Matthew 2:1-12
When I was in junior high school, my church always had a live nativity. The church was on a busy road in Miami Florida, and each year on the nights leading up to Christmas, all the youth would gather on the front lawn in our costumes and would reenact the Christmas story as it was read over a loudspeaker.
We did it authentic, all the way. The shepherd costumes were made from the best old striped sheets we could find. The angel costumes had real gold garland on poster board wings. And Mary and Joseph were always played by the sweetest-looking older teenagers in the youth group, regardless of rumors of whether that particular girl would be believable as the virgin Mary. The animals, though—the animals were real. We had a real donkey for Mary to ride in on, and real sheep to wander through the “stable.”
For several years in a row, I was cast as an angel, regardless of rumors that I wasn’t believable in the role. The angels sat up on the flat part of the roof, hidden from sight, until at the appointed time, the spotlight moved to the roof and we stepped into view . . . one first, then the whole group. Being an angel was boring. You couldn’t see anything, and you weren’t allowed to leave the roof, and you had to hang out with just the girls. I wanted to be a wise man—or a wise guy, as I called them. The wise guys got to hang out with the others not stuck on the roof or in the stable, and they got to follow the star – really an outdoor spotlight on a pulley–and they got to go to the stable and try to make Mary and Joseph laugh, which they were strictly forbidden to do. When the director finally gave in and let me be a wise guy, my dad took a picture of me as I prepared to walk into view—wearing a colored robe, a gold crown, a beard, and giving a great big wink to the camera.
I wasn’t a very authentic wise guy, since I wasn’t very wise, and I wasn’t even a guy. I didn’t have a valuable gift to present, and I wasn’t very good at following the star because the old guy working the pulley moved it more slowly than I expected, and I got to the stable before it did.
But in other ways, I think it was the best part for me—though not because I am wise. At that age I was definitely a wise guy in the smart aleck sense, but also, I’ve always been a bit of a star-gazer, a seeker. I like to think of myself as someone who is willing to step out on a journey with little more than a distant light to guide me . . . although that really isn’t true.
But here’s the thing about the wise men. They were wise, but apparently they weren’t very smart. “To search for the Christ is the epitome of wisdom. To underestimate King Herod is the epitome of stupid. I imagine the first people to hear this story, as Matthew told it, must have fallen out of their chairs, laughing, at the very first sentence. Those men . . . waltzed straight into Jerusalem and did WHAT?! With HEROD on the throne?! What idiots!! The first people to hear this story would have caught the supreme irony at work in the telling, because they would have remembered what it was like, when King Herod was on the throne. Herod was one of the cruelest dictators ever to pass through the Middle East, a man so paranoid about succession that he had his own sons executed, to keep them from inheriting his throne.
You couldn’t pick a worse time for the Messiah to be born than ‘in the days of King Herod.’ You couldn’t pick a worse strategy for the wise men than to cross the border into Israel, head straight to the capitol, and openly ask for the address of some baby that has been born king of the Jews—adding, of course, that this baby’s birth announcement was actually written in the stars, for everyone from here to Persia to see.”[1]
It almost makes me wonder if the story was originally told with a wink. The wise men—wink, wink—went to Herod and asked about the baby. Oh, the “wise men.” The PhDs with no street smarts. Gotcha.
The wise men were wise to follow the star, wise to seek the Messiah. They were foolish to underestimate the power of the empire. They were foolish to miscalculate the desire of those in power to stay in power. They were foolish to forget how threatening changing the world can be, especially to those who have something at stake in keeping the world as it is.
The same is true for us. We are wise to seek God. We are wise to search for the divine. But we are foolish in the way we seek. We go first to the seats of power, thinking that those with authority will have the answers. Or we forget that we live in a culture where power IS God, so we seek it for ourselves. We forget that we are called to fight against the powers of this world: the power of consumerism, the power of prejudice and privilege.
We also are foolish because we seek God but fear change. We cling to what we know instead of embracing the unknown. Now, don’t hear any judgment from me on this. I’m not too sure I want to embrace the unknown, either. I mean, it sounds good, but how can I embrace what I can’t see? What if I get it, and I don’t want to embrace it at all? What if it’s something bad? How can I welcome what I can’t name?
All good questions; but here’s the problem: God, by God’s very nature, is unknown . . . and unknowable, at least in full. Even in this incarnation, in this human form, Jesus is still unknown to us. He was both like us and unlike us, and we are both connected and disconnected.
So we crave God, and we resist the unknown. And that’s a hard combination. Looking for God often means giving up the known and venturing into the unknown. Looking for God sometimes means stepping out into the cold night when our cozy bed is so much more inviting.
But like the wise men, we are not without guidance. We have signs that point the way. We have gifts that have been given to us. We have guidance that we may or may not recognize. If we are open, there will be a star.
In a few minutes, you will have an opportunity to select your star gift for the coming year—or maybe the star gift chooses you, I’m not sure. For those of you who are new to the concept, star gifts are simply paper stars, each one with a different word on it. You will be invited to take one, and to consider how God might manifest that word in your life in the coming year. There’s nothing magical or mystical about it. It’s not a tarot card or an oracle card; and there’s no guarantee that it has a message from God for you. But if we pay attention, and if we look for a sign of that word in our lives, we just may find God at work.
Last January I heard from someone who was not a bit happy about her star gift. It was not a word she wanted in her life. In fact, she was looking for the opposite of her word. She was working to find her voice, and instead she got the word “silence.” In November she wrote to me of all the ways the word “silence” had been made real to her—some painful, others beautiful. She wrote of the silence of loneliness, which lead to inner strength; the silence of grief, when there were no words; the silence of waiting in expectation; and the silence of happiness so profound she couldn’t even speak; the silence found in safe community and friendship.
I heard from another person who didn’t like her star gift when she pulled it and still has no idea what it meant and really hopes she’ll get a better one this year. So there are no guarantees!
As I told you last year, when you look at your star, you may see the word and immediately think, “Yes! This is a gift!” Or you may look at the word and think, “This is a gift?” Either way, take it home with you. Tape it on your bathroom mirror or hang it from the rearview mirror of your car. Keep it in sight. Keep it close to your heart. And in the coming year, be attentive to the ways in which you notice that particular gift in your life.
I look forward to hearing how you respond to your star gift, whether you welcome it or fight it, whether it fits right away or whether you’d like to exchange it. I look forward to hearing how that gift is manifested in your life this year. I look forward to hearing how you might be changed by the light of that star.
In the meantime, I encourage you to be a wise guy. And I’ll give you a wink . . . because we both know you will have moments of great wisdom and moments of incredible foolishness. But you will be on a quest, a quest to see God’s light shining in unexpected places. Like the wise men, you must seek God beyond the boundaries of what you already know, or else you might as well stay home.
So here is an Epiphany blessing “For Those Who Have Far to Travel”:
If you could see the journey whole,
you might never undertake it;
might never dare the first step
that propels you from the place
you have known toward the place you know not.
Call it one of the mercies of the road
that we see it only by stages as it opens before us,
as to comes into our keeping
step by single step.[2]
Here’s to the first step.
[1] http://www.goodpreacher.com/shareit/readreviews.php?cat=50
[2] Jan Richardson