You can listen to this sermon here.
Happy are
the people whose strength is in you; whose hearts are set on the pilgrim’s way.
(Psalm 84:4)
I want to talk this morning about
this pilgrim’s way. I believe we can see
it in the story of the magi’s journey to Bethlehem. It is a model for our own
spiritual journey. We are, in many ways, the magi in this story.
If that is true, then what do we know
about these people? And why did they set
out in search of a new-born king?
We are not told exactly where they
were from, only “from the East.” At the
time Jesus was born that could have been many places: Arabia, Persia, Babylon, we don’t know. They were, however, people who studied the
stars, who believed that studying the stars was a way to know the future. We might call them astrologers, but they were
the astronomers of their day.
The stars were aligning in such a way
that they saw a new king to be born in the West—in Judea was their best guess,
and so they traveled to Judea’s capitol, Jerusalem, assuming that a son was to
be born of the current king, Herod.
How are we like the magi? We are seekers. We seek the good life, which means many
different things to us: prosperity,
contentment, happiness, peace, love, some measure of control over our future,
our destiny. But we are restless,
because we are faced too much with mystery, with things outside our control, with
the limitations of life.
So we, too, look for a star,
something or someone upon which to hook our fortunes. Some of these “hook-ups” only provide
momentary clarity or relief, although we can get stuck trying them over and
over again until they become an addiction.
Some of us want to hook onto the star of a politician or an ideology
that promises to bring order and prosperity to our lives. This, too, can become an addiction. Sometimes we want to depend on our family for
these things, this sense that things are all right and will be all right.
But none of these things give us any
consistency in meeting our needs. They
disappoint or fail us. We experience
frustration and pain. We experience life
falling short of our expectations. Yet
we still search for a star to follow.
Our grasping for the good life, for a
star to follow, inevitably brings us to some Herod. And when we meet him we have probably arrived
there with the best of intentions. Surely
someone with wealth and power can meet our need. But Herod doesn’t really have much power at
all. He’s a stooge for those with real
power—the Romans. He’s a snake-oil
salesman. The only thing he’s good at is
building monuments to himself—oh, and murdering anyone who threatens him,
including some of his own children.
Still, it is tempting to be satisfied
with Herod. He does bring order, even if
it is out of fear. And he does seem to
have religious people on his side, and they seem to be most helpful. They know where the good life lies—in this
case, in Bethlehem, a few miles southeast of Jerusalem. There you will find what you’re looking for,
or, rather, what Herod wants you to find.
So off we go, following the star we
have found, but then all kinds of odd things start happening. The king you’ve sought doesn’t seem very
kingly. He is a helpless baby, born to
parents of no particular importance.
Yes, his father is a descendant of King David, but then they tell you
the story about how Joseph is not really the child’s father. The magi must have been confused and not a
little embarrassed. The gifts they
brought seem somehow useless in this setting.
If we follow the star of faith, these
things will happen to us. It may not be
what we expected. It may not be as grand
or as clarifying or as obviously life-changing as we hoped or were told it
would be. We come face to face with a
strange God, who does not exercise the kind of power we assumed he would, no
matter how many times we call him “almighty.”
Who sometimes seems as helpless as we ourselves at times feel. A God whose light shines through not
glittering stuff but ordinary stuff—water and oil, bread and wine.
We can go away disappointed from
religion as well. I am sure the magi
were tempted to go away disappointed.
They had not truly found what they were looking for.
But then they make a connection that
enables them to have an encounter with what is really going on here. I imagine one of them says something like,
“Well this is all very strange.” And the
others shake their heads, sharing his bewilderment. But then one of them says, “But you have to
admit, we’re pretty strange too.” They
realize that they are strangers who have met the stranger. And the only thing that has passed between
them that makes any difference at all is acceptance, love.
We don’t know if that is how it
happened. All that we do know is that
they figure out not to go back to Herod, but to go home by a different
road. And when we have encountered the
living God, however that happens, we know it because we find ourselves on a
different road than we have been on.
Something changes, and all the stars that have twinkled in our eyes
before do not matter anymore.
What is this different road? We could say that it is the road of faith,
hope, and love, but those words are abstractions. This road is characterized by actions, things
we decide to do because we are motivated by faith, hope, and love. This road is named acceptance, it is named
repentance, it is named hospitality, it is named generosity, it is named
forgiveness and reconciliation, it is named justice and peace, acts which
uphold the dignity of every human person.
This is not the easy road. But it is the road of life. The road back to Herod is the road of
death. The road back to dependence on
ourselves and the ability to control our own future is the road of death.
The journey of the magi is our
journey, and it lays before us the choices we must make, the things we must
look for, the love that must change our hearts, the road of life that is open
before us.
No comments:
Post a Comment