“An Alternative Route”

Matthew 2:1-12

January 4, 2004

St. Paul UMC, Little Rock

Rev. John Fleming

By now, for most of us, the Christmas season has come and gone. Unless you are the exception to the rule, there are few signs that Christmas happened less than a couple of weeks ago. The route that I take to the church every morning and the one that I take home in the afternoon, are different, because of the afternoon traffic. I would not dare try to turn left onto Biscayne anytime near the five or six o’clock hour. And so my routes are different, but what lies at the foot of a number of driveways is the same. There, wrapped in oversized white trash bags with just a hint of Christmas left on them, maybe a leftover piece of tinsel or two, are what used to be Christmas trees. And inside, if these houses are like my house, there are no signs of the season that has just past. Downstairs, in our storage room, tucked neatly into large plastic tubs are the ornaments, the small Santa Clauses, the lights, the three artificial trees (one big one and a couple of small ones) and the do-dads that have adorned the parsonage since before the first week in December. In another closet, across the way from the decorations, are our Christmas tree dishes. Oh, the season will come calling again in a week or two, innocently arriving in envelopes with the words Visa and Master Card printed in the return address, but for now it is gone.

The church lessons that we usually read left us for a Sunday. Last week Diane Drilling preached from the prescribed lesson for the day, a great passage from the second chapter of Luke’s gospel, where Jesus is twelve and cannot be found as the holy family makes their way back to their hometown following a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for a religious holiday. No, I did not preach last Sunday, but if I had, my sermon’s title would have been, “They Sure Do Grow Up Fast.” I guess that you could say that our lives have pretty much gone back to the way that they were prior to Christmas. If you are employed, unless you compiled some major vacation time, you have already been back to work a day or two. Even our children, out of school for a couple of weeks, get back to their regular routines tomorrow morning when the school bell rings.

You might say that our lesson for this morning is the season’s last shot at us as a way of saying that there is one more thing that we should think about. This story has a way of snatching our attention and snaring our imagination. I think that it ranks right up there with the Christmas story, found in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel, with the shepherds and the angels and the donkeys and the flashing no vacancy sign at the inn, in terms of inviting you to be a part of it. I believe that it ranks right up there with the Easter story with Mary looking for the body of Jesus, when Jesus calls out to her, in terms of grabbing your attention and inviting you to be a part of the story. Any of us who have been in Christmas pageants and plays, dressed up as shepherds wearing bathrobes and hand towels around our heads, have wondered, as the three wise men process down the aisle wearing their elegant robes and hats, carrying expensive gifts, what their story really is. We might put it this way: so much has been made of this story about which we know so little. The wise men were not kings, of course, and there were not three of them, at least not according to Matthew, the only gospel writer who tells of them. We do not know where they came from, how many of them there were. Matthew doesn’t give us the detail of how long it took them to get to Bethlehem or how old Jesus was by the time that they arrived. There are even questions about the famous star, shining in the sky. Some will say that the wise men were astrologers, and could not help but to see the new star. Some have even said that they were the only one who could see it shining in the sky. Who knows the answer to that question? I certainly don’t.

What I do know is that the facts of the story are not quite as important as the story itself and then its message, too. I heard of a preacher who was driving his son home after church one Sunday. Their family usually took two cars to church and it was the practice of the son to ride home with his dad. So this son looked up at his dad and said, “Dad, I liked that story that you told in your sermon this morning.” His dad was thankful that his eight year old was listening. There was a pause and then the son asked, “Dad, was that story true, or were you just preaching?” My question for the stories I tell and the ones that I read in our Bible is this: do they have the capacity to change us?

So let’s look at this story, maybe using some different eyes this morning. Or better than that, listening with some different ears. Maybe it really happened like this: Once upon a time, there were three men who were trying their very best to make sense out of their lives. To help them with this, the three tried very different things. One spent the better part of his day contemplating his existence. He prayed from the time the sun came up in the morning until it set, but still, he senses that there was something missing in his life. The second one read every book that he could get his hands on, especially the ones that could be categorized as self-help books, looking for an answer for his life. He had even spent some time in the Bible hoping to find some answers. The third man had gone down a different route. He had used both magic and the reading of stars in hopes of finding an answer to the burning questions in his life. But still, all three sensed that there was something missing. This something was something that they desperately wanted.

