Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 11, 2009

Scripture:

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.

Do you see it? What is it? I’ve never seen anything like it! It’s so bright! It’s so low! It looks like a star, but it’s not like any star I’ve ever seen before. What can it mean? Or does it mean anything at all? I wonder. The stars hold meaning. I spend my life studying that meaning. But I sure don’t know what this one means. I wonder what it can be. Is it moving? It seems to be moving, but not like a normal star. It’s not moving slowly in a path we’ve seen before like other stars. What can it be? What can it mean?

Is it beckoning to me? I feel that it is beckoning to me. Beckoning me to follow, to let it lead me somewhere. Could that be? I wonder. Where is it going? I wonder. There must be something wonderful happening somewhere, wherever it is going; but I don’t know what, and I don’t know where. I study the stars. I’m supposed to know what the stars mean. They call me a magus and people like me magi. I study the stars to learn what they have to tell us, what they mean for us, what they portend for the world. But I’ve never seen a star like this before. What can it possibly mean? I wonder.

Can’t you just imagine one of Matthew’s magi, one of the “wise men,” wondering things like that. It must have been a startling experience, a bizarre experience even. Astrologers like our magus knew how the stars behave. Of course, they didn’t have theories and mathematical explanations like Copernicus and Kepler, much less like Einstein and Hubbell. Still, within the limitations of what was available to them they studied the stars and knew more or less what to expect from them. But this star was different. It hadn’t been there before. It didn’t belong there. It didn’t act like a star was supposed to act. It must have been puzzling indeed to those Persian astrologers Matthew tells us about and calls magi. Let’s return to our imaginary magus and follow him as he tries to figure it all out.

Where is it going? It seems to be heading to the west. But to the west is only desert until you get to the great western sea. I know there are people there, the Romans most of all. They’re our enemy of course. I don’t much want to go where they are. And I’ve heard of people called Jews who live there, with a capital city called Jerusalem. They believe in one God, and so do we, more or less. Could the star be going there? I wonder. Should I follow it? It’s a difficult and dangerous trek across the desert to the place they call Judea. I wouldn’t want to make it alone. Maybe some of my colleagues, my fellow magi, would want to go with me. They’d be as fascinated by this star as I am.

So our magus asked some of his colleagues to go with him. They had seen the star too and had been wondering the same things. They readily agreed. And one of them said that he had heard stories about a king who was to be born to the Jews, a king who would save his people. They decided that maybe this star was his star. They wanted to go find out. They decided to take gifts fit for a king, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They loaded these gifts, and plenty of food and water, on camels; and off they went. To follow the star. Full of amazement. Star-led and wonder bound, they headed across the desert to see what they would see.

We heard some of the rest of the story. Since they thought they were looking for a king, they went to see the guy who was the king of Judea at the time, the infamous Herod. He told them the king they were looking for was to be born in Bethlehem. Now, Bethlehem isn’t very far from Jerusalem. Today the two cities run together. So they started right off to Bethlehem, and that star they had followed all the way across the desert led them. Then. it stopped. It stopped over a house. Let’s go back to our imaginary magus and imagine what he saw and thought.

Look! The star has stopped! But it has stopped over a perfectly ordinary house. Can this be the birthplace of king? It sure doesn’t look like one, but I guess we’ll go inside and see what we find. So he knocked on the door, and a perfectly ordinary looking young man opened it. “Hello, can I help you?” “Maybe. My friends and I have come from the east following a miraculous star. It led us to this house. Is there something wonderful happening here?” “Well, we think it’s pretty wonderful. My betrothed has just had a baby that was given to her by the Holy Spirit. Come and see for yourselves.”

So they went in. Our magus was puzzled: I don’t understand. There is a young mother here, but she is no princess. She is a perfectly ordinary peasant girl. She is not dressed in fine robes but in a simple peasant dress. There is a baby here. But this is no nursery for a king. It is a perfectly plain, ordinary house. These are no sheets of silk. There are no attendants. There are no fine tapestries on the wall. There are no plates of gold and goblets of silver. This perfectly ordinary baby can’t be the king the wise men of the Jews talk about, can he?

But wait a minute. The young man who let us in said that this child comes from the Holy Spirit. And there’s that star too. That star that found us hundreds of miles away and led us across the desert wilderness to this place. We came here star-led, and that doesn’t happen every day! So maybe this is a special child. Yes, a special child to be sure, but surely no king. At least, no king in the ordinary sense. Who can he be? I wonder. The young man said he comes from the Holy Spirit. The holy books of the Jews say the king to come will be called Messiah, and that means one anointed by God. Could this ordinary child be anointed by God? I wonder. If he is, what could that mean? I wonder. It surely can’t mean that he will be a king the way the kings of the world are king. His earthly origins are much too humble for that. What else could it mean that this ordinary child is the Messiah, the ones the Greeks call the Christ? I wonder. I wonder if it means that God’s idea of a true king is very different from the world’s idea of a king. Hmm. That must be it, because this child certainly is no earthly king.

What kind of king might he be? He comes from the Holy Spirit, they say. That must mean that he has a very special, especially close connection to God. Maybe he even comes from God. Maybe he even is God. But no! Surely that’s not possible. God wouldn’t come to us like this! God would come in majesty and power, not in poverty and weakness. Isn’t that true? Well, maybe not. I mean, this ordinary child in this ordinary place is from the Holy Spirit. Maybe what’s happening here is far more miraculous that I ever imagined it could be. Maybe this is God coming to us as one of us, an ordinary, unremarkable one of us. That must be it! We are in the presence of no mere earthly king but of the Son of God! Surely that’s not possible, but nothing else makes sense. Not with the child coming from the Holy Spirit. Not with that star, that odd, amazing, impossible star.

And he was amazed. He told his colleagues what he had discerned about this child. They agreed that he must be right. Nothing else fit all the facts. So they gave the child their gifts fit for a king, even though he was no earthly king. He was so much greater than that. Their hearts were willed with wonder. They were overcome with awe. They fell to their knees and worshipped the God who had come to earth in person in the form of this helpless, perfectly ordinary baby boy. They hadn’t thought that the God of the Jews was their God, but the God of the Jews had reached out to them through that incredible star; and so they worshipped. They worshipped in awe and wonderment.

The magi were star-led and wonder bound. We can be too. The star of Bethlehem beckons us too across the miles and across the millennia. Come, it says. come and be star-led. Come, it says. Come and be wonder bound. Come to the cradle of Emmanuel, of God with us. Kneel in awe before the miracle. Stand in wonder at the crib of God With Us. Open your hearts to the impossible become real. Our anthem said “You don’t have to be a king to worship him.” You don’t have to be a magus either. So come. Come to the cradle. Come to the child. Come to God, who has come to us. Come and be star-led and wonder bound. Amen.