Seekers

I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. It was a long time ago, but I can still remember it all: the journey, Herod, the house, the child. There are days when I still can’t believe we really did it, really actually saw the child, especially since we had such a hard time finding him. But it was all worth it. My life has never been the same since. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

We were astrologers. Well, I was really an apprentice, but I was far enough along that my master slipped me into the travelling party. We lived in Persepolis, in the eastern part of the Persian Empire. We were Zoroastrians at that time. As astrologers, we diligently studied the skies. We read all the old treatises and knew exactly where all the stars, comets, and galaxies were. We knew how the Sumerians, the Greeks, and the Buddhists had mapped out the constellations. About that time, we’d had some inkling that some kind of shift or transformation was about to take place in the universe, but no one was sure what it was, or how we would know that it had happened.

One night my master came running in from the observation room. “The House of the Jews,” he shouted, “It’s in the House of the Jews!” “What is, master?” I asked. “It’s a star I’ve never seen before in that constellation,” he shouted. “Call the others!” After the others had studied the House of the Jews, they tentatively agreed that there seemed to be a new star there. None of them could say for sure the meaning of such a sign. My master, though, was sure that this star was the sign of the transformation we had been expecting. He said, “I feel a stirring, deep down. Some of us most go to Jerusalem, to the center of the land of the Jews and find out what this star means.” Most of the others looked at my master doubtfully. Jerusalem? Travel a thousand miles just because you think you see a new star?

My master was determined. He doggedly pursued his friends, and finally a few other astrologers agreed to go with him. They had to raise funds for the trip. They had to buy the provisions and equipment. They had to arrange for the camels and the camel drivers. My master had to get a letter of introduction to the government in Jerusalem. Once we started, it should have taken us about two months to get to Jerusalem. But we got lost several times. People sent us in the wrong direction. Some of the roads were washed out. The camels got sick, and one even died. And the camel drivers demanded that we spend longer than just one night whenever we stopped at a caravanserai. And, of course, none of us knew exactly where we were going. My master had figured out that we were looking for “the king of the Jews,” but he had no idea where this king might actually be.

At last we reached Jerusalem. We took our letters of introduction to Herod’s palace and actually got an audience with the great man. My master asked point blank, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” Herod and his courtiers went white. Trembling, Herod called for his priestly advisors. His voice shook as he asked them what Scripture had foretold about the birth of the Messiah. “Bethlehem,” they said. With that, Herod sent us on our way, reminding us to come back and let him know where this child was, so that he too could worship him. I was skeptical. Herod had called himself the “king of the Jews.” Would he really let someone else, a child, usurp his power?

Although Bethlehem was only six miles away from Herod’s palace, again we got lost. It took us a while to find the right gate out of the city. When we got to Bethlehem we wandered around for a while. We reached a small house on the street of the carpenters. “This is it!” my master shouted. “Are you sure?” the others said. “This small house? We thought we were looking for another king.” My master gingerly knocked. I held my breath. A man ushered us in. And there he was, the most beautiful child I had ever seen, a toddler, maybe eighteen months old or so, sitting on his mother’s lap. Seeing us, he leapt up and ran to us. He laughed and crowed and opened his arms to welcome us. We were awe-struck. For several minutes we couldn’t do anything but kneel there gazing at him. When he laughed some more, we unfroze and began to unpack our bags and pull out the gifts we had carefully carried all the way from Persepolis, gold, incense and myrrh. Even now, I wonder how my master actually found the child. I wonder if the child knew who we were. I wonder what his mother thought when she saw what we had brought.

We found a place to stay for a few days. Then we knew it was time to go back. The night before we were to leave my master had a dream. “We’re not going back to Herod,” he said, “that old fox is up to no good.” The locals told us how to get back to Persia without going through Jerusalem. Later, I shuddered as I heard that Herod, instead of worshipping the holy child, had ordered his soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger. “It’s OK,” said my master. “Herod didn’t find him. His parents had already taken him to safety in Egypt.”

I’m an old man now. I have children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren. They are all wonderful people. But something about that child made him more wonderful than any other child I’ve ever known. And my life changed forever the day I saw him. I knew myself as loved and accepted by God in a way I had never known before. How grateful I am that my master saw that miraculous sign and persuaded us all to join him on that wondrous journey.

