According to our Christian calendar, Jan. 6 is the time when many churches celebrate the day the Magi came to offer their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This special day is celebrated as Epiphany.
Who were these Magi from the mysterious East, who came to visit after the birth of the Baby, bringing their expensive gifts? They appear for a moment, and are quickly gone.
Matthew calls them the Wise Men. Biblical scholars call them Magi, astrologers, astronomers, philosophers, mystics, or scientists whose interests stretched far beyond Israel. Tradition has assigned them names and races.
Scripture identifies the three gifts they brought, leading us to assume there were three Wise Men.
But who they were, where they came from, or what they were about remain buried in the mists of history and legend. We really don’t know when they came and went. We honestly don’t know how many there were, but we do know they probably were not kings. The star in heaven may have been a “natural” astronomical phenomenon that occurred.
Like all of us at our best, they were on a quest, hungry for light in a dark world, eager to find that which was greater than themselves. Their story involved politics, murder, and duplicity.
In the last analysis, much depended on whom they trusted. Had they trusted Herod, Caesar’s king, history might have been different. But they trusted a voice which came to them in a dream, after they knelt.
The notion that another king was about to surface was not good news to Herod. “Go and find this new king,” he had privately said to the Wise Men. “And when you locate him, let me know so that I, too, may come and worship him.”
Having completed their mission, they were ready to head home, the oily voice of Herod stuck in their minds. They decided not to return to Jerusalem because they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod.
Their dream was right, as was their intuition. Herod was not to be trusted. He had tried to enlist them in his cause, but they had resisted. Powerful people intent on violence often try to co-opt religion. Every king, or president wants the blessing of God on whatever war is at hand. The three Wise Men took the back road out of town, and made their way across the desert. Matthew points to us in verse 12, “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”
When Herod realized that he was deceived by the Wise Men, in his rage he dispatched the troops. They must find and destroy this new king. Augustus, the Roman Emperor, said it was safer to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.
On his deathbed, Herod ordered some of the most distinguished people in Jerusalem to be arrested and killed at the moment of his death, so some tears would be shed at his passing.
Today, we are at the threshold of a new year. It’s not hard to find a seat on the Sunday after Christmas. The crowds have gone home, but like the Wise Men from the East, we have come to worship Christ, the new-born King.
For us, Christmas did not come to pass. It came to stay. What would it mean for you and me to take a new road home in 2025?
The Wise Men had to decide: would they be part of the problem, or part of the solution?
You know that our world is steeped in violence so ready to prove we are right because we can hit harder than anyone else, cannot hear or understand what he is about or has to say.
But Herod had a good reason to fear this baby in Bethlehem. You see, this baby will bring a new ethic, a new way of doing things to a world enamored with, mired down in the old ways. He will say, “Turn the other cheek,” “Go the second mile,” “Give good when you get evil.”
All the Herods of history will not understand him or what he teaches. His message comes to us in the quiet inner voices which speak of peace and non-violence.
He and his messengers (the Bible calls them angels) still summon us to a way of living in a world that does not understand. And we must decide whom we shall listen to, and whom we shall follow. Shall we trust the voices of the world’s Herods? Are we going to follow those who say “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”? Shall we heed those voices which demand that if we hope to survive, we will hit back twice as hard as we are hit? Perhaps wise men and women will hear that other voice which calls them to the back roads of life, roads which lead to peace on earth, good will among the world’s people.
After kneeling before Jesus, we are redirected to a different direction. That means that our joy in life will not be in seeking happiness and fulfillment directly, but in intentionally walking the way of service, sacrifice, and surrender. The new direction involves finding the holy in the least expected places, the very places we would most likely avoid.
Someone said, “Life is what happens to you when you make other plans.”
Jesus says that life begins by taking a different way home than the world teaches. Jesus shows us that by kneeling in front of the divine, we get a new direction. That new direction includes developing a theology of small victories, as we give ourselves to what God needs to be done.
Most often, we are led to a road that we would not have chosen had we known where it was going. However, at the end of the journey, we discover that the redirected way of life that Jesus calls us to is, in fact, a blessing.
To walk the way of Jesus is to kneel before the holy with empty hands, not with the words “give me,” but with the humble prayer that begins, “make me.” At that moment, Christ sets us on paths we would never have chosen.
At the end of life, however, we discover that his redirected paths are the ones we would have chosen in the first place, had we known that the deepest joy of all is in the small shafts of light we can shed on a suffering world. This is the way Christ wants for us.
So, here on the threshold of a brand new year, let us do the best we can that, with God’s grace, we take the road less traveled, it could make all the difference.
And sometimes, sometimes, it happens during those times when we do not know where to turn, or we do not know what is going on with our lives, or when we cannot understand why things are happening to us.
All of a sudden, meaning begins to unfold, and life takes on a preciousness that it never had before. And when we do it, the stars will shine brighter, and we see things from a different perspective.
Thus, let us keep our eyes open; keep our heart tender so when the star shines, we will recognize it. And when we recognize it, we will follow it.
Today as we eat the bread, and drink from the cup, I pray that we choose the road less taken, and then recognize that what we live on is not nearly as important as what we live for. What we live on keeps us alive and breathing, but what we live for gives us meaning, and a life well-lived.
That is what we all get after kneeling before Jesus: we are redirected. That different direction means that our joy in life will not be in seeking happiness and fulfillment directly, but in intentionally walking the way of service, sacrifice, and surrender. The new direction involves finding the holy in the least expected places, the very places we would most like to avoid.
Among the poet Robert Frost’s finest words that I recall: “I shall be telling this with a sigh.
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged into a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
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