Barbara Rowe:

In King Herod’s Judea, there was no room for a new king of the Jews, even one descended from the line of King David. Yet, from a great distance away – Arabia or Persia or Mesopotamia – wise astrologers spotted a bright star. It was a universal sign that a godlike king was present somewhere, but where? These foreigners seemed to know more about this important happening than Herod or the chief priests and scribes in the capital of Jerusalem just a few miles from the event. The religious leaders could quote the Hebrew Scriptures that pointed to a savior in Bethlehem but they had no interest in finding and celebrating the new Messiah; the one anticipated for centuries. They didn’t notice the star or follow the words of their prophet Micah, though both were right in front of their eyes. Outside of their earshot, an agitated Herod tried to trick the astrologers into giving him all the details of the child upon their return, but with the advice from a dream, they out-smarted him and took a different camel trail home.

These wise Magi, these astronomer/astrologers were specialists in reading the constellations but they knew little about Jewish prophets and predictions and the hope that had been important in the culture of Israel for centuries. Instead, without the help of angel messengers, they searched for a child who had been born months before and they came prepared to celebrate him. When they finally found him, they were overwhelmed with joy and spontaneously knelt down to worship him. In Matthew’s Gospel, these outsiders were the first to find and recognize Jesus as someone very special. Why did they care? What were they looking for?

I suspect that they yearned for something undefined in their own minds. They felt pulled by the unknown, the possibility that there was more to life then all they had experienced. Something or someone called them – a longing, a need in their hearts and lives, a hope for something more than stars, planets, camels and cold night skies. The journey was far and long. When would they get there? Likely they followed false leads or took other wrong turns before finally making it to Judea and then, with directions from the priests and scribes, on to the sudden joy in Bethlehem when the star stood still. After worshipping the child-king and giving the royal gifts that they had carried, the Magi returned home a different way. They trusted their dream. They were changed people having experienced Jesus and going home again but by a new road.

I must admit that I would like to be more like the Magi, following a star, searching for Jesus and feeling spontaneous joy when I find him. I am that way sometimes, truly noticing God’s gifts and guidance in my life, responding to shepherding nudges whether they come in dreams or in prayer or through the voice of someone I know. Unfortunately, though, I find I’m more often like the priests and scribes, knowing the scriptures but ignoring them and going about my business especially during November and December each year. Under time pressure, we easily fall into the habits of decorating, shopping, and inviting in addition to our usual working routine. Then, some of us suddenly wake up on Epiphany Sunday realizing that we exchanged many gifts but didn’t really make the journey to Christmas. We expected someone else to tell us where Jesus was but we didn’t allow the time to go there ourselves – to that place that is home away from home; that is peace among strangers, where we let ourselves experience God with us, Emmanuel.

We are invited on that spiritual journey throughout the year – not only at Advent and Christmas. So let’s not put off the trip. Notice the star that is shinning for YOU, waiting to lead you. May we trust in God whose hand reaches out to us. Let go of those things in life that hold you back and allow yourself to follow. Open the treasure chest that is YOU and offer your gifts to Jesus, the Shepherd King. There will be wonderful magical strangers to share the path and a new road to take us home. Jesus invites us to be nourished at the Table today as we begin our spiritual journey into the New Year. Blessings to you in your travels!!

Kirk Bingaman
We three kings of Orient, that is Persian are, bearing gifts we traverse afar.  Pretty far, indeed, for by the time the Magi enter the house - not the stable - where the child resides, Jesus is more than likely a toddler, learning to walk and to talk is.  Now, there's no need to rush home and pick out the wise-men pieces from your lovely nativity scene, and dispose of them because the scene is not entirely historically correct.  The bottom line is that the Magi traveled a very long way just to get a glimpse of this particular child, to pay him homage by way of their gifts that have extraordinary symbolic significance: gold in honor of royalty, incense for a priest, myrrh for death and burial.  They put themselves in harm's way, to get a glimpse of the child, and in the end they elude the cunning Herod.

