Before the displays have been set out in the stores, I’m going to beat them to Christmas by asking you to turn to Matthew 2 – this is the account of certain events around Jesus’ birth and earliest years. I read this chapter recently and was struck by it…again. We’ll read and briefly consider this passage in preparation for the Lord’s Supper. We’ll likely return to this passage the next time we meet at the Communion table.
As we read, I invite you today to start to consider how full of wonders the story of Jesus is, right from the very start. If you carry around the idea that Christianity is boring, Matthew 2 begs to differ.
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’
Human beings are wonderful creatures. We take photos of our meals before eating them. I’ve heard of something called “laundry art,” where the piles of dirty laundry are arranged so that the color and position of the various clothes make something pleasing to the eye. We are, to quote C.S. Lewis, “inveterate poets.” Now, inveterate means having a habit that’s unlikely to change. And in calling us poets, Lewis doesn’t mean that we like reading poetry or often make rhymes. What he means is that we don’t simply observe stuff, like food or laundry, we have this stubborn habit of always scanning for and discovering a deeper meaning in the stuff – praise or beauty or grandeur or even terror.
When we walk under the canopy of stars at night, we don’t simply register the bare fact of the stars – we sense… immensity. We feel solemn…reverent even before this awe-inspiring splendor. Humans can spout off the facts, the arithmetic of the distance between objects…but also they bring to the table an imagination that apprehends vastness and mystery.
Man is an animal…with spirit. He was made the same day as his brother animals, but unlike them he was made in the image of God. Not God, but made in his image. Also an animal, but something much more. Humans stand between God and the rest of the creation, in a way connecting heaven and earth.
All that to say we look at nature but also look through nature for something beyond the reach of our five senses. Sometimes people call that beyond thing Beauty or Fate or Destiny. We theists know that we are scanning for signs of God. Yes, naturally, humans are made to look for and see God.
In another sermon on the magi in Matthew 2 I mentioned that we used to live in Watertown MA where it bordered Newton MA. Just a couple minutes walk from us in Newton a palm reading shop opened up. Since that time stores around it have closed to be replaced by other stores who have closed…but that palm reader stays in business. How does the palm reading work? Enter the shop, and a person who claims to have this certain skill will look at your hand and particularly the lines in your hand. But they’ll see beyond just the lines and find the meaning in them – where you’ve come from, where you’re going. Now, Newton is one of the most affluent, highly educated communities you could find. The point is that the search for deeper meaning – what we know as the search for signs of God! – is not a primitive or 3rd world phenomenon. It’s deeply human. What I mean is that it gets to the heart of what it means to be a human, that is, to be an image bearer of God, standing between the natural and supernatural world as interpreter and communicator.
Let me hasten to state from this pulpit that palm reading is bunk. I’m not encouraging you to enter the shop of these hucksters, charlatans, quacks. But it’s important to understand where palm readers go wrong. They do not go wrong in their assumption that there is realm behind the observable wherein life and power and wisdom originate. Where they go wrong, at least 95% of them, ins in claiming that they are able to access that realm through your ugly, calloused hands! And the other 5% are mistaken in that they can usher you safely into that realm that is above nature…the supernatural.
The Law states: Do not turn to mediums or necromancers [those communicating with the supernatural and the realm of the dead]; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am Yahweh. This sorcery was forbidden, but not because there was no supernatural realm, but because this stuff defiles a people. It’s the human mis-using his unique position between the world of nature and super-nature for dark ends.
So, palm reading is a crock. Also…and here we head back to our Matthew passage: Astrology – looking to the stars for wisdom and direction, often via horoscopes – is also a no-go. But again, the Scriptures don’t deter you from astrology because there’s no deeper meaning in and through and beyond the night sky. No, the stars are saying something…
But the problems with astrology are several. 1) Again, it’s a hang-out for weirdo-charlatans who don’t have any competence in what they’re claiming. 2) There’s also the possibility that through astrology you enter the supernatural world escorted by dark powers. 3) Also, there is the possibility that in using astrology you stop short: you are entranced with the messengers rather than the source of the message. You end up worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator.
With all these caveats in place, and now back to the passage, we observe that the magi were a brand of astrologers. They were involved in a practice that was frowned upon in Scripture. Also, Matthew says they were from the east – non Israelites. These men fell under Paul’s description in Ephesians 2: 11, 12: Remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh…were separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
These magi were image bearers of God, scanning the creation for meaning, looking for God, yet were outside the gracious and truth-telling direction of God’s covenant. So, stuck in this cycle of hungering for meaning and God…yet always discovering only traces of God –shadows and reflections without ever arriving to God himself.
