God can flourish
where we are."
The first time we looked at the stars and wondered about God, we answered a call to a
journey of mystery beyond our knowing. Like the wise men, we have seen a star from God
that does not stay in the tidy boxes of a manicured faith, but shines into messy stables
and simple homes and dusty, ambiguous roads of life, shines into our past, illuminates our
present and leads us forward. The light from that star calls us anew each day, showing us
a new bend in the path to the home God has prepared for us. Jesus Christ, the Light of the
World, is our beacon, our hope, and the star we follow home. Amen.
