Sermons

Another Road

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
January 6, 2008	Isaiah 60:1-6/ Matthew 2:1-12

    
I have learned a lot living in Rochester now nearly seven years. I have learned that “Charlotte” is char LOT. I have learned that “Chili” is chI LIE. And I’ve even made a transition that seems silly but true. That is to say that for the first 38 years of my life, wherever I lived, Buffalo, New York was to the East. So, that even now, with Buffalo being to the West, I still get a little bit disoriented when I get on the Thruway. Thankfully, I have essentially overcome that, and figured things out.

But then there’s this little problem: 390, 490, and 590. Somebody told me, at one point before they were numbered, that two of those were actually 47. When I thought about that I figured it would just be much easier to drive into Lake Ontario! But still, now trying to remember which goes where, 390, 490, and 590, and the little prayer that every once in a while we could all go back to whatever committee it was that named those things and say, “Give me just a little bit of a difference to hang onto.”

When we moved here we were told that it would take about 15 minutes to get to any place. And that may be true for the majority, but it certainly has not been true for me. More than once in the middle of one of these solo trips that I take every so often, I will call back to the church office. They are bemused as they give me directions. Or I’ll call home. They are more than a little entertained when I ask for directions as well.

I don’t know if it’s a gender thing; although I won’t ‘fess up to that. I have no good sense of direction. People who tell me a GPS would help me don’t know what they’re talking about! And even the little thing that says North, East, South, and West in our car doesn’t offer much assistance whatsoever. So, don’t ask me for directions ever. And if you do, believe me when I say I don’t know, and be grateful for my honesty. And if I show up somewhere and you see me, don’t ever ask me if I had trouble finding the place, because you know I did.

All of that, on this Epiphany Sunday, allows me to be intrigued by the ending of the story. This story is told only in Matthew’s gospel, and as we read it and sing about it, and look at paintings of it, and hear music, we are intrigued and overwhelmed by its meaning and impact and possibilities.

There are so many rich and diverse and complex entry points. This morning in churches across the land and around the world, the faithful will consider this story and enter into it from many places and from a variety of experiences.

They will think about the star. When we lived in Chicago, the famous Adler Planetarium’s most popular event, year after year after year, was the event that considered the story of this star. Could it be true? Could it have happened? What would it have looked like?

Or we think about the Wisemen themselves. We have ascribed so much to them, have we not? We have numbered them, though Matthew doesn’t say there are three of them. We have given them names (I’m particularly fond of King Caspar this year, by the way). And more than that, we have wondered who they are. What was their vocation? What were they doing on this journey? Because in so many important ways they seem to represent for us and for our tradition a deep acknowledgement in the face of great incomprehension of who this baby is and what he signifies.

We’ve invested a great deal of energy in thinking about the gifts that they have brought --- gold, and frankincense, and myrrh --- their value and what they represented, and how they connect us back to the Old Testament vision from Isaiah.

And every once in a while we think about the protagonist of the story, the little baby, the newly born one, whom they come to visit. He doesn’t say anything in this story. In fact, he goes undescribed and unmentioned. But theologian James Allison poses a question for all of us. When the wisemen showed up at the manger, who was really looking at whom? A question that’s really worth pondering at least a little bit, in this Epiphany season.

Now, all of these are important themes, to be sure. One we might think a bit more about this morning is that strategic decision that the Wisemen made at the end of their journey – as they were faced by a threat – to go home by another way. It was an unexpected response to a threat that they were facing. There were clearly great risks involved, physical, and political, and economic. But even so, facing those risks, having had this extraordinary experience, the payoffs and the rewards were significant as well.

We often wonder what happened to them when they return home. But I need to think at least that they were transformed by their experience, and that we along with those mysterious visitors are transformed as well.

