Text: Matthew 2: 1-14
If one of the magi dropped in to speak with us this morning, and we had the good grace to enquire about his journey, I wonder what we would hear?
This morning I suggest we make room for his voice, his story, listening to it with an ear for what the Spirit may be saying to us.
And so the Magi speaks:
Tradition has it that there were 3 of us, only 3. I suppose it was the gifts … gold, frankincense and myrrh. Oh those gifts !?*! … but that’s getting ahead of myself.
Tradition has it that we were just 3, all men, from the East.
And then from there the details begin to differ. In some renditions, we’re kings; in others we’re astrologers, or astronomers; elsewhere, we’re known to be wise. In other words, some things got lost or embroidered in translation!
You know what? It doesn’t much matter what we are. What matters … what matters is that we saw. That’s what started the journey in the first place…the fact that we saw. Well that’s not entirely true. First we were given something to see. You see what happened didn’t start with us, it didn’t come from us.
It was given … from beyond us. And we noticed.
And I suppose, it was even more than that, because you can notice something, you can see the contours, appreciate the details, you can pay attention, and what you have in the end is a report. But in this case, what we saw found its way inside us where it quite literally moved us to respond.
Maybe that’s what, in hindsight, they mean by wise …our openness to trusting the tug we felt inside, even though we had no clue where this journey was taking us. It seemed like foolishness to us!
Tradition has it that what we saw was a birth star. In my own words, we were given this glimpse that something holy was unfolding … something from afar and yet near at hand … something hopeful and far reaching … something we had been waiting for all our lives without even knowing it. It was only as we committed our hearts to it and our steps toward it that, little by little, more was revealed, and in ways we never could have predicted.
That’s the other thing about this journey … what we thought was the right move, the right direction, was always being corrected. We were constantly being re-oriented, sent in a different way, awakened to a totally different wisdom.
So there was a new leader on the rise. Common sense says Jerusalem is the place. We had no trouble gaining entrance to the palace. We were, after all, affluent, clean, clearly foreigners, but it was obvious we were coming in peace.
As soon as we saw him, we realized this is not the one. At least the way the guards trembled in his presence, and the fear that possessed him, masquerading as competence, there was nothing new, nothing hopeful about him, nothing that spoke to what had been awakened in us. So we asked him: “where is your child, or is it your grandchild? … can we see the new born king?”
There flashed across his face this dreaded puzzlement. Then he gathered himself, and with apparent aplomb, he left us to wait as he disappeared beyond closed doors. When he returned he told us, “Bethlehem, about nine miles south. Do search out the child,” he ordered us, “and bring me word of his whereabouts, that I too may honour him.”
We were only relieved to be on our way--there was such a vile energy about that place. It took us most of the nine miles to shed it AND to make our peace with yet another unforeseen change in direction. Some day maybe we’ll be able to let the next steps come without pre-judging where they will take us and how we’ll be in it.
Maybe … some day.
Everything surprised us about the child when we found him. Everything!
First, that he was … that after all our wandering, that such a child does indeed exist! and we would lay eyes on him. We found him in such basic quarters, in this out of the way village, born to peasant parents. In this lies the hope of our world?
He was such an ordinary … beautiful yes … but ordinary child. He could have been anyone of us!
So you might imagine how silly we felt about the gifts we brought! In a palace they would at least have some sense of place. But here, they felt ridiculous – for this vulnerable little child who needed only our care. Kneeling down before him, our sense of true treasure was completely altered. But these were the gifts we brought, so we gave them. The parents were so gracious, receiving our gifts, as though they carried a piece of our own selves.
They made room and more than room for us to be there. At one point the child’s mother even gave him into our arms to hold and then taking him back she began to nurse him, til we all fell asleep in the warmth of that place.
The next morning we woke up, each of us disturbed by a dream ... a dream in which we were warned not to go back through Jerusalem, but to return home by another way. Another way … that defies Herod’s orders? Another way that takes us not through the centre, not by the well-worn routes but to the edges, out of the way places? It would mean forgoing whatever privilege or reward Herod might have in store for our cooperation.
So once again we’re in this place of deciding about what’s real? and how do we proceed? How far do we trust this tug that has led us here -- only to be met by this vulnerable child and dreams of another way home, when Herod sits only nine miles away with all the power of the empire behind him.
Why would we trust in this most fragile hope when the world is in the grip of powers that would crush it in a heartbeat?
As foolish at it may appear, we threw our lot in with the baby, and the dream that imagines there’s an alternative. What I mean to say is that we threw our lot in with the One who brought us this far, who keeps showing us the way, who keeps giving us signs -- strange as they are.
That morning as we set off, we chose to entrust our hearts and our steps once more to that One, believing that more will be revealed as we go.
Have you felt the tug? telling you there is another way home.
There is another way home.
The way is there in the child’s life, in his death and in his rising.
The Way is with us.
He in our steps … and we on his path.
He in our steps … and we on his path.
