Sunday, January 7, 2024… Sunday of the Epiphany

“A Star to Follow”

Psalm 72:1-15; Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-13; Matthew 2:1-12

Divine Service III with Holy Communion

Hymns: #367 “Angels from the Realms of Glory”; #370 “What Child Is This”; #397 “As with Gladness Men of Old”

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

    Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.

    We’ve come to another New Year; the calendar has flipped over to 2024. So what has changed? What’s different? It’s the same world it was last week. It would be nice if we could leave whatever ailed us last year behind us and start a New Year with a clean slate. But last year carries over, and our troubles follow us. It’s a New Year, but it’s not a new world. The hurting still hurt, the lost are still lost, the hungry are still hungry, the sick are still sick. The prisons are still full, the homeless still homeless, the wars in the world rage on. Our neighbors are still out there, still needing our help. “The poor you will always have with you,” Jesus said. The needs are as desperate as ever.

    What I’d like to show you today, in the story of the “the Magi from the east,” is what makes the difference between people in this world, which is the same for us today as it was for the Wise Men. There are people in this world, as there were back then, who have no eyes for anything but themselves. Like King Herod, they have their own interests, their own little kingdoms to protect. Like the high priests and leaders of the Jews, they their own power and position to cling to. People have their own work, their own troubles, their own lives to worry about -- like so many people living in Jerusalem when Christ was born, who never saw the Christmas star shining, who didn’t notice a thing, because they were too busy with what they were doing on earth to take a moment to stop and look up at what was happening in the sky. But there are still some of us in this world who still seek God, and look for Him, and bend our knees to praise Him, and are still willing to follow Jesus His Son. And therein lies our hope, both for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for this world we live in.

    The story of the Magi is just so strange. Nobody really knows what the Christmas star was, although theories abound. No one knows exactly who the Wise Men were or where they might have come from. Legends have given them names -- Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthazar -- but the Gospel account never says the “three kings of Orient” were kings, or that there were only three of them. But we can talk about what we do know.

    St. Matthew starts out by giving us the setting for the story. The story has a time and a place; it’s an historical account of what happened. (Matthew and the other disciples might have heard it from mother Mary herself). The story takes place sometime after Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, and it happened during the reign of King Herod, so we have a general time frame. But when exactly the “Magi from the east” arrived in Jerusalem could have been weeks, months, or even a year or more after the birth in the stable. We don’t know how long it was from the time Christ was born and they saw His star in the sky, until they were able to make the journey from wherever they were to come and see Him.

    A “Magi,” by the way, is a magician or a sorcerer; literally “a seeker after hidden knowledge.” Every nation and kingdom in the ancient world had their court magicians. There were magi in Egypt, in Syria, in Mesopotamia; and also in Persia, also known as Babylon -- which is my best guess as to where the wise men came from. And I’ll tell you why I think so. The wise men, arriving in Jerusalem, asked, "Where is the One who has been born king of the Jews? We saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” How would a band of magicians, from a country far to the east of Jerusalem, even know about a coming “King of the Jews,” who would also be the Son of God and worthy to be worshiped as the Savior of the world? They weren’t even Jews themselves. How did they know that a particular sign, a particular star out of all the stars in the sky, would tell them that the Savior had been born?

    Way back in the time of prophet Daniel, some 500 years before, Daniel, as a young man, had been taken to Babylon along with the exiles of Israel. Years later, by the end of Daniel’s story, he’d done such great service to Babylon’s king, interpreting his dreams and such, that he’d become head of all the wise men, all the Magi, in the land of Babylon. Yet Daniel remained, for all his life, righteous and faithful to Israel’s God. It’s very possible that Daniel left a Gospel witness among the Magi of Babylon, that he had converts among them, and that he told them about the coming Savior, and the prophecies about Him, and how they would know when He’d at last been born into the world. They were given a sign, a natal star, a Christmas star, to look for.

    Maybe not all of them, but some of them at least, remembered what Daniel had taught them, and it’s not so hard to believe that the seed of faith lived on in that place for all those years. So while the rest of the world was “doing their own thing” and looking elsewhere, there were a few wise men in the world, at least, who were paying attention. Maybe the passing of the years had made the story incomplete, maybe the details had gotten a little fuzzy, which maybe explains why they came to Jerusalem, instead of going directly to Bethlehem. But they knew enough to be awake, and to see, and to come and seek Him. And isn’t that still what matters for us today?

    Matthew’s story introduces us next to King Herod, one of those men who had little care for anything but himself. This was a man who’d do anything to keep his crown and his kingdom. He’d murdered a number of his own relatives, even his own sons, because he suspected them of having an eye on his throne. The last thing old Herod would welcome was news of new-born King of the Jews. So when Herod heard what the Magi were asking, he was disturbed, he was troubled, he was agitated. And when Herod was agitated, all Jerusalem was agitated, too, because there was just no predicting what the man would do.

    What the king did was call together the chief priests and law teachers of Israel, the people who should know, to find out what they knew about where the Christ, the Savior, was supposed to appear; not because he welcomed a Savior, but because he couldn’t tolerate a potential rival. The book of Revelation talks about a great dragon, the devil, who stand and hovers over the mother of God, “waiting to devour her child the moment He’s born.” The last thing the devil would tolerate was a Savior who’d grow up to pay for the sins of the world on a cross; that would be the end of his kingdom.

