Setting Sights

Sunday, January 2nd. 2005
(Second after Christmas, Epiphany)
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matthew 2:1-12

A foreword:

For almost the last two weeks I have been ‘perking’ today’s message. For the last week, I have, in a parallel way, been catching what I could of the developments related to the Earthquake and Tsunamis that hit Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and the other countries around the Indian Ocean.

Last night, as I sat down to put on paper the message related to the text for today, it hit me that, just as I expected Father Win Lewis, the rector of Old Donation Episcopal Church in Virginia Beach, to say something that would lend meaning to the events of September 11th, 2001, when I went to the prayer vigil that evening, I wondered if you would expect the same of me this morning, in light of what we have heard and seen of the unfolding tragedy and unimaginable suffering of those who have lost everything – EVERYTHING and are trying to survive after … having survived the initial disaster.

If your question is “why?”, all I can do is refer you to Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, chapter 8, beginning around verse 19, but especially verse 22, where he speaks of ‘creation groaning in labor pains until now …’ and entreat you to each find a way to do something -- however small, through whatever agency. I read some statistics last night – there are approximately 189 million working adults in the United States today. If each of us gave $100.00 towards relief efforts, we would be sending about 18 Billion (with a B) dollars to help with relief and reconstruction efforts. Another way to approach it is this: there are about 169,000 congregations that make up the top ten denominations in the United States. What if each of those congregations was to give $500 toward Asian relief? We would be able to give 84.5 million dollars toward these efforts. (thanks Jay for the stats)

The one thing we CAN do immediately is to continue to lift up our brothers and sisters, those who have lost so much, as well as those who are on the front lines of providing relief, in prayer. So let’s do that right now. Please bow with me:

God of Compassion, with you and all the world family, we weep and mourn. Comfort all who are alone or afraid, who wail in loud lamentation. Let us be your heart reaching out to those who grieve. Let us be your hands working to assist those who still live. For you are the God who stands with the least and the lost. Come by here, Lord. Come by Sri Lanka, and India, and Indonesia. Come by all the places that need your comforting and healing presence. Amen.

1In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ 3When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6“And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”’ 7Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’
9 When they had heard the king, they set out; 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. 10When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

What’s he doing? Doesn’t he know it’s AFTER Christmas? That’s part of the Christmas story!

Yes, I DO know it is after Christmas, and yes, the passage IS part of the Christmas story, but today is ALSO the Sunday before the celebration of the Epiphany, which falls on January 6th, the day marks the traditional arrival of the three wise men to the place where Jesus was with his family, before the flight to Egypt, on the 12th day after Christmas (hence the song). Bear with me; let’s see where this takes us.

I always got in trouble with the backstroke. For the longest time, I wasn’t able to figure out that, in order to move in a straight line, and in the absence of floater lines on either side of the travel lane, the best way to get from one side of the pool to the other involved fixing your position on a spot or an object at the end of the pool you just dove off of, and keeping your body in line with IT, in order to make your way down the length of the pool to the other side. Part of the problem with THAT was the fact that, after a certain distance, my nearsightedness made it hard for me to distinguish smaller objects on which I might have focused. It didn’t take me long to figure out that, when doing the breast stroke or the crawl, the best way to keep within your lane was to watch the nice, WIDE stripe so generously provided for you on the bottom of the pool.

Santiago summers are hot. Dry and Hot. Hotter than summers outside Santiago, mainly due to the amount of pavement that is absorbing, retaining, and reflecting the sun and heat back up at you. Since there is little to no rain in summer, and Santiago is in a bowl – surrounded by mountains – it’s your basic frying pan. The main objective in summer is to get out of the city as often and for as long as possible.

I enjoyed staying in Santiago. The pace slowed down, since so much of the population spent the summer outside the city, and there was still stuff to do. My favorite activity by far, though, was swimming. We lived just a few blocks from the community pool, just enough of a walk to work up a sweat while you walked there and long enough to dry off as you walked back. Often, we would head out early enough to get there before they actually opened the pool for the day, and ended up waiting for them to finish pouring in the chlorine and impatiently waiting for the minutes to tick by before the chemicals had sufficiently diluted themselves before we could dive in. We STILL wound up with stinging, red-rimmed eyes and itchy noses, and green hair, but it was a small price to pay for the sheer joy of diving into the deep end of the pool and opening your eyes underwater, looking across the expanse of the pool and seeing the other side, with sunlight dappling the sides and bottom of the pool. It created a magical quiet place to which I readily escaped, weightlessly floating until i couldn't hold my breath any longer.

We know the story. We’ve heard it, or most of it, as far back as we can remember. Mary and an angel, Joseph and an angel, shepherds and a whole bunch of angels … then Herod comes into the picture and three wise men from the east do too. Being foreigners, they check in at the desk, so to speak, when they get to the area, and let the local King know why they are there. The local King, along with ‘all of Jerusalem’ – in an interesting parallel to a similar response at the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry – is frightened. As usual, they are frightened of what they don’t understand and cannot control. How unusual is that? But let’s focus on the last 4 verses: (read)

8Then he (Herod) sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; 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. 10When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

The celebration of epiphany is the celebration of the giving of the gifts. Again, the song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ makes that aspect of the celebration apparent. On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

It is interesting to me that we also use the term to signal a moment – an event - a transformative second when we have a glorious unveiling – a dazzling moment of clarity when an idea hits us, or when we suddenly realize something that afterwards seems obvious, or a given, where before we seemed to be muddling along in a thick soup, unaware of anything remotely as apparent as that would soon come to be.

In any case, we have the wise men, who apparently spent a good portion of their time observing the heavens, at least enough to note the coming of the star of Bethlehem, and even more importantly, to recognize its significance. They realized the importance of the event. Scripture doesn’t go into a lot of detail about HOW they did that, but in their response to the coming of the star, they demonstrated that on some level, they understood the coming of the star, and the coming of the Christ child as an epiphany in world history.

So they set off, and set their sights on the star, and made their way to Judea. They were briefly sidetracked by Herod, but then were able to get back on track and make their way, still, following the star, until it brought them to the place where they were “overwhelmed with joy.” Can we identify a place or a time in our lives when WE were ‘overwhelmed with Joy’?

It seems like such a trivial question in the face of the incredible suffering we’ve witnessed since last Sunday, and yet, that’s the starting point. If we are going to respond to tragedy, it will come out of our response to the unmerited grace of God in touching OUR lives, in changing US, in having been rescued, and welcomed, and comforted and surrounded by the presence of God through the family of God. We have an opportunity to gift the sorrowing world with the presence of God in a way that we seldom do.

We can get bogged down in the smallness of our contribution. I used to get so frustrated, after having concentrated so hard on making my arms go to the same place with each stroke, but having kept my face facing directly up, I had no point of reference by which to gauge where I was headed, and I always ended up disoriented, hitting the side of the pool with my left arm, or worse, with my head. Once I learned the importance of maintaining that point of reference, getting from one end of the pool to the other became a matter of time, and not direction. Keeping an eye on where I was coming from helped me get to where I was going.

We have no choice about diving into 2005. That has already happened. What we DO have a choice about, of course, is … what course we will set for ourselves as we move through the year. Will we be focusing on where we’re coming from, or where we’re going? Or is it possible to hold both within us, letting the one inform the other – helping us maintain our bearings, and set our sights on the prize that is before us?

Let’s pray.