Only Matthew tells us this story. And what a wonderful story it is. How can it be that foreigners, people from Iran, a country from which the U.S. is currently estranged, were the first to sense the true identity of the holy child? Could it be that God’s revelations sometimes come to outsiders, not only to faithful Christians or Jews? Is it possible that God’s revelations even come to our enemies or to those we think undeserving of God’s love? How could it be that the Persian astrologers were led not by Scripture, but by a celestial phenomenon? Could it be that God speaks through the non-human world as well as through the human world? Could it be that birds and fish and bears and deer, even our own companion animals, reveal something to us of God? How could it be that God spoke to the astrologers through dreams? Could God be speaking to us too through our dreams, through our hopes, wishes, fears, and joys?

How could it be that the astrologers trusted God to lead them back home by an alternate route? As 2014 begins, many of us are not where we thought we might be. Perhaps unexpected changes have occurred in our families, in our jobs, in our health, and in our relationships. Perhaps someone has lost a loved one or been forced to change living arrangements. Just by virtue of being a year older, we are travelling by a different road than we travelled last year. Even so, like the Persian astrologers we too can trust God to continue to reveal Godself to us and to lead us on the challenging alternative roads of our lives.

Laura Sumner Truax reminds us that, “The Magi are traveling companions for us in our information-rich age and especially good for us to emulate as we put one year to bed and once again hold out hope for the new one. Our plans may seem set, but just as 2013 took many of us in a different direction, so will 2014.”1 And as we set forth, we may not have any better information than the astrologers. Even though we have diligently read the Bible, faithfully worshipped, and fervently prayed, we still may have only a dim sense of who God is and what God desires for us. We still may not know exactly where God is leading us. We still may get stuck or discouraged and wonder who can give us accurate directions. We still may encounter detours and alternate routes, even to return home. We still may have to endure losing companions along the way.

Here is the good news: God is with us. Wherever we are on our spiritual journey, neophyte, beginner, wanderer, wonderer, or old soul, God is with us. God will lead us, sustain us, and bring us home. And “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

1. “Reflections on the Lectionary,” Christian Century, 130, 26, Dec. 25, 2013, p. 19.

Where's the Good News?

Why is December 28th red on our liturgical calendars? We’re still in the joyful season of Christmas tide, which lasts through the Epiphany, and in which our liturgical colors are white and gold. So why is the 28th a red day? Red days on our calendar mostly signify days on which we remember martyrs, those who died for their faith. On December 28th we remember those who died for a slightly different reason. Between the two paragraphs of our Gospel reading today there are three verses that we did not hear, but which we need to hear if we are truly to understand the meaning of today’s Gospel. These are the three verses, verses 16 through 18: “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’” This event is what we are asked to remember on December 28th, Herod’s slaughter of the innocent children.

Whoa! What’s going on here? Why are we asked to remember such a horrendous event in the midst of our joyful celebration of the coming of the Prince of Peace? Why does the church give us this Gospel, with or without the mention of the Holy Innocents, in Christmas tide? Wouldn’t this text be more suitable for Lent? Perhaps so, but there’s a good reason for hearing this text now. Truth be told, this isn’t an easy text on which to preach. It would be much easier to consider the coming of the Magi, which precedes the events in today’s readings, or even Jesus as a young adolescent in the story from Luke’s Gospel, both of which are also possible Gospel texts for today. But we need to hear this text. We need to hear it to avoid becoming too sentimental about what the birth of Jesus was all about. On Christmas Eve we heard Luke’s lovely story, complete with angelic voices and awed shepherds. On Thursday we’ll hear of those strange eastern politicians who visited the young child and whose departure precedes today’s Gospel. Last week, I preached on the Word becoming flesh and blood and moving into the neighborhood. Well, perhaps the neighborhood wasn’t quite as idyllic as you and I remembered it. This text, this disturbing Gospel reading, forcibly reminds us that, indeed the neighborhood in which the Word became flesh and blood was not idyllic at all.

Herod “the Great” who lived from 73 to 4 BC, was given the title “King of the Jews” by the Roman rulers who put him on the throne in 40 BC. He was famous for his brutality, and he had had many of his relatives and other potential rivals killed. He was insecure and suspicious, and the last thing he wanted was someone else who could possibly be the “king of the Jews,” as the Magi had suggested. When his religious advisors informed him that the ancient texts foretold the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem, Herod had all the possible infant boys in Bethlehem killed. Warned by God in a dream, the Magi did not return to Herod, as he had requested, but returned home via a different route.

This is where today’s lection begins. No sooner have the Magi boarded their camels, then the angel warns Joseph to take Mary and the child and get away as quickly as possible. Imagine Joseph hastily packing, Mary climbing back up on the donkey, the three of them fleeing for their lives. Make no mistake: this was no trip back home to the grandparents, to make arrangements for the baby’s baptism in the home parish. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus became refugees heading to who knew what and where in Egypt. No maps, no credit cards, no embassy connections, no cell phone. Just the Prince of Peace and his parents running for their lives from a two-bit dictator! That’s the world that Jesus was born into!