The story has a quasi fairy tale quality to it, as the author, Frederick Buechner has suggested, of a world of "once upon a time" and "they lived happily ever after," of an infant or toddler king who at such a tender and vulnerable age already commands respect and attention. And it is so easy to dismiss it all, as sentimentality, as wishful thinking, if you are Freud, as escapism, as whistling in the dark, and just plain childish.  And did the whole thing even happen in the first place?  Is there any empirical evidence?

We know the whole cheerless litany.  But, if the wonder evoked in the Magi and the wonder evoked in us here today is nothing more than a pipe dream, then why do we spend vast sums of money to go to the moon and to Mars and to the Jovian moons, Europa and Io?  And, the great listening devices we train on the skies to catch some whisper of extraterrestrial speech from the stars, a la Jody Foster in "Contact?"  We hardly need Steven Spielberg to tell us that maybe, just maybe, there really is something out there after all.

We do our daily meditation, or, as it was called in the evangelical world of my youth, devotions, in the hope that, properly stilled, our minds will stop reflecting back to us the confusion and complexity and turmoil of our world.  We want a glimpse of the silvery mist like that, which encircled Bethlehem, where we can step through into a world where the child asleep on the hay of a feeding trough will come awake, in our hearts, in our homes, and in our world. We probe the murky depths of the ocean and of Loch Ness and of the human psyche, because if the shadowy and dangerous and even monstrous side can be proven to exist, then who can be sure that the bright and blessed side does not exist as well.

My hunch is that the whole obsession of our time with the dangerous shadow side of existence - whether in the field of psychology, religion, literature, film, and so on - is at its heart merely the flip side of our longing for the beautiful divine light.  We are like the medieval knight in Ingmar Bergman's classic film, "The Seventh Seal," who, on his way home from the Crusades, tells a young witch about to be burned at the stake that he wants to meet her master, the devil. When she asks him why, he says, "Because I want to ask him about God.  He, if anyone, must know."  Like the allegorical world of the fairy tale, the world of Christmas and Epiphany is a world, not simply of happiness and bliss, but a world of danger and intrigue and darkness, for many of the great scenes take place, appropriately enough, at night.

As I pointed out a few weeks ago, the child born in the night among beasts and hot breath and steaming dung.  He is visited, more than likely, at night by the Magi, who can remain somewhat incognito and therefore away from the watchful eye of the demented and maniacal Herod.  In fact, they are warned, at night, in a dream, not to ever see Herod again.  This child had his first meal in the dark of the night, at his mother's breast.  And, as we will remember, in a few minutes here at this table, he had his last meal in the dark, the blinds drawn and everyone straining to catch the first sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs.  In the garden of Gethsemane, he could hardly see the face that leaned forward to kiss him.  No, friends, the gospel story of God becoming incarnate in the person of the Christ child, is not at all escapist or sentimental or pie in the sky.  There is no less danger and darkness and uncertainty in the stories of Christmas and Epiphany than there is in the world of the Brothers Grimm.  But beyond and above all else there is great joy at the light breaking into this dark and troubled world.

Such is Christmas, and now Epiphany, this meeting and juxtaposition of light and darkness, of hope and fear, of peace and angst.  Like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, or a Tolkien trilogy, where the hobbit, Frodo, finally, in Part III, makes his way into the bowels of the volcanic Mount Doom, to release the ring so that good will triumph over evil.  Only one crucial difference, however.  The claim made for the gospel story is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time in the far away world of Bethlehem, in the presence of beasts and shepherds and later Magi; but that it has kept on happening ever since.  It keeps on happening still, even here today, in your heart and in mine, as we prepare to eat and remember together. When they saw the star, they were filled with great joy.  And, upon entering the house, they came face to face with the child, they bowed down and worshiped him, then it was over!  Time to go back to the real world of a long and circuitous journey home, trying to stay a step ahead of the murderous Herod, back to the ordinary world of everyday living.  Only now, transformed by the encounter with this child.

So, for a minute, here today, we, like the Magi, come to see this thing that has come to pass.  To encounter the Spirit of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, who, even here today, has the power to break into the chaos of my life and of yours, so that we may experience, yet again, the wondrous gifts of faith, hope, and love.  My world, your world, the world in general, still has its share of darkness, but the message of this season is that a light did shine and continues to shine, and the darkness has not and will not extinguish it.  Amen.