It may have been late one night when the three of them found sleep hard to come by, that they saw something in the sky that they had not seen before. Up there, several million miles above, was a star that sparkled so brightly that they could not ignore it. For some reason the idea was planted in their hearts to follow the star in hopes of finding out what it was pointing to. If I told you, would you believe that the star would not go away? Even in the morning, the men could still see it. And because they could, all three of them, starting out from three very different places in the world, set out to find the star. And why shouldn’t they? After all, getting out of town for a while might help their perspective somehow. So they set out, on this journey, believing that they were the only ones who had seen the star. It was that way until they ran into each other just outside of Jerusalem. Because they kept looking up, each of them soon realized that they were not the only ones with the star in their eyes. The star made these three instantly brothers. It was as if they were the founding members of a club, complete with a secret handshake and a password. For sure they were kindred souls even before they spoke to one another. Somehow these three knew that the star was special and individually they all thought that the star was leading them to a king. Since they were near Jerusalem, where there was a king, Herod, I believe was his name, they went to see him. Actually Herod was his ruling family’s name. He was one of many who had and would have the name. The wise men concluded that Herod was the king that they were supposed to see. By the way, the three did not have any trouble getting in to see Herod. As busy as his schedule was and as important as he was, Herod’s servants immediately allowed the three men in. You see, they looked rich, even though they may not have been. Looking rich, in those days, would have gotten anyone a royal audience. Yes, they looked impressive. But Herod, in their humble opinion, looked just the opposite, unimpressive. His crown tilted to one side, his beard had not been trimmed in some time and his royal robe poked out more than it had in year’s past. The one thought that went through all three of the men’s minds was this: this is not the king that we are looking for.

But they were cordial and polite, unlike Herod. Actually, it was not until one of the wise men asked if there happened to be another king in the general vicinity that Herod perked up. Until then, he had been biting his nails and rolling his eyes. Their question caused Herod to sit up on his throne. Herod asked the men if they would excuse him for just a minute. He slipped into his royal library where the prophets on his payroll were studying. I know that this may be hard to believe, but they had a Bible study then and there. Herod, you see, wanted to know if there was anything in the scriptures about this sort of thing. So the scribes searched and found a passage in the obscure writings of the prophet, Micah. His words read like this: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” Herod’s prophets thought that it was an unlikely fulfillment, but that maybe he ought to check it out. Now the royal funds were low and Herod knew that and so he came up with a brilliant plan. He thought: I will send these men, on their own dime, and they can find out if there is another king. If there is, then I can do something about it. So Herod returned to his throne, told the three what they had discovered in the scriptures. He suggested that they go to Bethlehem, with the stipulation that on their way home that they come back by to tell him what they discovered so that he could send dinner to the new king.

So they went on their way and followed the star to Bethlehem. It led them right up to a nice, modest house in Bethlehem. It was not at all like Herod’s palace. It was not the kind of a place that you would expect to find a king. In fact, if it weren’t for the insistence of the star, the three would not have knocked on the door. But they did, they did knock, and when the door opened, standing on the other side of it was Joseph. His eyes were tired, but they perked up when he saw the three. The truth was that he was scared to death of these men. He wondered what they wanted and why they had arrived, but given how his world had changed so much in the last few days, he decided to invite them in. The three men, with gifts in their arms, walked right up to the baby, who, by the way, wasn’t at all afraid. His eyes glistened with the same glimmer of the star. That helped the wise men to see that it was him, whoever him was, and they got down on their knees and worshiped him. They handed over their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Now I imagine that they wished that they had brought other gifts, like a blanket or something to hang from the crib. How could they have known? Then something happened. It was remarkable really. Mary reached into the manger, pulled out the baby king, and handed him to the first man. Joseph who was scared by their appearance, was really scared now. But the first man, held Jesus for what seemed like forever before he passed him over to the next. After all, what was now in his arms is what he had been searching for with his meditations. There, in each of their arms, was not only a damp, soft, and living soul, but the answer for all their questions. They spent the night, of course, and when morning came, after breakfast each of three said thank-you and headed home. But not through Jerusalem, not back to Herod. Because that night, all three of them had had the same dream, warning them to travel home using a different route.

Friends, there will be preachers standing in their pulpits this morning, telling their churches that they need to be like the wise men and seek Jesus. If I have seen it this year, I have seen it a dozen times, on church signs. You have seen it, too, these words, illuminated: “Wise Men Still Seek Him.” That is a good sign and a good sermon, I suppose. Though I think that the line is overused. There will be others who will talk about how these men, really outsiders, and foreigners came and worshiped Jesus. That, by the way, is Matthew’s sermon. That is what his gospel is all about. There may be a preacher or two out there who will say something about how we see signs, like stars, and confirm it with scripture. That is always good to think about.

But your preacher, standing in this pulpit this morning, wants to say something that has been preached before, too. I want us all to hang out hats on the fact that we, too, are looking for something special and significant. And once we have found it, we have to go about our lives, in a different way, taking different paths, not following the same ones that we have always taken that have landed us in the same places. If you don’t mind me saying so, the new path might just land us here, at the communion rail. It is a good place to start, friends. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to the writing and preaching of Barbara Brown Taylor. I used her idea of filling in the details of the story of the wise men for the basis of this sermon and I used some of her thoughts and a few of her words. Special thanks also goes out to God for giving us different routes to take in 2004. Finally, let me thank St. Paul for allowing me to walk with you this year. God bless all of us.)