Early on Christmas Day, our daughter Elizabeth, who is an astrophysicist, and I got up to watch the James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared space observatory which looks like a giant golden honey comb, launch into space from the European Space Agency’s launch pad in French Guiana, an event that scientists all over the world, including my daughter, have been eagerly anticipating for years.
According to Space.com, “the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope — NASA’s largest and most powerful space science telescope — will probe the cosmos to uncover the history of the universe from the Big Bang to alien planet formation and beyond. It is one of NASA’s Great Observatories, huge space instruments that include the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the cosmos.”
The long delayed launch went perfectly. And so the journey of the giant telescope began. As Dr. Karan Jani, astrophysicist from Vanderbilt University said, “The James Webb Space Telescope is a triumph of human ingenuity. After thirty years of planning and development, we now have in space the greatest telescope in the history of astronomy…this telescope really belongs to every single one of us, regardless of our countries.”
The mysterious people that we hear about in today’s gospel, who the gospel writer Matthew identifies as wise men from the East, were the ancestors of modern-day astrophysicists, for they too studied the heavens, and puzzled over the stars, searching out knowledge and meaning from their observations of the night sky.
As they studied the heavens, they observed a new star rising, a star powerful and full of meaning, a star that indicated the birth of the king of the Jews.
These wise men wanted to find the new born king and to pay homage to the child, to bring the child gifts. They wanted to see this heaven sent king for themselves.
Scripture doesn’t give us details about their preparations for this journey, but the wise men must have taken the time to gather the provisions they would need to make a long journey. We know that they collected the gifts they considered worthy of bringing to a new born king. And they decided on their destination—Jerusalem, the Jewish seat of power in Palestine, a logical destination if they were seeking a new born king of the Jews.
When they were ready, they set out.
We Christians here today were born into Christian families. Jesus is a familiar person that we’ve known about all our lives, maybe just a story that has been part of our lives, a starry point in a sky filled with stars.
But as this story reminds us, at some point, if we have been paying attention, we too see his star rising for ourselves, we suddenly see his light for what it is, and we know that we must seek him and hopefully to find him, to see him face to face, for Jesus is God with us.
As we prayed at the beginning of today’s service, we, who know God now by faith, want God to lead us into God’s presence, where we may see God’s glory face to face.
And so, having realized for ourselves who Jesus is, we set out on our journeys through this life with the desire to find Jesus. As the second verse of the hymn “I want to walk as a child of the light” puts it, “I want to see the brightness of God, I want to look at Jesus. Clear sun of righteousness, shine on my path, and show me the way to the Father.”
Our baptisms mark the beginning of our Christian journeys. Our baptisms equip us for our journeys to God. At our baptisms we renounce all of the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God and threaten to corrupt us. We put our trust in the grace and love of Jesus as we promise to follow and obey him as our Lord, for he is the one who will lead us into God’s presence.
We come up out of the baptismal waters, and then we set out.
No journey is perfect. When our Christian journeys end up getting detoured, or we get tired or discouraged, or we think we can’t go on, those promises we made at baptism equip us to try again, to set out again, to launch again, to keep traveling toward our destination, which is to be in the presence of God.
And that promise to obey is so important, for that promise to follow and to obey him helps us when we fall into sin not to give up, but to repent and to return to the Lord, to keep going.
Here’s another thing that this gospel reminds us to consider.
Before they left, the wise men determined their destination—Jerusalem. Although I have always assumed that the star just led the wise men where they needed to go, scripture doesn’t say that. Matthew says that the wisemen saw the star of the new born king at its rising, and so the wise men decided to set out. Nowhere in Matthew’s report does the star lead the wise men to Jerusalem. That idea in my mind comes from countless Christmas cards of men on camels crossing a desert with a bright star ahead of them, or from the verse in the familiar Christmas carol, “the first Nowell” in which the star continues both day and night, and the wise men followed it wherever it went.
But in Matthew’s report, the wise men see the star when it rises. The wise men set out toward the logical destination that they have settled on, Jerusalem, but we hear nothing more of the star until after they have reached their destination, have asked and asked about the new born king, and have come up empty. The new born king isn’t in Jerusalem at all.
In fact, Matthew reports that when Herod hears that these men have arrived who are seeking the new born king of the Jews, he is full of fear, and all of Jerusalem with him. Herod consults with his own wise men, who tell him of the ancient prophesy that the child is to be born in Bethlehem. And so the devious Herod calls the wise men to him, reveals the prophecy to them, and sends them off to Bethlehem to find the new born king and then to come back and tell him, so that he too can go and worship.
Only then does the star reappear. Matthew tells us that when the wise men had heard the king, they set out once more, and there ahead of them went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.
We too, like the wise men, determine where we should travel to reach our destination and to find God. We make our best guess, based on what we know. We may choose a particular church, or denomination, we may decide that we are spiritual but not religious and strike out on our own, we may go on retreats, or travel to some shrine, or travel to the Holy Land itself. But when we get to the places we have figured we will be in God’s presence, we may discover that who we seek isn’t completely there, or isn’t there at all. We may be so close, but we still haven’t quite gotten all the way into God’s presence.
BUT, we do find the next sign, the next clue, the next word or prophesy that will lead us on. Like the wise men, we set out again. “When the wisemen had heard the king,” Matthew says, “they set out once more.”
The wise men were humble. They accepted the fact that they hadn’t quite reached their destination in spite of their best planning and knowledge. BUT, they were close! They had only six miles left to go to get to Bethlehem. They accepted the fact that their determined destination wasn’t the final destination. They realized that their determination had gotten them almost the whole way, but that they had needed some help to figure out the rest of the journey.
And then the star reappears.
Suddenly, once more they see God’s light in the sky, leading them on, confirming the next part of the journey, making sure that they would get there, and stopping over the place where they would find the child.
So today, we set out once more, into a new year, with all its challenges and discouragements. Like the wise men, we travel well prepared. We know our destination.
But as we have learned, our destination, to see God’s glory face to face, is elusive. We have traveled so long and so far. We are almost there, but we have a little way left to go before we see God face to face.
So we, like the wise men, must listen, seek clues, and keep our eyes open for the blazing light of God that will reappear to confirm to us that yes, we are on the right path, even though the journey will lead from the seats of power with all their certainties to a place that seems small and insignificant, a place like Bethlehem, to a child born in a stable and laid in a manger.
And what will that blazing light be? You will know when you see it reappear. It will be God’s love, the love that will not let you go, ever. The love of another person for you that shows you God’s grace and mercy, the love built into the natural world around you that opens your eyes to God’s majesty, the love that floods and pours from your heart for those people and things that are starving for love.
We have set out so often.
Today, the wise men challenge us to set out once more, with great anticipation, for we do not have far left to go. And we can accept the promise, as the wise men did, that the star that we saw at its rising, the star that rises for all people, God’s love blazing and burning throughout eternity, will indeed reappear, and will light our way to God.
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