We Keep Seeking (2)

If anyone is late to a birthday party, it’s the wise men. If we were looking at this in real time, we would celebrate Christmas and the magi wouldn’t arrive until 2-3 years later by some estimations. Talk about a belated birthday. I knew of a church in Tupelo that had their holy family in one place and the magi way away. Ever so slowly, before Epiphany, they would move them closer to the stable. Long past Christmas, and the wise men are still seeking.

Who were the wise men really? Interestingly, only Matthew’s gospel mentions them. Since he mentions three gifts, it is easy for us to assume there were only three individuals....and of course we assume that they were all men. There is even a legend where they are given names (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar). There are various thoughts about their background (astrologers, philosophers, sorcerers) and where they came from (Persia). Legends regarding their gifts and legends of the star they followed. Was it a supernova, a comet, or an alignment of planets creating a superstar?

But the truth is, we don’t really know. Nadia Bolz Weber says “Three kings from the orient bringing gifts to Jesus in a manger is a charming story but it’s not actually the one we find in the Bible. A closer reading of Matthew shows that we have no idea how many people there were, we don’t know how far east they came from, was it the Orient … was it New Jersey?...They were Magi as in, magicians; and not the cute kind you hire for you kid’s birthday party. More likely, they were opportunistic, pagan, soothsaying, tarot card reading astrologers. Yet history made them out to be kings, maybe because the reality that they were magicians is too distasteful, since no one wants the weird fortune teller lady from the circus with her scarves and crystal balls to be the first to discover the birth of our Lord.”

Maybe the wise men when thought of this way can seem like a strange addition to our nativities, but I think that’s the point. Matthew’s audience was dealing with thinking everyone had to become Jewish in order to believe in Jesus. And so Matthew has the wise men in his story, not because they fit, but precisely because they didn’t. Matthew wanted us to see that Jesus was serious about the good news being for all people.

We know that the wise men weren’t Jewish. We know that they were foreigners, going far beyond their homeland and crossing over ethnic, political, and religious boundaries to seek out this child. We know that they traveled a very long time. Surely they must have wondered if they were still heading the right way. I think sometimes when we hear this story we assume the star kept shining for the whole journey, like a magical GPS dot that always led them forward. But what if it wasn’t that easy? We know that they stopped in Jerusalem to ask King Herod for directions. They weren’t always so sure, but they were still seeking.

Some say the wise men practiced another religion known as Zoroastrianism. They didn’t come to know of the child through Old Testament prophecy. They spoke the language of the stars and the heavens. In this light they experienced awe and wonder, and began to follow. Did you catch that? God spoke through these individuals in a way that they could understand and drew them near? You see, sometimes it isn’t just a straight path to Bethlehem. Sometimes the road is winding and we have to stop along the way. Sometimes we aren’t really sure we are still headed the right direction, but we are still seeking.

I don’t know if I have any stargazers in the room with me this morning or any of you who experience awe and wonder by the light of a night sky. It can be hard to notice it sometimes if there is light pollution clouding out the natural light of the cosmos. Last year, the first images of the new James Webb Space Telescope were released. If you haven’t seen them, I encourage you to go and look at them. They really are extraordinary and evoke an experience of awe.

Dr. Bill Brown of Columbia seminary in looking at these images said that there is an emerging scientific field of awe. And he said that all experiences of awe have one thing in common: vastness. This is an experience of feeling so small compared to something so great. It has a tendency to overturn one’s own frame of reference or worldview.

Last summer Jim and I traveled with some friends of ours to Bar Harbor Maine. It was late at night and I told Jim I wanted to go into Acadia National Park to sand beach to star gaze. So the guys drove us out there and my friend and I stood out on the sand and stared up at the sky. The guys kept laughing at us saying, “I’m so glad we drove all the way out here in the middle of the night to look at stars, the same stars we have in Mississippi. What’s the difference?”But I had never seen stars like this before. All of the distractions weren’t there and it was as if they were bending down in front of my face, a whole galaxy I hadn’t noticed was right there. I was caught up in awe and the vast cosmos of God. I couldn’t unsee it.

I only thought I had seen stars before, but then I really saw the stars. Similarly with the images from the James Webb telescope, you can look at side-by sides of the same nebula, the same galaxies taken with the Hubble verses the James Webb and you realize there is so much more to be seen, so much more to seek. Things we weren’t able to detect before are suddenly right before us. And it changes everything.

I wonder what it must have felt like for the wise men to finally arrive and stare into the face of the child they had been seeking for so long. This was the epiphany or the revealing of God that begins our epiphany season this morning. Dr. John Philip Newell said that “it should not so much be understood as the appearance of God as the transparence of God. The divine light that shines in the child is not a foreign light to the earth. It is the light at the heart of all life. It is the light from which all things come. If somehow this light were extracted from the universe, everything would cease to exist. So this is a story about the light at the heart of everything, the light at the heart of you, the light at the heart of me.”

Kevin Hainline, an astronomer who was helped to launch the James Webb telescope, gazed at the images for the first time and said, “I think that this is why the total obvious purpose, the meaning of life, the reason why we are here is not to destroy. It is not to other each other. It’s literally to love each other.”

I wonder what it must have been like for the wise men. Perhaps we assume that the manger was the end or culmination of their seeking, but I like to think that maybe they realized it was only the beginning. Once they saw the light of Christ, everything changed. At this point, gifts were secondary. They worshiped this tiny baby boy, in which the light of heaven was contained. They went home by another way, protecting the holy family. The epiphany changed their trajectory. Before the manger they followed the light. After the manger they were filled with the light.

This is the light of awe and wonder, the revelation of Christ. It is the light that changes everything, the light that is the heart of God, and the light that is the source of love.

So what will this year reveal for you? What will you seek? How will your star words guide you this year? Maybe you think you’ve seen it all. That this year couldn’t possibly hold anything new. No magical epiphanies in your future. Just the same-old, same-old.

Maybe you drew a word that you feel is surely the wrong one. Time Magazine just released their photo collage of 2023 and the word they used to describe this year was weary. Weary.

So what word are you holding? Maybe it isn’t the word you wanted, but it may end up being the word you need. A year ago one church member drew the word Endurance. She thought well that is definitely not in my ballpark but she went home and glued a magnet on the back and stuck it to her fridge. You see, she didn’t envision at the time how much she would have to endure. She applied to start a new UMC church plant. She was denied several times but kept enduring and today, a new church has been planted. She said that “one day as I prayed for endurance I realized that the scriptural version of endurance actually means abiding under.” For this woman, abiding in God throughout this past year led her to the endurance she never knew she needed.

Another member drew the word service and ended up serving in ways that challenged them to be the voice of reason in a season of conflict.

As for me, I drew the word gentle. For the longest time I thought this meant I was trying to learn to be more gentle but then one day while reading Matthew 11:29, I heard God say “Hannah, I want you to know the gentleness of my heart.” Once again, a word I didn’t understand or know fully how to seek ended up being what God had in store.

What if we believed that God still has a word for us this year? What if we really believed that God might have an Epiphany or two up the sleeve? I want to invite you to take a selfie with your star word and send to me. I would love it if together we flooded our Facebook page with our star words. What if we take our word and keep it and see what God does with it this year. What journey might you embark on this year? A journey for joy, a journey of refuge, a journey of adventure, a journey of grace or whatever word you are holding. What if like the stars there is more to be discovered, more to be seen and experienced of God than we imagined. Let us join one another on the road again this next year. Like the wise men making their way, still seeking.