Nine Miles Off Course
The danger about the story of the three wise men is that we have heard it so often that we are convinced that we know it and that it has no more secrets to reveal to us. So, what is it that we think we know? Three kings from Persia… named Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar… rode their camels to Jerusalem to bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus. And, given the distance they had to travel, they either started out long before this baby was born… or they didn’t arrive until he was back home in Nazareth, because Mom and Dad had finished their business in Bethlehem. True? No. Scripture does not tell us how many wise men there were… nor does it tell us that they were kings… nor do we know their names… nor do we know how long the journey took… or how they traveled. All we know is that these people… magi, they were called… the equivalent of today’s fortune tellers… showed up nine miles off course at the palace in Jerusalem with a story about a star and a child who was born to be king of the Jews… a story that made Herod really nervous because he was the King of the Jews… or so he thought. Then, on the advice of Herod’s intelligencia, these guys took off for Bethlehem and, the GPS system that they had been using recalculated the route and took them straight to the place where Jesus was… in Bethlehem.
So, who were these people? What star did they see? Why is this story important to us? And then, the question that has bugged me for the past couple weeks: How could God’s own GPS system put them nine miles off course? Not that GPS systems are perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. I gave a Garmin NUVI to Julian for Christmas and we had a delightful time wandering through the cities of Houston and Baytown to get to Galveston on Christmas Day. If you can imagine two cars with slightly different GPS systems following each other in the dark… wandering around the fourth largest city in the country… trying to find a strange house in Baytown… and then a hotel on a non-existent street in Galveston. How the wise men did it without cell phones, I don’t know. If we could not have called the hotel to ask for directions, we would never have found it. We weren’t just a couple blocks off course… we were a couple miles off course!
For some reason, these mysterious travelers showed up at the palace in Jerusalem… nine miles off course. Now, I realize that a tiny stable may not be on the map… or even on a street… but, after all, God’s GPS system ought to be perfect. The wise men should have been guided directly to the stable without even going through Jerusalem… unless they had to make a pit stop. They should never have been nine miles off course. But I am going to theorize that there was nothing wrong with God’s GPS system. That’s just a wild guess… but it fits what I know about God. I am going to guess that it was probably human error. The wise men probably could not believe that a new king would not be born in a palace… that he would not be born in the capitol city… that he would not be surrounded by all the accoutrements of his position! And, perhaps, their GPS system didn’t talk to them the way that mine talks to me when I dare to take a different route than the one it has mapped out for me. She’s very polite… very patient… but I get message… “Please proceed to the highlighted route.” When they eventually did that, they found Jesus… not in the city… not in a palace… not surrounded by an entourage… not with all the trappings of wealth… prestige… position… or power… just a child… with his mother… in Bethlehem… the Bread of Life in the House of Bread. And… the Bible tells us… the wise men were overwhelmed with joy!
How often… I wonder… do we get distracted by what we imagine the outcome should be? Are we looking for our Savior in the wrong places… despite all the guidance that God is trying to provide? How often do we take short-cuts in life because we think we will get to where we need to be faster? Walter Bruggemann theorized that the wise men… knowing they were searching for a king of the Jews… were using Isaiah 60… the passage that Raymond Kenny read for us this morning… as the one to guide them to the new king. It describes a triumphal rise for Judah… the restoration of wealth and fortune for the children of God… and their international prestige and power in the new order. Perhaps, that’s why the wise men took the short-cut through Jerusalem. It seemed to fit the description of that prophecy. Instead, the prophecy they needed to hear was Micah 5… the one that Chad Levisay read for us a couple of weeks ago: “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”
So, the fortune tellers eventually made it to Bethlehem… and they join the motley collection of people to whom the good news was revealed. The shepherds knew… and they told the people in the tiny towns around Bethlehem. Now, some fortune tellers know… gentiles from a far-off place… and they tell Herod… but somehow, his reaction is not what they anticipated. He does not experience that overwhelming joy. Instead, he is so fearful of the future that he has every male child under the age of two in Bethlehem killed. Nor does any member of the Jerusalem intelligencia travel to Bethlehem with the magi. Instead, these religious leaders stay where they are most comfortable… close to the wealth… the power… the “certainty” of their lives… in a place nine miles off course from where God was really at work in the world.
Where are we today? In Jerusalem… walled up in our palaces… and fearful of the future… or surrounded by the comforts of life… and soothed by the certainty of our own minds? Or in Bethlehem… where God is at work in dark streets that don’t show up on our GPS systems… where God is revealing himself to another motley collection of human beings in unpredictable places? When was the last time that we truly asked God where he wants us to be to witness his glory and power at work in the world… and to tell the story of what God is doing to others? Perhaps, we, too, are nine miles off course. Maybe, we’ve missed Bethlehem completely. Perhaps, that is why we have not felt an overwhelming joy in our own lives this Christmas. As we begin the journey into this 150th year of ministry in Stephenville, shall we let God’s GPS system recalculate the route for us? This time, will we follow the star? And… like the wise men… will we find a new way home? Amen.
Matthew 2:1-12