By The Rev. Elizabeth Masterson
Matthew 2: 1-12
So how's the year going so far?
I was reading a column by Paul Greenberg in the News Journal on from Thursday's paper about how often predictions of editorial writers are wrong. He closed the column by saying, “I think I'll just stick to observing. . . that the future lies before us. You can quote me on that.”
“The future lies before us” said in a certain context could imply hope for something better than one experienced in the past. In another context it might imply that the quest one is starting on promises to be exciting.
Might one of the Wise Men have said to the others, “Let's get started following this star, the future lies before us?” It wasn't reported by Matthew if he did!
These seekers after the King of the Jews hardly seemed like the politicians or editorial writers who may be prone to spouting that sort of empty, but pretentious, statement. Rather, Matthew presents them as seeking truth from ancient prophecies by talking to those who should have known what these prophecies meant—serious people on serious business. That serious business was to find a child whose claim to the Jewish Messianic title made men and women want to worship him.
For the Wise Men, worship involved leaving their usual activities and duties. Perhaps they turned these over to others. Perhaps they just allowed some things to go undone. Perhaps they left family and friends behind to worry about them. Whatever they gave up was the price they paid for their quest.
The Wise Men also worshiped through gifts carefully selected for value and for their meaning. We do not know why they chose these gifts, except that they were gifts worthy of a king. Looking back, we can speculate about their meaning. In other words, why would we give such gifts to the Messiah. For us they may symbolize kingship (the gold), priesthood (frankincense), and anointing in death (myrrh)—three aspects of Jesus' messiahship.
Yet most of all their worship was not in what they gave up or in the economic or symbolic value of their gifts, but in how “diligently” they sought the child. The faith they showed as they undertook and persisted in this quest and their attentiveness to God's message in a dream afterwards made them examples for all of us who seek God and long to worship God faithfully. Yes, to worship faithfully as the Wise Men did with reverence and with generosity.
“Christian faith” is a word some folks fling about all too readily in regard to someone's holding a certain set of beliefs. Do you believe . . . can be how someone starts a question about someone else's faith. Do they believe as we do about certain important issues or doctrines. And if they don't??
Rather, we need to understand faith, including Christian faith, as a gift from God that sends us out into a land of uncertainty and challenge, just as the Wise Men were sent. And our faith then becomes our persistence in seeking the Messiah, the Christ and our attentiveness to God in the midst of uncertainty and in a time of challenge.
Timothy Mulder, who has pastored both Episcopal and Reformed congregations, gave this advice to those of us who see ourselves on this sort of faith journey. Wise people should pray “for the gift of faith that we may see Christ in the world in the most unlikely of places.” Perhaps even in someone or in a situation that we dislike and would rather avoid. But being certain that in these “unlikely places” God will provide us with opportunities to grow in our faith and to trust God more fully than ever.
Where is your comfort zone? What sort of worship would you chose if you could choose anything? Yet what might God use to reach out to you?
No more wonderful worship experience could be imagined than the moment the Wise Men knelt and opened their gifts. And yet soon afterwards they had to leave and not in the way they had planned. But attentively they listened for God's leading and left, I expect, with more uncertainty and challenges ahead. Given their obvious faith, however, mostly like they would meet these uncertainties and challenges by continuing to trust in God's leading.
How might the example of the Wise Men's lives be seen in our lives or in the lives of our families or in the life of Good Shepherd? Different answers may come to various folks. Various answers may come at different times. But God will guide us to answers—if we remain attentive.
Pastor Mulder offered this observation on the Wise Men's journey—which I present as a New Year's gift—a principle that can inform our answer to 'How's the year going so far?': “Faith is traveling wherever, resting in hope that it is God who is leading us and our travels are not in vain.”
So how's the year going so far??
