Following the Star

Well it’s New Year’s....

Did you have any idea that it would be this cold this past week? Back to Back snow days? Can you believe that? I was trying to think whether or not the girls have had back to back snow days since they started school and honestly, I can’t remember. And my house? I’m sure it’s the same with yours. My heater is like the little engine that could. “I think can, I think I can, I think I can...” Well it can’t! It thinks it can get up to 68 but somehow it’s still floating around 62 or 63. I’m a California boy! I can’t take all of this continuous cold. It isn’t just freezing my my body, it’s freezing my soul!

How many different

I know I know. It is winter so we should expect it to be cold, but you never know just how cold it is going to be or how much snow is going to show up or whether school is going to get canceled or not until you actually get there. A teacher of mine once said to me that “the map is not the territory” and we have all experienced the truth of that in different ways. Often when we are driving, but also apparently with the weather. We know roughly what might happen because it is the beginning of January in the Northeast, but what we know is only the map. Until we are actually walking through the territory there is only so much we can possibly know.

And so that’s fitting to me today for two reasons. The first is that it is the beginning of a New Year and like me, I’m sure you have pondered all the ways that you want this year to be different than the last - you’ve started putting together a map as it were. But the actual territory, you are as clueless about as I am. The second is that yesterday was Epiphany - the day that many in the Christian faith remember the story you just heard a moment ago. The story of the magi - astrologers from the east - who looked to the sky for signs of what the territory might be, particularly the political territory. And what the stars had told them was that a child would be born king of the Jews. They looked for this kind of thing all the time, but there was something about this particular king that led them to follow a star hundreds of miles to where Jesus would be. Now that’s commitment especially when it isn’t even your king or your religion, but these magi knew something was up. They just didn’t know what.

They certainly knew something was up when they got to Jerusalem, the capital city and the local people knew even less than they did. If a king was born, then you would think everyone would be in the know. Of course, this presented a problem, because no one wants to be the out of towner who shows up asking about the new king when the old king is still on the throne. Herod had a reputation and it certainly wasn’t for loving his enemies. But Herod was a sly dude so he pumped them for as much information as he could and asked them to return once they had found the newborn king so he could pay the child homage as well. Someone should have given Herod a dictionary because homage and murder do not mean the same thing.

What I always find most interesting about the story is how God told the magi everything they needed to know and led them wherever they needed to go. You can use stars to navigate. Sailors have done so for hundreds, even thousands of years. But stars have never led anyone to a specific house, not like it did for the magi....so I’m going to step out on a limb and say this was no ordinary star. That was God’s doing. And when the magi considered returning to Herod to tell him what they found, God warned them in a dream to avoid Herod and take the scenic route home.

Now were these things that the magi expected to happen when they left their country and headed to parts unknown? Did they know where Judah was? Absolutely. Did they know what would happen when they got there? Absolutely not because we may hold the map in our hands but the territory belongs to God and it feels like that’s a lesson that we are forced to learn with each New Year. There were things that I hated about 2017 and things that I totally loved, but hardly any of them were things I could have told you would happen.

Our job is not to know what the New Year will bring. Our job is to follow the one who has promises to lead us through it. That is what the Israelites had been promised, but it was the magi who got to experience it first hand. When the chief priests and scribes went scrambling to figure out what was going on, they read that there would come a ruler “who is to shepherd my people Israel.” Shepherd, one who leads. Do they sheep know where they are headed? Not really. To water, to food, to some place good to rest, to safety - yeah that’s just the map, not the territory. They are just expected to listen to the shepherd’s voice and follow him.

I love beginning the New Year with communion because it is the best reminder of the shepherd we have been called to follow. The one who looks after us and takes care of us even when we aren’t paying attention. I mean, our shepherd died for us. He died to keep us safe, to give us life. How can we not expect him to lead us by stars or to speak to us in dreams, to tell us where we need to go and when we need to be there even if the details remain fuzzy? As you approach the communion table I invite you make the best resolution possible - resolve yourselves to follow the star, in whatever form God sends it. Such a star led the Magi to a little house that held a very big God. Where will the star lead you?