HOME ANOTHER WAY Matthew 2:1-12 January 5, 2014 Matthew s version of the events surrounding birth of Jesus have little in common with Luke s more popular account. Trying to put the two stories together can be confusing. The shift is dramatic: exit lowly shepherds, enter wise men; exit poverty, enter wealth; exit angel choirs, enter stars. But, one of the few things Matthew and Luke agree on is an emphasis on traveling. Both stories are about people making trips: from Nazareth to Bethlehem; from the fields to the manger; from Judea to Egypt. The longest and most unlikely of the journeys was from Persia to Palestine a journey taken without knowledge of the final destination. Such an unreasonable trip certainly couldn t have had a reasonable beginning. Matthew implies that the trip began with an unexplainable longing. Something unaccountable led them to follow a star to an infant king of an occupied country that they may have known little or nothing about. These words by Joyce Rupp have meant so much to me in my journey of life in faith. I share them with you this morning. I keep pulling it out the old map of my inner path, I squint closely at it, trying to see some hidden road that maybe I ve missed, but there s nothing there now except some well-traveled paths. they have seen my footsteps often, held my laughter, caught my tears. I keep going over the old map but now the roads lead nowhere, a meaningless wilderness where life is dull and futile. toss away the old map, she says, you must be kidding! I reply. she looks at me with Sarah eyes and repeats, toss it away. it s of no use where you re going. I have to have a map! I cry, even if it takes me nowhere. I can t be without direction. but you are without direction, she says, so why not let go, be free?
so there I am tossing away the old map, sadly, fearfully, putting it behind me. Whatever will I do? wails my security. and all I hear are the words, trust me no map. no specific directions. no this way ahead or take a left. how will I know where to go? how will I find my way? no map! but then comes the whisper: there was a time before maps when pilgrims traveled by the stars. it is time for the pilgrim in me to travel in the dark, to learn to read the stars that shine in my soul. I will walk deeper into the dark of my night. I will wait for the stars, trust their guidance, and let their light be enough for me. The Gospel tells us little about those who made the journey. We don t know from where they had come or even how many made the trip. They may have been scholars. They are described as magi. Magi, the root from which we get our word magician. And, you know, it may have been magic that sent the travelers on their way. Consider this definition of magic by John Welwood. Magic... is a sudden opening of the mind to the wonder of existence. It is a sense that there is much more to life than we usually recognize... that life contains many dimensions, depths, textures, and meanings extending far beyond our familiar beliefs and concepts. Could it be that the travelers were intellectuals who hungered for something deeper, something beyond rational logic and familiar scholarly pursuits? In the midst of our technological society, I have a yearning for something more. Don't you? We can see that yearning all around us. There are the various celebrity gurus and modernday cults. Fantasy literature, movies, and games have become a major component of our entertainment industry. In fact, there seems to be a universal yearning for that which is greater than ourselves, for that which outreaches our human grasp, for affiliation with something that transcends technology. Yes, we know that we must reach beyond this world for anything approximating hope. And beyond this world, there is the mystery, the wonder, the star. It was Albert Einstein who said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." And, my friends, it is that mystery, that wonder, that capacity to dream that we acknowledge through the story of the Magi. I can easily picture the scene of the magi considering all the accumulations of wisdom that had given them security and ease. I can see how they might think that moving into a strange, distant land was a ridiculous idea. They must have valued their old maps; their style of life, their
process of thinking, their way of acting. Why would they leave all that for something that had the smell of danger and the goose-bumps of a map-less terrain? Undoubtedly, we have all had times when everything in us wanted to cling to the old maps instead of opening up to a new unknown unmapped territory that challenges us to change and grow. This is particularly true when we have had to face tragedy and loss, when we had big decisions to make with no clear answer, when the future was uncertain, but has the future ever been certain? There have been times when we have felt somewhere between the old and the new and nothing seemed to fit. The old didn t wear well, and the new was either too uncomfortable or too masked with unknown possibilities. And maybe we sat by the side of the road of life and wondered, how will I find my way? Frederick Buechner tells this story: I remember sitting parked by the roadside once, terribly depressed and afraid of my daughter s illness and what was going on in our family, when out of nowhere a car came along down the highway with a license plate that bore on it the one word out of all the words in the dictionary that I most needed to see exactly then. The word was Trust. What do you call a moment like that? Something laugh off as a kind of joke life plays on us every once in a while? The word of God? I am willing to believe it was something of both, but for me it was an epiphany. The owner of the car turned out to be a trust officer in the bank, and recently, having read an account I wrote of the incident somewhere, he found out where I lived and one afternoon brought me the license plate itself, which sits propped up on a bookshelf in my house to this day. It is rusty around the edges and a little battered, and it is also as holy a relic as I have ever seen. When the magi reached Bethlehem, they found the child king in a humble home and they knelt down and paid homage. These distant travelers recognized what the local people of faith had missed. Maybe that s why they were called magicians. They must have thought they had reached the end of their journey. But it was only the beginning, for they would return in a different way. Going home another way This morning, I speak of going home another way, not as a different route to a familiar physical location. But consider how you are changed, even transformed, by the journey itself. And, consider home as your center of being where your dreams are birthed, where you find truth and purpose. We are all on the journey. And so, let s embrace those places in our lives where we feel our deepest joy and our lingering fears. Like the Magi, let s keep our hearts and minds and eyes open to the unexpected and even the unimaginable. For then, we will find the guidance and the courage to travel and to live in another way. And we will find, at the end of all our exploring, that we will arrive where we started at our true home and know the place in a very different way and maybe even for the very first time. My friends, this morning I encourage you to imagine a very different way, perspective, life and to make your trip home. I close with this Epiphany meditation by Jan Richardson, found on her Painted PrayerBook website.
For Those Who Have Far to Travel An Epiphany Blessing If you could see the journey whole you might never undertake it; might never dare the first step that propels you from the place you have known toward the place you know not. Call it one of the mercies of the road: that we see it only by stages as it opens before us, as it comes into our keeping step by single step. There is nothing for it but to go and by our going take the vows the pilgrim takes: to be faithful to the next step; to rely on more than the map; to heed the signposts of intuition and dream; to follow the star that only you will recognize;
to keep an open eye for the wonders that attend the path; to press on beyond distractions beyond fatigue beyond what would tempt you from the way. There are vows that only you will know; the secret promises for your particular path and the new ones you will need to make when the road is revealed by turns you could not have foreseen. Keep them, break them, make them again: each promise becomes part of the path; each choice creates the road that will take you to the place where at last you will kneel to offer the gift most needed the gift that only you can give before turning to go home by another way.
As we move into the coming year, where do you find yourself on the path? Have you been traveling more by intention and intuition or just by reacting to what s come your way? What direction do you feel drawn to go during the coming weeks and months? Is there anything you need to let go of or to find in order to take the next step? In the coming months, what gift do you most need to offer that only you can give? Blessings and traveling mercies to you for your journey through year to come. I look forward to walking with you