Rev. Jennifer Whipple
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)

January 2, 2011

Micah 5:2-5a
Matthew 2:1-12

Recalculating

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our minds and hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.  Amen.

             Today we celebrate Epiphany, the arrival of the Magi on the scene during the story of the Nativity, perhaps just for our own reasons though.  After all, January 6^th, the actual Epiphany day only lands on a Sunday once every seven years, so we are kind of faking it.  But if we don’t celebrate this day, then we miss the camels coming to church on the organ, and at least to me it seems as if we miss a part of the story – the part of the story that might actually connect us to our ancestors in faith a bit more officially – and a part of the story that I think helps to teach us something new each year.  After all, we do in the United Church of Christ say that God is still speaking!  In re-reading this story this year there were three things that came to mind for me that I wanted to share with you today.  Now, I would never claim to be a mathematician, but these three things all deal with recalculation in some way…  Allow me to explain.

             For Christmas I received a TomTom – a GPS system.  I realize that it would have been a good thing to ask for a few years ago, when I didn’t even know that Brookfield existed on a map, but better late than never, right?  The thing that I find most interesting about GPS is that as you are driving, if you miss a turn, or you choose to defy the instructions given to you, the system will work its hardest to get you back on track – “recalculating,” it says.  Then it pleads with you to either turn around or listen this next time.  We, of course, can choose whether or not to follow the directions given to us in one of a variety of accents.  It all depends on what we think we know, or how open we are to changing our route perhaps. 

             Well, the story about the wise men can perhaps be seen as an ancient example of one of the first ever situations of a recalculating GPS or of Mapquest.  Of course, the technology was not the same, but the result was no different.  You see, the wise men came to Herod’s Jerusalem, because they were learned folks who knew something about the scriptures and knew a lot about astrology, so were following this star that they had seen at its rising.  Usually around Christmastime we hear a good deal from the prophet Isaiah about the king who is to come to bring about change, a new way to the world.  But reading the prophet Isaiah, one might come to think that the wise men had landed in the right place – right in Jerusalem , where the seat of power rested.  But they come asking the question, “where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”  They are asking for directions.  They are searching for an address.  And lucky for them, Herod, out of fear and anxiety, is willing to consult the closest thing he has to a GPS – the Old Testament scholars that he seems to keep at the ready.  And come to find out that the answer they give Herod requires that the focus is not only on the prophet Isaiah, but also on the words of the lesser known prophet, Micah, who says this, “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”  Herod perhaps heard this and was even more confused about the message that was coming to him, and once again out of his fear and anxiety, asks the wise men to find the child and bring him word so he can “go and pay homage too…”  (Or something like that!)  The wise men hear this recalculation, one that takes them another 9 miles or so out of the way, and instead of trying to go against the directions, remain open to this miracle that is happening in their lives, and follow.  They hear this version of God’s GPS, and choose to do something with it – going on to Bethlehem to find the child with Mary, his mother, and lay all that they have and all that they are at his feet to worship him.  Lesson number one! 

             Now this story, as well as the Christmas story in general, lends to interesting conversation in Confirmation Class each year.  You see, I give our confirmands a quiz about the Christmas story – about what it truly says in the Bible regarding how things came to pass.  Each year our confirmands inevitably end up hating me for shattering all of their visions of what Christmas truly is when they find out things like we have no idea whether or not there were any animals at the manger with Jesus, that the Little Drummer Boy doesn’t actually appear in the Bible, and so on and so forth.  This year, though, the biggest issue for our confirmands had to do with the wise men.  “What do you mean they weren’t kings?”  “What do you mean there weren’t three of them?”  “Jen, the song says ‘We three kings of orient are.”  “I know, I know what the song says.”  “Well, we are boycotting that song…never going to sing it again!”  I contend that the song “We nondescript number of stargazers from East of here” would not have been quite as catchy or caught on quite as well in the tradition of carol singing! 

             This confirmation conflict each year begs the question about what truly matters in the story.  Is it the embellishments that we have created through years upon years of celebrating Jesus’ birth – many of which, like the possibility that there were animals near the manger, follow logically from the story we do know.   Or is it what we come to learn from it as people of faith that we can carry with us on our own journeys?  The fact is that in the story in Matthew’s gospel we hear that there were wise men from the East who wanted to pay homage to Jesus.  They came bearing gifts of gold and frankincense like had been prescribed in the scriptures passed down from the prophets, and they added the gift of myrrh because there was something a bit different about this king than others that had come before him.  They did all they could to find the child, even stopping at the palace of the ruthless King Herod, and shaking the place up a bit.  Then they laid it all down for Jesus when they reached their destination. 

             So what is most sacred in this story is not how many guys wearing crowns there were, but rather where they find God and how they choose to respond.  What is most sacred in this story is what continues to be most sacred, what flows on into our stories today.  Where do we find God in our lives?  And once we find God, how do we choose to respond?  Do we choose to lay down all that we have – to offer our gifts, to sit at God’s feet and open ourselves up to the message and the learning, even to follow through on some of the recalculating God asks us to do with our lives?  Do we choose to build up the gifts and skills we have for service to God, and to clean up our act in the departments where we are not serving so well – where we are perhaps doing more harm than good?  That is the second lesson we learn from these foreigners who take a journey to find this special and precious child. 

             The third lesson we learn from the wise men today flows from their response to meeting this child - once they meet God their lives are changed.  It says that they had been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, so following another recalculation, they leave for their own country by another road.  A new route for a new response, new lives, challenged and changed by the child they found in the house in Bethlehem – they come home differently than they went to find the child…they come home different people than they were when they went to find the child.  These men, after all, had no reason to find this child born king of the Jews.  The story tells us nothing about their faith background, but with the knowledge we now have, it seems that they were not within the faith tradition.  Rather they were astrologers, interpreters of dreams, people who knew of the scriptures because they were educated but not because they were people of faith.  But their gut reaction to meeting this child is to kneel down to worship him and to offer their resources in his service.  They are changed! 

             Today that begs the question for us about whether we are changed.  Whether we are willing to be changed by our God who loves us enough to give his only son for us, who meets us in this place and in the world beyond in some unexpected ways, who calls us to use our gifts not only in safe and well known ways but in ways that challenge and change us even more.  God does not call us just to come find Jesus but to take him out into the world.  God asks us to come together, to learn together, to sit at table together, but to go home a different way.  When we meet God, much like the wise men did, we are challenged to be different – to be the best we can be for our world.  We are challenged to move from selfishness or haughtiness, to humility.   We are challenged to move from acts of charity – although good and honoring the need in this world, to acts of justice – that honor the world that God wants to see.  We are challenged to accept some of that recalculation God calls for in our lives in order to be of service to God and the world in ways that we can only dream of if we allow ourselves to.  My prayer today is that through God’s grace and never-ending love we might have the faith and strength to accept those recalculations and that challenge.  Amen.