Theologian Herbert O’Driscoll writes this about those three Wiseman: “Theirs is a deep wisdom. The Magi represent forever and for all of us the wisdom that recognizes human life to be a journey, taken in search of one who calls us beyond ourselves into faithful service, one before whom we are prepared to kneel, and to whom we offer the best of our gifts, flawed and unworthy though they be. We watch these visitors to Bethlehem as they kneel with supreme grace and dignity before what is to them simplicity, vulnerability, and poverty. They are prepared to kneel for in their wisdom (and this is the heart of what makes them truly wise) they discern the glory that is hidden in this place and in this child. And so we too,” O’Driscoll concludes, “daily engaged in our own all-too-human journey searching for that which would have us be so much more than we are, and bearing our unworthy gifts, kneel on the stable floor beside these royal ones, worshiping with them the child who is most royal.”

What would it be like for all of us and for each of us to focus on this notion of journey and destination and path, theirs and ours? And what would it be like to live into the promise and the possibilities of traveling by another road?

If you Google this story (if you know what that is), you will find an extensive list of musical representations and artistic portrayals, mostly seeking to capture the grandeur of this experience, and rightly so. But if you go a little bit lower down on the screen, or dig a little bit deeper into this experience, you will be called to pay attention as well to those who seek to capture the risks and challenges of this journey.

Poet U. A. Fanthorpe writes this: “This was the moment when before turned into after, and the future’s uninvented timekeepers presented arms. This was the moment when nothing happened, only dull peace, sprawled boringly over the Earth. This was the moment when even energetic Romans could find nothing better to do than counting heads in remote provinces. And this was the moment when a few farm workers and three members of an obscure Persian sect walked haphazard by starlight, straight into the kingdom of heaven.” A conclusion worth repeating: “walked haphazard by starlight, straight into the kingdom of heaven.”

We romanticize and sentimentalize this journey and this story, but T. S. Eliot’s classic Journey of the Magi captures what I think would be its reality.

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

We need to be prepared, we who seek to follow this star, to go on unexpected journeys that take us to new and risky places.

You have heard about Rick Warren, the mega-church pastor of the mega-church called Saddleback. Rick Warren has a spouse, Kay Warren. She tells a story of sitting one afternoon and reading a magazine article, and then she had an epiphany and began an unexpected journey. And that unexpected journey has now taken evangelical mega churches into Africa to work on the AIDS epidemic, places no one would have ever expected them to be were it not for this epiphany moment that led this woman on an unexpected journey to a new and risky place.

Henry van Dyke writes that “it is better to follow even the shadow of the best than to remain content with the worst. And those who would see wonderful things must often be ready to travel alone.” Perhaps that’s our calling as well.

I thus far have managed to write “2008” correctly every time. I don’t know about you. It is, in fact, a new year, and we are still individually and corporately working through a jumbled maze of resolutions.

It is also the Twelfth Day of Christmas, as these wonderful banners remind us. And we are still working through the meaning and the implications of this story, how we attach ourselves to it and how we live into its vision and promise.

And it is, in fact, Epiphany, a day of wondering and awakening and recognition. There are so many entry points to the story, including recognizing and being recognized by the one whose birth we celebrate still.

But in the midst of it all, in the midst of it all, we, in fact, are given stars to follow and alternate routes to pursue, and new journeys to take.

I’m not sure what that journey is for you. Perhaps it’s about your vocation, where you are headed next. Perhaps it’s about your lifestyle, an important choice you are about to make. Perhaps it’s about a relationship, one you are seeking to heal, or one you are seeking to ignite. Perhaps it’s about a commitment that you are being called to make, to a cause in this uneasy world. Perhaps it’s a journey to shed something. Or perhaps it’s a journey to take on something new.

I don’t know what it is for you, but I do believe, and more so I believe that this story of a journey’s other road would insist that to take the road less traveled by will make all the difference. All the difference.

We don’t quite know how it happened, but at each step of their journey along the way, the Wisemen were guided by God to and from and in between. Our vision is that we would be as well. Perhaps not quite as dramatically as they were. If we pay attention there are signs and voices all around us, leading us to another road, a road of discovery and transformation and abundant life.

Happy Epiphany. AMEN.