Another Road
Micah 5:1-4
Matthew 2:1-12
Epiphany Sunday – 1/4/09
Rev. Jennifer Whipple
Prayer: May the
words of my mouth and the meditations of all our minds and hearts gathered here
this day be acceptable in Your sight, Oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
Well, here we are, gathered together in holiday recovery mode.
Tomorrow schools will be back in session.
Activities will pick back up. Our
regular schedules will be back in full swing.
It seems like it is all over. And
yet, there is one more holy day to look to this week, as we await the official
celebration of the arrival of the wise men at the house where Mary, Joseph, and
the young Jesus were staying before returning to their home in Nazareth.
While in other countries Three Kings Day is celebrated much more widely
– much more like Christmas, in fact, in the United States we often forget
about the arrival of the magi -- treating it like any other day.
And yet it is the arrival of the kings that marked a kind of opening up
of God to other people – people from outside of Israel – people like you and
me. It was the wise men, and their
willingness to encounter whatever and whoever it was that they might find at the
place where the star stopped with celebration, joy, and admiration that first
introduced the possibility that this child, this new shepherd, would be a savior
for ALL people.
As I thought about this new idea regarding the wise guys, as some have
called them, I saw a few themes emerging for me from this story in a new way as
well. So today I ask that you
indulge me as we walk perhaps another road – as we speak about welcome, the
extraordinary, the new path we are called to walk…and what all these things
have to do with what will come soon enough in today’s service – namely our
gathering around God’s table once again.
First, as I read through the story of the wise men once again, and
through some of the history as well, I saw it as a story of welcome and
intention. The wise men were
welcomed at Herod’s palace and even called in for a special meeting with the
king himself. They made the king
aware of something that he perhaps did not know before, or perhaps did not want
to deal with – as he worried about his own future and the future of his
dynasty. So he welcomed them and
then sent them out into the world with a new task – to find the child and then
bring the information back about where Jesus could be found.
When the wise men set out on the road to find the new king of the Jews,
we might imagine that they were looking to find this powerful creature in a
palace much like Herod’s, and yet instead they found that the star they
followed rested over a small house in the small town of Bethlehem.
And what they found inside may have shocked them even more – a small
child in the arms of a teenage mother, with a hardworking carpenter for a
stepfather. And yet the story says
that they went inside the house and paid him homage.
They were welcomed inside by these humble folks and were able to
celebrate all together the arrival of this special child once again.
We might think about the intention of the various characters we are
introduced to in this story. Herod
was power hungry and trying to protect his territory, so the intention behind
his welcome of these strangers from the East was to find out all he could about
this new king – and in obtaining that information be sure that any threat to
his power was eliminated, no matter what force or brutal measures needed to be
taken in order to do so. Mary and
Joseph, on the other hand, welcomed the wise men perhaps out of the joy they saw
in the eyes and heard in the voices of these strangers who had come to meet
their child, and more than likely because they had been raised with the belief
that it was important to offer welcome and hospitality to anyone who came to see
you. And the wise men were blessed
with this welcome, as they in turn welcomed the young Jesus into their hearts
and minds as the Messiah and offered him the extravagant gifts of gold,
frankincense and myrrh.
Second, there is still some question about who these wise men were
exactly. Some say they were
interpreters of dreams, others seem to think they were astrologists or magicians
of some sort. No matter who they
were they had heard that there was a child born who was someone special.
And as they came to meet the child Jesus and his parents along their
journey they came to realize that the ordinary was truly extraordinary.
Everything about where the wise men would have found Jesus was more than
likely pretty ordinary for the time. They
found him in a small house, in a small town.
They found a child born to a young mother and an older father.
Even the hospitality they more than likely received would have been
ordinary – welcome into the home, some water to wash up, a meager meal to
refresh them. And yet they knew that
from these ordinary beginnings something extraordinary would arise.
They found in that meager house the fulfillment of the prophecies they
had heard about at Herod’s palace – those from the prophets like Isaiah and
Micah that we heard today. They had
come to find the king of the Jews after all, and there was something about this
child that made them realize that was exactly who they found sitting in his
mother’s arms that day – and so they offered him the extraordinary gifts
they had to bring. Gold to symbolize
that he was the king. Frankincense
to symbolize his divinity. And
myrrh, a burial preparation, to symbolize the redemptive suffering that he would
experience for all people.
Third, as I read through this story again I realized that there is more
to the other road that the wise men walked down than an escape route.
“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left
for their own country by another road,” the scripture says.
Yes, they left by another road because they wanted to be sure that the
child could not be found by Herod AND so they could remain safe and far away
from him as well. However, I believe
that the other road also symbolizes the fact that they were changed.
Once you meet the Messiah, once you get to know Jesus in your heart as we
might guess they were able to do in the time they spent with him and his family,
you cannot possibly be the same. So
we can imagine that they were not the same people leaving
Bethlehem
as they were when they arrived. They
walked another path on the way home – the path that allowed them to hope for
better times to come as they headed back to their home in the East – in a time
when most social, political, and even religious systems were corrupt and times
were tough.
We come to the table today not only because of tradition and not to go
through the motions. As we come to
the table today we do so because all of the same themes that run through the
story of the wise men and the child Jesus run through our experience as well.
This table is open to all who wish to know the presence of Jesus Christ.
That means that we are recipients of extravagant welcome at this table.
We are welcome no matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey
as long as our intention is to better know Christ through receiving the elements
and the nourishment in body and spirit that comes with them.
We are welcome as we are, with our questions, our hang-ups, our fears,
and our sins. We do not come because
we are forced to but rather because we are invited to.
And much like the wise men, we come because we have heard that there is
something extraordinary that lies inside the participation in this communal
meal. Because just as they saw a
small child and a young mother in a meager home in an ordinary town, we see
simple and humble gifts as we come to the communion table.
We see bread and juice, the grain of the field and the fruit of the vine.
Yet what they mean for us is more than the beginnings of lunch.
What these elements mean for us is one of the most amazing gifts we have
been given. These ordinary elements
mark for us the extraordinary gift of God’s saving grace – the forgiveness
and salvation we find through the death and resurrection of that child born in
the manger.
As we come to the table today we come from all different places and all
different walks of life. Some of us
come bringing nothing but pure joy and desire to be refreshed and renewed once
again. But others of us come
bringing resentments, issues that we are facing each day out in our difficult
and challenging world. We gather at
this table today both with people we know well and people we have never met
before. We gather at this table today with people with whom we are in total
agreement and with whom we have very different opinions as well.
And the hope is that we will leave this table today by another road.
As we leave this table renewed and refreshed we are called to be true to
our faith and to live it with our whole lives.
We are called to offer welcome to others, to see the extraordinary and
the blessing in the ordinary and everyday. We
are called to follow Jesus’ instruction for living, to live in humility and to
love and treat others as we would hope to be treated.
We are called to put God first, to lift all of our cares and joys up to
God, and to give thanks and praise to God for the many blessings both small and
large alike that have been showered upon us.
We are called to step off the road paved with power, greed, and vanity
that society challenges us to remain on and instead to walk one paved with
forgiveness, reconciliation, and love in this new year – energized and
strengthened by the hope we find in Christ Jesus in this place.
As we gather at the table this day may we realize the gifts that God has
bestowed on each of us, and may we see the gifts in others as well.
As we share the elements this day may we see the extraordinary in the
ordinary – both in these humble elements and in the people with whom we share
them. As we gather at the table this
day may we once again be blessed with the knowledge of God’s love and
forgiveness and in turn go out by another road loving and forgiving others as we
go. Amen.
