Saturday, January 4, 2014

Epiphany Sermon for 1/5/2014

Matthew 2:1-12 

 2 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
  3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.   5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:
 6 “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’” 
  7 Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.”
  9 After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
  12 And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.


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Now that we’ve reached the end of the Christmas season, Americans have settled in from their travels.  Over the past 6 weeks, countless Americans have raced from one part of the country to another, visiting family and friends near and far.  We barely settle in from Thanksgiving when Christmas calls us out once more, and we go bravely out into the chaos via car and plane. 
So what makes for a successful journey?
It’s an easy question at first—reaching one’s destination safely.  But does it matter how long it takes, or how varied the actual journey is versus the one that was planned?  Rachel’s cousin recently returned to California from Kentucky.  What was supposed to be a boring journey turned into a trip a fiasco because the airline kinda forgot about him, sending him first to Chicago for a 6 hour layover before eventually getting him to Phoenix.  Last we heard, he was still there.  If he arrives two days later at his final destination, it still counts as successful, right? 
So we want to arrive at our final destination within a reasonable amount of time.  Well, yesterday Rachel and I spent just under five hours in the car driving from Cincinnati to home.  We didn’t end up stopping, because somehow Danielle slept through the entire trip.  We were thrilled.  Of course, we were even more amazed that she slept through the entire trip because Caleb fussed the entire way.  For almost five hours, he complained that he didn’t have enough food or the right food or more toys.  Often, he complained at high volume.  About thirty minutes into the trip, I immediately regretted not leaving enough room in the trunk for a whiny toddler.  Four hours later, I could no longer think straight, but I had to focus because I was shielding my eyes from the sun with a Christmas DVD because the sunshade is broken and I don’t feel like paying the dealer $150 for it.  So we made the trip safely and in a reasonable amount of time… but was it successful?
You get the idea.  We could all recount travel adventures, and we can look back on them and laugh, grateful that we eventually made it to our destinations, often a little worse for the wear but grateful to arrive. 
Travel is difficult.  It takes a lot out of us.  It takes a commitment to travel—you don’t just do it on a whim.  You have to plan for it, to prepare yourself, and you have to be ready for the unexpected, to deal with whatever you might encounter.
It is all these things today, and it was even more so in the 1st century.  It was expensive to travel, because you didn’t just set out by yourself on the freeway.  It was risky, because there were roving gangs of bandits that might hijack and rob your entire party.  It was lengthy, because there were no cars or superhighways or airplanes.  The best guess is that these magi hailed from present-day Iran, meaning they traveled almost 1,000 miles.  That’s like the distance from here to Boston.
So it’s a pretty amazing thing that these magi, who see the star of a king of another religion in the sky, set out to pay homage to him.  They travel 1,000 miles to worship at the foot of Jesus Christ, then still an infant, a toddler, at most two years old, unable to string a sentence together.  They do so because God appeared to them in the stars, gave them a sign of a king and they came to worship.
I think it’s fairly amazing that this story unfolds as it does.  Realize that these magi are gentiles.  They aren’t Jewish.  They are Persian astrologers, and rather than wait for them to figure out who the true God is, God reveals himself to them in the language they are already speaking—the language of the stars.  God makes himself known to them, makes himself accessible—but doesn’t make it easy on them.  God challenges them to make this journey, to invest their time and energy and money in a long journey to worship a child.  God asks a lot, and it doesn’t seem like the magi get a lot out of this, do they?
Friends, I don’t believe this passage is all about results.  There are a lot of individual lessons we can draw out of this, but there is a larger framework here, and I want us to focus on this.  God reveals himself to the Magi and begins in them a journey, one that challenges them and changes them.  We don’t know what took place on that journey, but I guarantee that it didn’t go exactly as expected.  Journeys never do, especially ones that take this long.  They obviously didn’t know everything at the start, because they had to detour in to Jerusalem to ask Herod for a few details.  They were working it out as they went.
But go they did.  They saw the star and they went, embarking on a journey.
We do the same. 
Friends, Christ calls us into a life of discipleship.  It’s a long, arduous journey, but it begins with a call.  It begins when God translates himself into a language we already speak—God comes to us.  On Christmas, we celebrated that God took on human flesh to reveal himself, and his grace, to us.  God continues to reveal himself to us, speaking to us in ways we understand, reaching out to us in acts of love to open our eyes and our hearts up to his incredible grace and peace.  God wants us to see him and respond.
God challenges us to take up the journey of discipleship.  Here’s what I hope you hear—it’s a lifelong journey, and it’s not going to go exactly as you have planned.  It’s not all going to be easy, smooth sailing, and it might not fit anyone’s depiction of an easy journey.  But it’s not about us—it’s not about whether or not we end up rich or successful in the eyes of the world.  It’s not about how it makes us feel or the kind of emotions it solicits.  It’s not about what it looks like from the outside.
What matters is whether we are journeying, each and every day, closer to Christ.  What matters is whether or not God is leading us in everything we are doing.  Are we pursuing Christ?  Or has the challenge of the journey become so much that we have set it aside to pursue something easier?  Have the sands of the deserts of life become too much, bogged us down and overwhelmed our defenses, causing us to seek smoother sailing?  Do we endure the heat because we trust the one who has led us here?  Are we willing to persevere, to risk everything because we trust that the initial call is faithful?  Are we going to go back to the wellspring of hope, to remind ourselves of God’s call to us, or are we just going to drift and hope we end up near where God wants us to be?
Friends, God has called us on a journey.  It’s a challenging journey, just as challenging today as it was 2,000 years ago.  It’s the journey of a lifetime, and I will not promise for a moment that it will be easy.  There will be segments far harder than any of us can endure on our own.  We will face monumental questions.  There will be plenty of people promising plenty of easier paths.
But it’s worth it, and not just because there are plenty of celebrations along the way.  It’s worth it because of where it leads—to the Christ, to the King, to the One who reigns forever.  This is where the journey leads—to eternal worship.  From the outside, it looks like the magi risked everything to give gifts to a child who wasn’t old enough to appreciate them.
But in the eyes of the Kingdom, the magi were changed.  They left by another way, not going the same as they came.  Their eternal destinies were altered because they came to worship the king, and that is my hope for each and every one of us—that we are forever changed by our lifelong journey of faith, and that we find ourselves in worship of the King, both now and forever. 

Let us pray 

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