A New Way

A New Way

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

January 8, 2017

Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It’s a familiar story. Some mysterious men called magi come to Bethlehem and encounter Jesus. They go see King Herod, who sends them to Bethlehem. They greet Mary, bow down before baby Jesus, and are warned in a dream not to return to Herod. So they depart from Bethlehem for home “by another route,” as the NIV puts it. This morning I want to look at this story not as a factual account of something that happened but as a symbol, as a symbolic story. A symbolic story is one that tells of people and events as though they were facts, which they may or may not be; but it tells the story not to convey facts but to convey a meaning much deeper, much more true, than any mere facts. A symbolic story points beyond itself to some important truth. Matthew’s story of magi is loaded with symbols that can speak profound truth to us if we will let them do it and not reduce this great story to mere fact. This morning I want to look at one symbolic meaning of Matthew’s story of the magi’s visit to the baby Jesus.

They come from afar, probably from Persia in what is Iran today according to the scholars. Wherever they come from that place is home. It is their starting place. It is where they have been formed. Where they learned their native culture and how to live in it. Where they learned the conventional ways and wisdom of their people. Where they learned their people’s religion—in their case probably Zoroastrianism—and made it their own. They live and work there with all the beliefs, superstitions, and prejudices of their people. Yes, they are wise men, so maybe they question or even deny some of those beliefs, superstitions, and prejudices; but they are still men of their time and place, men of their culture, established and respected there. Doing well materially there. After all, they had the freedom to leave there and undertake a long, time-consuming journey across the desert to Judea and back. They start from their home. That home represents their beginning place, and they come with all of the intellectual and spiritual baggage that that place has put upon them.

They’re home at first, but then something happens that shakes them loose, that pries them out of their starting place. They see an unusual star. Something new. Something unexpected. Something that piques their curiosity. They are, after all, thinkers. Wise men. So they want an explanation. They want to know why that odd star is there and what it means. We aren’t told how, but somehow they come up with the correct explanation. They decide that the star heralds something new, something special. They conclude that it heralds the birth of the long-expected Jewish Messiah, a newborn King of the Jews. We don’t know quite why that matters to much to these Gentile stargazers, but it does. I hear the story telling us that in their hearts they longed for something new, something better, a new revelation of God’s will and ways. Whatever the reason, they know they must go and pay homage to this mysterious new thing proclaimed by this mysterious new star.

So off they go. They don’t know exactly where they’re going, but because they believe that their star proclaims the coming of a new King of the Jews they know that they must go somewhere in Israel. So they go to Jerusalem, the only major city in Israel, to ask about a newborn king. Apparently no one knows anything about it, but King Herod hears about them; and he’s not happy. The Messiah would be an irresistible threat to his power. So he gets his religious experts—sort of a Council of Religious Advisors—to tell him where the Messiah was to be born. Bethlehem, they say. So Herod calls the wise men in and sends them to Bethlehem with the disingenuous request that when they have found the child they return and tell him where he can find the newborn Messiah so he too can go worship him. So off our wise men go to Bethlehem.

There they find baby Jesus. They find what they were looking for. They find the new revelation they had been seeking. It’s odd that what they were seeking would turn out to be a baby, isn’t it? After all, a baby can’t teach them anything new. He can’t even talk yet. He can’t do anything except be a baby like any other baby. Still, they give him gifts that say he is a king (gold), that he is a high priest (frankincense), and that he is mortal (myrrh). They confess through these gifts that Jesus is the one come from God to reign, to instruct, and to show God’s nature through his life and even through his death.

Herod told them to come back to him with the baby’s location, but they have a dream that warns them not to do that, so they set off for home. But they don’t go the way they came, through Jerusalem. They go home “by another route,” as the NIV has it. The King James Version says they go home “by another way.” However we say it, after the wise men have encountered Jesus they change their course. They turn to a new way. They don’t go back the way they came. Their journey is changed. It is diverted to a new way.

Folks, Matthew’s great story of the magi is a magnificent parable, a magnificent metaphor for the human spiritual journey and for how encounters with Jesus affect that journey. We all start somewhere, just like the magi did. We all have a home, a spiritual starting place that has formed us and given us at least some spiritual grounding. That spiritual home, our spiritual starting place, may be more satisfactory or less so. We don’t all start in the same place, but we all start someplace. Probably not in Persia, but someplace.

In Matthew’s story the magi’s starting place is a long way from where they eventually discern that they need to be. I looked it up on MapQuest. Even western Persia, where these guys presumably came from, is about 1,250 miles from Jerusalem. That’s a long way today by car, not that I’d recommend driving a car across Iraq today. It’s a long way by car, but it’s an incredibly long way on foot, or by camel. Matthew’s wise men started out a very long way from their destination. Sometimes we do too, figuratively speaking. Sometimes our spiritual journey covers a lot of territory and takes a lot of time.

Our wise men were supposedly wise by the standards of their time and place, but I think we can know that at some level of consciousness they knew something was missing. Maybe at first they weren’t really aware of what that was or even that anything was missing at all, but something made them aware that they needed something new. In Matthew’s story that thing is the mysterious star. With us it’s probably not a star that makes us sense that we need something we don’t have. Maybe it’s a feeling of emptiness inside. Maybe it’s a lack of inner peace. Maybe it’s a nagging question about life, death, and whether anything means anything at all. Maybe it’s a feeling of guilt over some wrong we know we’ve committed. Our mysterious star can be many different things. Whatever it turns out to be, we sense that our spiritual life is lacking. I think Matthew’s magi must have sensed that too.

So they set out to follow their star. It led them to Jesus, which turns out to have been where they needed to go. It may seem odd, but I think that whatever it is that is acting as our star can lead us where we need to go too. When we do the work of really understanding what we lack we can see what we need to satisfy that lack. Do our souls feel empty? We need substance to fill them. Do we lack peace? We need a gentle assurance of God’s grace to quiet our unease. Do we feel guilty? We need to know God’s forgiveness so that we can forgive ourselves. Follow your star, follow your lack, and you will discover what you need.

The magi’s star led them to Jesus. Our star, whatever it is, can lead us to Jesus too. After the magi had worshipped Jesus and presented their gifts they went home by a different way, a new way. Matthew says that’s because they were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, but I think their new way has a deeper meaning too. In Matthew’s story their physical path is changed, and I invite us to think of that change as a metaphor for how encounters with Jesus change our spiritual path as well. After all, the magi’s encounter with Jesus wouldn’t mean much to them if all that happened was they came, knelt, left their symbolic gifts, and then went home unchanged, forgetting about Jesus. No, I think we are to understand that it wasn’t just their route home that changed. I think they were changed too. Changed inside, in their spirits, in their souls. Notice that the star doesn’t lead them home. They don’t need the star to lead them home because whatever that star represented in them had been satisfied by their meeting Jesus.

It can be the same with us. Jesus and the God we know in and through him can satisfy whatever lack we feel inside. Truly meeting Jesus can bring us peace, forgiveness, and a meaning our lives didn’t have before. Truly encountering Jesus, learning from him, and learning to lean on him can give our lives a direction they didn’t have before. The magi went home by a new way, and they went home new. So can we. We can if we will truly come to Jesus, if we will listen to him carefully and deeply and turn to him when we need guidance, strength, or peace.

Folks, we can be magi too. We can come from our starting places, our various spiritual homes, to seek what we need and find it in Jesus. Then we will be changed. That is the path of the Christian spiritual life. That is the journey to which God calls us. So let’s pack our camels and head out, heading for Jesus and new life. He’s waiting for us. Let’s go meet him. Amen.