“The Power of a Star”

Matthew 2:1-12

January 2, 2005

St. Paul Church

Rev. John Andrew Fleming

Just this week, I heard the story of a king from a distant land. In a lot of ways, he was an ordinary king, surrounding himself with the sort of things most kings have around them. His palace was well built and spectacular. It’s floors were made of marble; it’s walls were made of the finest and most rare wood. The table in his royal dining room seated no less than one hundred people. Servants tended to his every need. When he was at home in his palace, this king did not want for anything. Every night a servant pulled back the covers on his bed and every morning, when he woke up, the finest food awaited his taste buds. His kingdom was as powerful as any had ever been. The military that protected the kingdom had not been threatened in years. But rest assured, if they were, behind their fearless leader, soldiers were ready for battle. This king, on occasion, would walk the streets of his kingdom, where the people lived. He did not believe that he was above them. He greeted the people on the street with the smallest of an entourage. He would go into their shops and their places of business to purchase things. To say that this king was well liked and well respected would be an understatement. Everyone loved this man, this king of theirs’.

He was an ordinary king, but in an extraordinary kind of way. One of the things that made him exceptional was that he was concerned with things beyond wealth, power, and palaces. You see, it was said that this king was interested in spiritual things, too. He was interested in being rich that way, in his relationship with God. Those that the king knew the best knew that he strove sincerely and restlessly after that. It may have been the most important thing in his life.

One night this king was awakened from a deep sleep to the sound of footsteps on the roof above him. Somehow someone had gotten past the palace guards and was on his palace’s roof. He was afraid and worried, but for some reason he did not call for help. Instead he called out to the intruder. These were his words, “Who is up there?” He asked near the top of his lungs. He wanted to make sure that he was heard. “A friend” came the reply back. Then this friend of the king’s, whose voice he almost immediately recognized, said this, “I have lost my camel.” Now the king had to think for a minute. He was taken aback by his friend’s words. He had, after all, been in a deep sleep when he was suddenly awoken. When his friend’s words registered, he called towards the roof, “Friend, are you crazy? A camel? Why would you look for a camel on my roof?” The words back from the king’s friend took only one second. He had risked climbing the roof to make a point. He was about to make his point. He called down from among the roof’s shingles, “With all respect, your heinous, are you crazy? Why would you look for God wearing silk clothes and lying in a golden bed with servants all around you?”

This story that came my way while I was working on our sermon ends this way. The king was so frightened, so filled with terror from the simple words of his friend on the roof that he got out of his golden bed, out of his silk clothes, out of his deep sleep and dedicated the rest of his life to being the best follower of God that he could be. And, as the story goes, did that so well that when he died, his church honored him with the status of sainthood. I want to raise the question, put it on your heart and in your mind, and then come back to it a little later in our sermon. Here is the question, “Where is God leading us these days?”

Our scripture lesson for this morning, taken from the second chapter of Matthew’s gospel, is always the season’s last shot at us before we put up the last of the decorations, if we have not already done so. It is a story not of one king, popular in his kingdom, but three, who were in the habit of looking up at the stars. One star-filled night, these three noticed that there was a new star in the sky, a different one, one that they had not seen before. They noticed it not because it shone brighter than the others as we sometimes picture it, but because it was now up in the sky. Somewhere these three had been taught to pay particular attention to the rising and falling of stars. Back in those days, the rising and falling of stars had a huge significance with the rising and falling of kings and rulers.

Now that I think about it, these three, most likely, were not kings. This story found only in Matthew, immediately captures your imagination. Since the first Christmas pageant in a church, we have dressed our youth in cloth robes, with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh in their hands and turbans on their heads and asked them to parade down the center aisle taking turns singing the middle three verses of We Three Kings, the verses that tell of bringing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Tradition tells us that they were kings or magi or wise men or star gazers. It also tells us that there were three of them. There were three of them, right? In our Christmas pageant this year, we had two wise men and as Mary Katherine Smith was quick to point out, and a wise woman. She played the part of the wise woman. Matthew does not tell us that there were three. He tells us that wise men from the east, observed the star at it’s rising, and knew that it had eternal significance. Somehow the wise men knew that a baby had been born and that he would be the king of the Jews. They knew that, traveled a long way to find this child. Their journey was guided by a star. Their only mistake, really, was stopping in Jerusalem first. Oh, it was an honest mistake, one that I think that I would have made. You probably would have made it, too. After all, Jerusalem was the most obvious place to find a king. So they knocked on the door of a palace where another king, King Herod lived. You know this story ends. Herod and everyone with him is frightened by this news the wise men brought. Somehow Herod and everyone else in Jerusalem had missed the rising star. Because he was afraid, the king called in the chief priests, had a Bible study in his inner chambers, was told about Isaiah’s prophesy, called the wise men in secretly, told them where they might look, and then, with as much sincerity as he could muster, said: “Now when you have found him, come back here, tell me where he is, so that I can pay him homage.”