That world wasn’t so different from our world, was it? We too live in an unstable and violent world, where the small and weak regularly experience tyranny and oppression. On January 12th it will have been a year since the earthquake in Haiti, an earthquake made all the worse by the environmental devastation visited on that poor country by its own two-bit dictators, Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier. Who can forget the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi in which the leaders of the majority Hutus murdered thousands and thousands of minority Tutsis? Communal slaughter in Darfur mercifully ceased in February 2010 but may well erupt again after this month’s elections. In Iraq, Christians have been especially targeted by extremist groups. In October, a siege at a Catholic church left 60 people dead, and just a couple of days ago two people were killed and 20 were wounded by bombs placed near the homes of Christian families. In this country, we perhaps have been spared political tyranny. However, we have a higher rate of both capital punishment and criminal homicide than any other western democracy. To make matters worse, many people have lost their jobs, their homes, and their retirement savings in the recession of the last two years.

The coming of Jesus into the world, the coming of Christ into our own lives, is the greatest gift anyone could receive. But maybe that gift should come with a warning label. That gift does not allow us to see the world through rose-colored glasses, or to imagine that the adorable child and the angelic voices are all there is to our faith. Rather, the gift of Christ strips away from us a kind of “unrealistic innocence.” Herods exist. Inside us and outside us. Herods do violent, nasty, and evil things. The world, Jesus’ world, our world, is not a nice, cozy, comfortable, peaceful place. Yet.

Whoa again! Where’s the good news? What happened to “God rest ye merry, Gentlemen?” Has the joy gone out of our lives with the Christmas tree ready for pickup on the curb? Rest assured, there is good news here, and this is it. The Word was born in a dark, violent world. God came and continues to come to the darkest places. When evil seems at its strongest, when the Herods of the world do their worst and stand ready to gloat in triumph, God leads us, God guides us, and God protects us. God enables us to find safe passage out of the darkness that threatens to overwhelm us. With Herod’s minions just hours away, God awakened Joseph and led the Holy Family out of danger. True, they were refugees in Egypt, but they were safe. When Herod the Great had at last died, God led the family back to Israel. Ah, but the more cruel of Herod’s sons was reigning in Judea, Joseph’s ancestral home, so God led Joseph to settle in Nazareth, in relative obscurity, but in safety. Herod had not triumphed, and the child grew, became an adult, and began his ministry. At the end of his life, the adult Jesus faced down those same forces of darkness, and again triumphed over them. That ultimately is the greatest good news.

God came to us and God comes to us in our darkest places. Haitians are suffering still, and the cholera epidemic has only made their plight worse. Even so, God is at work in Haiti, through our church, through other churches, and through many non-denominational agencies addressing the devastation of the earthquake and Haitian poverty more generally. Rwanda and Burundi are now at peace. God willing, the vote this month on the creation of an independent South Sudan will stop the bloodshed there. At the Sacred Church of Jesus, a Chaldean Catholic church in Iraq, the Rev. Meyassr al-Qaspotros, urged his followers not to flee Iraq, despite the dangers, but to trust God’s leading and work for peace among Iraq’s peoples. In response to the poverty in this county, God has brought the mobile food pantry here, God has led us to develop our diaper ministry, and God has encouraged us to become an Ohio Benefit Bank site. And God also comes to us in the darkness of our personal lives. When despair, doubt, and grief threaten to overwhelm us, when we feel as if God has abandoned us, God comes to us. If we are light enough sleepers, if we believe in dreams, or prayer, or the counsel of others, God can lead us and guide us into a safer place. Not a place where the Herods in our lives have disappeared. No, it’s not that easy, but into a place in which we are at least protected from them.

Make no mistake. The good news of this second Sunday after Christmas is not only that of our lovely Nativity scenes. The good news is not only that the Prince of Peace was born, or that the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. The good news of this second Sunday is that God also comes to us in the darkest places of our lives and leads us out of the darkness. The world can be a nasty, violent place where nasty deeds are done by nasty people. But God is with us through all that the world can throw at us. With God’s leading and guidance, we will triumph over the worst that can happen. Evil and darkness will not have the last word. They did not triumph over the baby Jesus, they did not triumph over the Jesus who was executed on the Cross, and they will not triumph over us. Ever. That is good news for Christmas, for Easter, and for every day of the year. Thanks be to God.