To Journey Together in Faith, by The Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 2:1-12

Today is the Second Sunday after Christmas — or, if you’re counting according to the Twelve Days, it is now the Ninth Day of Christmas. We don’t have nine ladies dancing in church today — but we do have a familiar story in today’s Gospel reading. In this latter part of Christmastide we look ahead, as it were, to Epiphany, to the culmination of our celebration of the Nativity in the Feast of the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Our Gospel story today is Matthew’s account of the Visit of the Magi to the infant Christ.

As often happens in Gospel stories, Matthew does not give us very much detail in the telling of his story. All that Matthew says is: “wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’” Matthew does not say where the Wise Men came from — just “the east” — nor does he say how many of them came — just “wise men” — nor does he say in particular what it is that makes them wise. Over the centuries, Christian tradition and storytelling has fleshed out some of those details, so that we now read the story and see in it things that Matthew himself never put there.

For instance, we all know there were three Wise Men, right? Some of us even know their three names: Gaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior. But Matthew never says there were three Wise Men. He says there were three gifts — gold, frankincense, and myrrh — and from that detail commentators and interpreters have deduced that there must have been three magi to present the three gifts. Matthew’s much less interested in the number of wise men than he is in the symbolism of the gifts. It’s the tradition that has supplied that number.

Likewise, Matthew never specifies where the Wise Men come from; but here also, tradition has grown up to supply more detail. One of the traditional stories about the Wise Men that I’d been half-aware of but had never stopped to really think about until a few years ago, is the story that the Wise Men all came from different places, representing different races and ethnic groups within the human family. If you look closely at many traditional paintings of the Wise Men you’ll see that one of them is African; and I’ve seen some crèche scenes that clearly depict another of the Wise Men as Asian. The third Wise Man is usually depicted as being white — but not European white, because Europe of course is not east of Bethlehem and the Wise Men have to come from the east — but the third Wise Man is often depicted as being Persian or Armenian, from areas we now call Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan. One traditionally-told story is that the Wise Men all came from different places, and met each other on the road as each of them journeyed following the star.

The reason for all this ethnic detail in the depiction is not hard to understand. It comes from the tradition that says the Wise Men represent all the non-Jewish peoples of the earth, all the Gentile peoples of the earth, coming together to recognize God’s gift of a savior in Christ. Even though they are Gentiles, and have no political interest in who is King in Jerusalem, and no prophetic interest in the coming of a Messiah — still, these Wise Men see in the star the promise of a new light from God to enlighten all people, and they want to draw near to that light, they want to come to the place where divine compassion is embodied in human life. These ethnically diverse and geographically distributed Wise Men represent all of us as we come together in our various journeys, as we strive to follow in our own ways the star of God’s leading, as we seek for ourselves and for others the Light of Christ in our world.

And in that sense, this Gospel is for us more than just a story: it is a call, it is a summons, it is a charge to us that we should keep on journeying, that we should keep on seeking the Light of Christ, that we should continue to join with other people — sometimes very other people — to follow the star of hope to the place where God’s saving love is revealed for us. The Gospel is a call to us to follow the Wise Men in the way that transcends barriers of race and ethnicity and geography and religious belief and brings us all together to the place where divine compassion is embodied in human life.

And I think there is no more important religious quest for us than that coming together in divine compassion in our day and age. Too often these days, we tend to think of religion as something that divides us, rather than something that brings us together. For years I’ve met people who identify themselves as “spiritual, not religious,” because to them “religion” is a word that signifies a rigid system of beliefs and behaviors, the kind of rigid system that marks off some people as saved and some people as damned, the kind of rigid system that leads inevitably to fighting and war and persecution and hate. They see religion as a divisive force, not the coming together to seek compassion that the Wise Men show us in our Gospel today. I’ve encountered people who think that “religion” and “hypocrisy” are synonyms, who think that it is simply not possible that any rational, thinking, normal person could believe all that stuff; so the only reason people adhere to religion is that it gives them some sort of position or prestige or power over people — a power some corrupt individuals are all too ready to manipulate to their self-serving advantage. They see religion as a hypocritical scam, not the coming together to seek compassion that the Wise Men show us in our Gospel today. I think one of the most important things we can do as Christians today — for the public face of our religion as well as for our own souls’ health — I think one of the most important things we can do as Christians today is to do what the Wise Men in the Gospel story do: to journey forward in a way that transcends borders and boundaries and races and ethnicities and orientations and belief systems, a way that is focused on following the Light of Christ however we are able to see it, a way that brings us together at the place where divine compassion is embodied in human life.

And there are many journeys we are called to go in our mission to seek the embodiment of divine compassion. Sometimes they’re actual, physical journeys, travel to other places — Haiti, or Honduras, or New Orleans, or an Indian reservation, or an urban immersion program, or even down the street to the Valley Mission — journeys to places outside our comfort zones, places where other peoples, other cultures, other socio-economic brackets, other levels of material wealth, other realities, become the effective signs in which divine compassion is embodied. Sometimes those journeys are not so much outward and physical as they are inward and spiritual, passages through illness, sadness, loss, grief, pain — passages to places where the compassion and strength and encouragement of God shines forth for us in the embodiment of friends and neighbors and fellow churchmembers. Sometimes the journey is both outward and inward, both physical and spiritual — a trip to the mountains or the forest or the ocean, a journey to a place where the light of Christ is visibly shining in the interconnectedness of all creation, a place where we are summoned to embody divine compassion in the way we love our neighbors, including our non-human neighbors, as we love ourselves, the way we show practical love by taking action for the well-being and flourishing of our whole environment. There are so many journeys that call us beyond separations and divisions and enmities, so many journeys that bring us together around the embodiment of the compassion of God. That is the wisdom of the Wise Men Matthew shows us in his Gospel today.

Matthew says “wise men came from the east” — and tradition supplies the interpretation that the Wise Men represent all the peoples of the earth coming together to transcend barriers in divine compassionate love. Let us pray today that we may also journey with the Wise Men, so that Christ may be revealed to us, and through us Christ may be revealed for the world. Amen.