The three of them, or however many there were, walked out of the palace, looked back up at the star that acted more like a roving spotlight, and followed it to the house where Jesus was. I can remember, as a kid, being fascinated by spotlights, rented lights that told of some important event, that beckoned people to it’s site. When there was time, I begged my mother or my father to drive me where the light originated. I will admit this to you, I am still curious and at times still follow spotlights around until I find them. Most often the lights are positioned at car dealership or night clubs, so I usually keep driving. Friends, could it be that this story of the wise men is, at one level, a story that says to us that God directs our paths, illuminates our steps, so that, if we follow, we are brought closer to Christ?

If that is what this story is about, then it’s timing is perfect, landing here, and being read here on the first Sunday of a new year. It is, after all, black eyed pea eating, and resolution making kind of time. This is the week when we will decide what promise we will make for the coming months. Some of us will resolve to do more things, like exercise more, read the Bible more, pray more, offer forgiveness more. Some of us will resolve to do less of things, like eating, in hopes of shedding a few pounds. It is also the time, if we take it, where we survey the months ahead and decide where, in a year from now, we want to be. Today we have fresh day timers, and palm pilots. Today we feel pretty much in control of those blank spaces on our calendars. So we are in a position to map out our lives, at least, for the next few weeks. Let me ask my question again, the one that I asked you to put on your heart and in your mind. Here it is, “Where is God leading us these days?” And by us, I do not mean us as a congregation. That is an important question for another day. Today, by us, I mean us individually. Ask the question this way: “Where is God leading me? Where would God have me to go? What does God want me to do in the days and weeks and months ahead?”

Now I know, I know. Those are hard questions that are difficult to answer. You are not alone in believing that. The most often asked spiritual question that I am asked as a pastor is this one, “John, what is God’s will for my life? What exactly, preacher, am I supposed to be doing?” The question is almost always asked by those people who are willing and ready to follow, if they only knew for sure what God wanted them to do. “What is God’s will for my life? What exactly, preacher, am I supposed to be doing?” I wish I had a dollar for every time I was asked that. The truth is that I am not sure how to answer that question for you or for me. If only there was a star, a spotlight, around these days to show us the way. Now wouldn’t that be great!

Those of you who have heard me tell the story of my call to the ministry know that there is a star involved in it. God had nudged me for some time, using various people to do that. On a beach, in Panama City, Florida, I wanted to sign on the dotted line, seal the deal as one of God’s pastors, but I needed some kind of an assurance, some kind of a sign. I prayed for that, on that beach, and when I opened my eyes, with stars filling the sky, one star shot across the horizon. And I knew. I knew. I wish that the star would come again, not streaking across the sky this time, but stopping in the sky, and shining down, illuminating what I am supposed to do, and where I am supposed to go.

Maybe it happens this way, the way that my grandfather taught me long ago. My mother’s father died when I was twelve. I must have been four or five, maybe six, when I was at his house in Conway, on Ash Street. I was there on a dark night, when the electricity went off. In those days I was afraid of the dark. My grandfather knew that. He reached for his old kerosene lamp (one that had been in his mother’s house), pulled the hurricane glass from around it, lit the wick with a nearby match, replaced the glass, and walked over to me. And then came the lesson. He said this, or something like this, “It’s a funny thing about the light of a kerosene lamp. If you sit still, it’s glow surrounds you. But if you take a step, the light seems to go first.” I have not forgotten that lesson. I remember it on dark nights and dark times in my life. Maybe that is how God directs our paths, illuminating them one step at a time. That is good enough for me.

The star for the magi ultimately functioned to bring them to Christ and that, I believe is God’s will for us for this new year and every year. I believe that what God wants more than anything else is a deeper and more meaningful relationship with him, not things like gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Let me close with this. The great theologian, Frederick Buechner said this about the wise men, “The gifts that the three wise men or kings, or Magi, brought to the manger in Bethlehem cost them plenty but seem hardly appropriate to the occasion. Maybe they were all that they could think of for the child who had everything. In any case, they set them down on the straw - the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh, worshiped briefly, and then returned to the East, where they had come from. It gives you pause to consider how, for all their great wisdom, they overlooked the one gift that the child would have genuinely please to have one day, and that was the gift of themselves.” The gift of themselves. Hmm. That is something to think about. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to the writers of Homiletics magazine for the opening story in this sermon. Thanks be to God for the gift of Louis Henderson Moore, my grandfather. I still miss him, but his lessons remain. And thanks to the writings of Frederick Buechner. The quote that ends the sermon comes from a collection of his writings, Beyond Words: Daily Readingsd in the ABC’s of Faith. The quote can be found on page 410. The book is published by HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. It was a gif that I gave myself this Christmas).