By Another Road

By Another Road

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson

January 7, 2018

for

Kirkland Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12

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.

First of all, before I actually begin this sermon, I want to say a warm and heartfelt thank you to you members of this church for supporting me in the four way covenant that we had while I was pastor of the First Congregational Church of Maltby from January, 2015, until last Sunday. You don’t know me, or most of you don’t; but you agreed to accept me as a member though I would virtually never be here, and you agreed to be one of the parties of that four way covenant that preserved my UCC standing while I was serving that non-UCC church. For that I am most sincerely grateful; and I look forward to getting to know you as I attend here as a retired pastor and member of this this church. So once again, thank you.

When Ryan asked me if I would be willing to preach today he told me that he had planned an Epiphany service for this first Sunday of the new year. So as I thought about what I might say to you this morning I poured over Matthew’s story of the visit of the magi to newborn baby Jesus. It is a mercy of the preaching profession that sometimes something in a text jumps out at you as you ponder what you could possibly preach on out of that text. When that happens for me I always, well, usually, pay attention. That happened for me as I was considering Matthew’s story of the visit of the wise men to baby Jesus. What jumped out at me was the line “they left for their own country by another road.” To get at what that line might mean for us let’s take another look at that story and the details of it, some of which may strike us at first glance as merely coincidental. Actually, very little in any Bible story is merely coincidental, and I don’t think the way Matthew has constructed this story has anything coincidental in it at all. The story goes like this:

The wise men, called magi, see an unusual star “in the east.” I always used to wonder how a star that they see to the east could lead them west, which is how they went. I finally figured out that Matthew means they saw the star while they were in the east, not that the star was to their east. Somehow they discern that this star heralds a newborn king of the Jews. Why these Gentile, probably Persian, sages should care about the birth of a new king of the Jews isn’t at all clear, but they decide to go see this newborn child anyway. The star leads them. But it doesn’t lead them directly to Bethlehem where Jesus has been born. They’re looking for a newborn king, so they go first to see the reigning king of the Jews, King Herod, known to history as Herod the Great. He’s a mere Roman puppet and a very brutal one at that, but King of the Jews is his title, so the wise men go see him first. They go first to the seat of political and religious power in that part of the world. Their first road takes them to a representative and wielder, indeed a symbol of, worldly power.

Then they go to Bethlehem and enter a house where they find Jesus and Mary (though apparently not Joseph, or at least he isn’t mentioned). They kneel before him and “pay him homage.” Kneeling before him is a sign of recognition and of subservience. To show homage means to show respect or reverence, and I suppose these magi showed both respect and reverence for Jesus. They give the baby their symbolic gifts: Gold for a king, frankincense for a priest, and myrrh for one who one day will die. I’ve heard it said that if there had been wise women rather than wise men come to see Jesus they would have given blankets and diapers, but never mind. Then apparently they find a place to sleep because what happens next is that they are warned in a dream not to return to Herod. Matthew doesn’t tell us here directly why they would be warned in a dream not to return to Herod, but the reason soon becomes clear enough. Matthew’s next story is the story of the massacre of the innocents, the order from King Herod to kill all the children in and around Bethlehem of approximately Jesus’ age at the time. The magi take the warning to heart. They “left for their own country by another road.” This morning I’d particularly like us to notice the movement of the magi in the story: From a foreign land to the center of political and religious power in the region, to the representative of empire in the region, the puppet king of the great and violent Roman Empire. Then to the birthplace of the one we call the Prince of Peace. Then home by a different road. Their movement is home, the representative of violent empire, Jesus, home by a different road.

There is a great lesson for us in the way the magi move in Matthew’s story. An encounter with Jesus even when he was a newborn baby changed them. It changed their direction. They traveled one way, encountered Jesus, then traveled a different way. The movement of the magi in this story is a symbol of the transformative power of encounters with Jesus. Encountering Jesus turned them around, or at least aside, from the way they had been traveling. Traveling across the countryside yes, but presumably also traveling in their lives. After they met Jesus they had no need of Herod and went home by another road.

