January 8, 2006
Isaiah 60:1-6 + Ephesians 3:203,5-6 + Matthew 2;1-12
It struck me early this week that this Gospel story and the one we shall proclaim next week from John raise a question we have all asked in our lives more often than just once.
Next week, Jesus will turn toward some people who are following him.
He will look at them and ask the question:
“What are you looking for?”
It is a question Matthew raises too with these travelers who are so far from home.
What could they have been looking for?
What are any of us looking for?
I would suggest that getting to that question and its answer
is what shapes most of our lives.
Those “wise men” of Matthew’s Gospel
may have been wise about politics, astrology, and travel,
but at the point in their lives when they made that journey,
they were not very wise about the ways of God.
They went looking, looking for a king,
so naturally they went to the palace
in the capital city, Jerusalem.
If they were looking for power, they found it.
If they were looking for corruption, they found it.
Lies, deceit, betrayal, intrigue – all the stuff that goes with power:
they found it all.
But perhaps once there,
they realized that this was not what they were looking for.
All that power, wealth, and influence did not really get them anywhere.
It certainly did not get them where they really needed to be with their gifts.
Herod did not need their gold, their incense, nor their myrrh.
So, they moved on to look elsewhere – to look in an unlikely place,
a nearly forgotten little place hardly the destination of anyone in the “fast lane.”
Had there been a tourist industry in those days,
I doubt that Bethlehem would have been thought of as the place to be seen.
I does not seem to have had much by way of accommodations at least!
But not until they realized that Jerusalem and all it stood for was not where they belonged, they journey, their quest would have continue.
What were they looking for?
They seem to have found it in Bethlehem,
because they left their gifts with someone helpless and want,
and they went home avoiding Jerusalem.
All of us looking for something in this life might ponder this story
a little more carefully with this thought.
What we are looking for and where look for it says a lot about us
and a lot about the purpose of our lives.
Where we look for peace;
where we look for love;
where we look for happiness,
even to the point of where we look for someone
with whom to spend the rest of our lives.
I just can’t imagine how we will find peace at the Pentegon or a battle field.
I don’t think we will find love in good looks, a good figure.
I don’t think we will find happiness in the Mall.
nor someone to love and cherish us all our days in a bar.
What you are looking for, asks Jesus to those who follow him.
We can learn a lot about that from these wise men.