    The chief priests and scribes in the story had the correct information. They could point chapter and verse to the passage in question, and they did. They quoted to King Herod from Micah 5: “But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.” The priest and scribes of Israel knew the truth, but they wouldn’t welcome the coming of a Savior any more than King Herod did. They were more worried about their own positions, much more concerned with keeping Herod happy, and not offending the Romans who ruled their country, and holding on to what they had. They were as blind as Herod, in their own way. Later they’d crucify the Son of God, rather than bowing their heads to Him and making the changes in their lives that doing that would require. Not to be aware that a Savior is coming is bad; but knowing that He has come and rejecting Him outright is worse. It’s the difference between being blind, and covering your eyes and choosing to be blind on purpose. Both kinds of people still live in our world.

    Herod may have been evil, but he wasn’t stupid. He was sly and slick and an expert at deception and “palace intrigue.” He called the Magi in secret and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared to them. He needed the time frame, the window, since he didn’t know how old his new-born rival was. He needed the information for later, for the really wicked plan he already had in his heart. Herod sent the Magi to Bethlehem, to make a careful search for the child. (Bethlehem was a small place then, with only 2000 people or so, so the task wasn’t impossible). The king told them, “As soon as you find Him, report back to me, so that I  too may go and worship him.” That was a lie, of course. Herod worshiped nothing but his own exalted self, and had nothing but murder in his heart.

    The story gets even more interesting from here. The Magi heard the king and went on their way, toward Bethlehem to the south; and there before them was “the star they had seen in the east.” Nowhere in the story of the wise men does it say they followed the star from wherever their home was all the way to Jerusalem. They saw the star, back there in the east, on the night that Christ was born. They prepared their journey, and traveled for weeks or maybe months, however long such a journey might take. But they didn’t need a guiding star to find Jerusalem. Jerusalem was on one of the world’s great trade routes; everyone knew where it was. If the star had led them all along, they’d have gone straight to Bethlehem, and never had to bother with Herod at all.

    The journey was a leap of faith for them. They knew the Savior they sought was the King of the Jews, and they knew Jerusalem was the capital city of the Jews, but they had to trust God to help them find Him once they arrived. Like you and me, in a way. We have no roadmap, no GPS, to lead us to heaven; only faith that the Lord will bring us there.

    So when they saw the star, they were overjoyed. Literally, “they rejoiced with great joy exceedingly.” Was it the same star they’d seen in the east, set to shine again just for them? Or some different kind of star, or maybe an angel sent to guide them? I don’t know; but what matters is that they got what they prayed for, and found the One they came looking for. This is what the Bible sometimes calls our “vindication.” We trust God, we believe His promises, even while time goes on and the world grows dark and things get scary. We trust and believe, even when people laugh at our faith and tell us we’re out of our minds for believing in things we can’t see. But then God, as He always does, keeps His promises. And then one day we’ll get to point up to heaven to God smiling down on us and say, “See? I told you so!”

    And they came “to the house,” our Gospel says. (Note that they came to a house, not to a stable; Joseph was a good enough father not to leave his family in a stable for more than one night). And they saw the Savior with their own eyes, in the arms of Mary His mother, as God had promised they would. And they bowed down and worshiped Him, and they opened their gifts of precious and expensive things -- gold, frankincense, and precious myrrh. (The same stuff a certain woman years later would pour on His head “to anoint Him for His burial”).

    Have you ever thought about what those gifts must have meant to Joseph’s little family? A poor couple, from a poor place, with a child to feed, were suddenly blessed with gifts fit for a king, more money than they’d ever seen in their lives. As it turned out, I think the wise men’s gifts must have provided travelling money for them, to get them away to Egypt when Herod’s soldiers were seeking to kill their little one. God is good!

    “The wise men were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, and returned to their country by another way,” our Gospel says. So what had changed? How was the world any different? Herod was still Herod, plotting the murder of as many innocent little boys as he had to murder, to protect what was his. The chief priests and scribes, and the people of Jerusalem, went on with their lives, not knowing anything had happened at all. The hungry were still hungry, the hurting still hurting, the lost ones still lost.

    But the world was different, and it has been to this day. The Light had come, as Isaiah says. “The true Light that gives light to every man had come into the world,” John says in his Gospel. A small light to begin with, just a light in a stable, but the light would grow. And the Magi, the wise men, must have been different in their hearts as they made their way home. Their faith had been vindicated and proven to them, as God in His mercy showed them the One they’d come to see. No doubt they spread the Word about him once they got home. (One of the oldest Christian churches in the world today is the Syriac Christian Church in Iraq, formerly Babylon, which traces its beginnings back to the preaching of St. Thomas; faith lives on!)

    And you and I are different from having known Jesus, and because of that we’re here to make a difference in the world. It’s a New Year, but our mission as God’s people hasn’t changed. The needs out there are still great, our neighbors still need us -- and who’ll be the light in this place if not us? Arise and shine, folks! We have work to do!

    Lord, help us in this New Year to rise and shine and show the world Your glory. Help us, O Lord, to do our part to break the darkness around us and bring the nations to Your Light. Help us to bring the Good News about Jesus to our sons and daughters, and to all Your children, until the whole world knows how much You love us all. In Jesus’ name; Amen.