His story of the magi is Matthew’s first tale of Jesus transforming people, but it certainly isn’t the last story of Jesus’ power to transform in the Gospels. Encountering Jesus turns men who made their living fishing for fish into men who lost their lives fishing for people. Several times in the Gospels encounters with Jesus give blind people their sight and make sick people well. They make demonically possessed people whole and healthy. They even make dead people alive. Christians sometimes speak of the transformative power of encounters with Jesus using the language of being born again, language many of us don’t much like to use because of its misuse by so many other Christians but when properly understood language that speaks powerfully of a life transformed, a life made new, by an encounter with Jesus. When we truly encounter Jesus and understand who he is and what he means, we too go home by a different road.

Yet there’s more meaning in the way the magi go home by a different road than that. The road the magi travel is changed, and it is changed in a most particular and meaningful way. It is turned away from empire. An encounter with the one who rules by justice and nonviolence turns them away from the ones who rule by violence and injustice. The Magi's encounter with Jesus even as a newborn infant turns them away from the ways of the world, the ways of violence, greed, exploitation, and injustice. In Matthew’s story they just go home, and we don’t know what they did after they got there. Still, there is great symbolic meaning in the way Matthew has them go home by another road. They go home differently. They go home changed. They go home transformed.

Now, that would be interesting I suppose even if the story of the Magi were merely a story about something that happened to other people a long time ago in a place far away. But see, the great Bible stories are never merely about things that happened to other people a long time ago in a place far away. They are about us. If they weren’t about us we’d never have heard them. They’d be of interest only to scholars studying ancient literature. Just think for a moment about what going home by another road, a road that leads away from the powers of the world, might mean to us today. We live in a most uncertain and disturbing time. We live in a world with enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on earth several times over, and an unstable American President and an unstable dictator of North Korea keep threatening to use them. We live in a world of drastic climate change that threatens to disrupt and harm life as we know it, and the powers (in this country at least) keep refusing to do anything meaningful about it. We live in a country angrily divided by race, gender, class, and other human characteristics, and the struggle for justice goes on seemingly without end. The list of our current difficulties could go on for a very long time.

Jesus spoke to a world with great difficulties, and some of the difficulties (though not all of them) are similar to the difficulties we face today. The Roman Empire ruled his world and maintained its rule through the liberal application of violence. It taxed the people into abject poverty. It let Jesus’ Jewish people follow their own faith and customs as long as they didn’t threaten Roman power in any way, but Jewish people kept rebelling against Roman rule; and they kept being crushed by the Roman legions when they did. Class division, poverty, and violence were at least as much a problem in Jesus’ time as they are in ours.

Jesus spoke God’s word to all of those problems. He said the poor are blessed and the rich are sent away empty. He said the peacemakers are blessed, and he rejected all use of violence in the struggle for peace and justice. Time and time again Jesus turned the values and expectations of his world on their heads, and he does the same with the values and expectations of our world. Matthew’s Magi went home by another road, and Jesus sends us home by another road too. He turns us away from the ways of the world just like the Magi went home avoiding King Herod.

Folks, our world needs to hear and follow Jesus’ word of another way today as much as it ever has. Few people listen to Jesus these days. Even most Christians don’t think he’s primarily about transforming the world. Trust me, I just resigned as pastor of a church that told me they didn’t want the world coming into the church. And I suppose many see the last line of Matthew’s story of the Magi as meaning only that these wise wanderers wanted to avoid telling King Herod where Jesus was. Yet that line means so much more than that. It calls us to go home by another road too. It calls us to turn from the ways of the world, the ways of violence and injustice, and to turn to the ways of God, the ways of peace, justice, and nonviolence. Are we prepared to listen? Are we prepared to be a voice in the world for the ways of God over the ways of Jesus? Are we prepared to be that voice when we stand alone and when the whole world turns against us? For that can happen to those who speak up for God in a world gone mad with power and oppression. Are we prepared? May it be so. Amen.