In short, the magi were sinners – humans who had fallen short of their reason for being, which was bearing the image of God. And “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Even as we still are positioned between God and the rest of the creation, we’ve lost track of God, the way to him is covered over with the grime of our disordered desires, selfish management, messed-up relationships. Instead of reflecting God into the rest of the world we’ve ignored God, and thus confusion and corruption have taken over, not least in own selves. We who were made to serve God for the sake of the creation have unleashed destruction into the world.
Then, one night, at the fullness of time, these meaning hungry image bearing astrologers looked up, and God met them…and gave them directions.
Do you see why the story of Jesus is wonderful? After millennia of preparation, at Jesus’ birth God begins drawing the peoples of the world – sinners all – back to himself. Into their search for meaning and hunger for the divine, even in their religion and lore and superstitions that were shot through with error, God inserts himself and starts leading people to Jesus, whom God had sent into the world as the reliable Mediator.
The story of Jesus trumpets this: God is in charge and he’s a Savior. He comes calling, so often not through churches or ministers, but through our scanning for deeper meaning in the creation. I’ve told this story before but it was a while ago and only about 20 people were there. Whittaker Chambers was an American journalist in the 1930s…and a member of the Communist party. In the book “Witness,” he describes the scene when his faith in the Communist part began to be shaken:
I date my break [from the Party] from a very casual happening. I was sitting in our apartment on St Paul Street in Baltimore. It was shortly before we moved to Alger Hiss’s apartment in Washington. My daughter was in her high chair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life. I liked to watch her even when she smeared porridge on her face or dropped it meditatively on the floor. My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear – those intricated, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: ‘No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design.’ The thought was involuntary and unwanted. I crowded it out of my mind. But I never wholly forgot it or the occasion. I had to crowd it out of my mind. If I had completed it, I should have to say: Design presupposes God. I did not then know that, at that moment, the finger of God was first laid upon my forehead.
The human looks at his daughter’s ear, scanning for deeper meaning, and there God meets him. The humans look up to the stars, and there God meets them. I had to think of Blair, who one day scooped up some dirt in her hand, looked at it, looked through it and said to herself – there must be a God.
The takeaway of the magi shouldn’t be: maybe there’s something to astrology after all. Just like Whittaker Chambers account isn’t extolling the virtues of Communism. But rather, God is serious about showing up to people as they are, showing up to where people are, and meeting them where they’re looking. People are “inveterate poets,” hungry for meaning, observers, interpreters. And God finds people in their wondering and wandering. That’s the takeaway. That’s all. God finds people. God meets sinners.
And directs them to the truly Wonderful. To the Everlasting God. To the Bright and Morning Star. To Adam 2.0. To Jesus.
And behold, the star they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Matthew 2: 9b-11
“Give me something to believe in,” says the old song. Ultimately that is what humans are scanning for, something that can bear the weight of our full devotion. In Jesus, that’s what we meaning searchers discover. Jesus is, the gospel says, the ladder between heaven and earth, upon whom angels ascend and descend. In other words, he is the Mediator between the natural and supernatural. Heaven comes down to earth through Jesus. The earth enters heaven through Jesus. He is the Human, connected to whom we ourselves can learn how to be human and fulfill our role as image bearers. He is the God –who can bear the weight of our seeking and interest and worship. He is the One to whom we can unreservedly and joyfully give our best gifts and spend our lives falling down before in worship.
OK, one note of application, taking a cue from the magi. Cultivate wonder. Make time for, and practice, looking away from yourself and leaving behind clamor. Put down the self-help books. Tune out the voices in your head. Get off your phones. Lay off postings and liking posts/photos. Turn off YouTube. Let the election noise go quiet.
We are easily numbed to wonder and grandeur. Especially that’s true now: I do believe that’s the great danger of ubiquitous artificial visual stimulation: it dulls us. I also believe that God sometimes uses suffering to break the spell and return us to noticing and wandering and wondering. “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” – Lewis
Go outside. My observation is this: I see people moving from undeveloped nature to God, but I’m not so sure about developed nature. What I mean: I don’t know of any stories of people while sizing up and mulling over a Mercedes God meets them there. So again, go outside. Look at things you can’t possess, like stars. Let yourself be filled with wonder, with reverence, with gratitude, with a sense of grandeur.
And Christian, from that sense of wonder in nature, let the Spirit take you to Jesus, the Source, the portal through which you can engage the natural and supernatural world properly.
And unbeliever, from that sense of wonder in nature, speak a prayer before that immensity: Find me, God. I can’t make it home. Lead me.
And then be on the lookout for directions to Jesus.
The stars, the ear, the dirt point the way to Jesus. And now in Christ Jesus you once were far off [from God and hope] have been brought near by the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ draining out of punctures on his skin and dropping to the ground.
Someone says: stars, blood, skin, ground – that’s where I live, that’s the world of stuff. Yes! Stars, blood, skin, ground – do you get it? God sent Christ into the creation to save.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
And now we gather at the Table because God has called us to Jesus. This morning we are remembering again the meaning of his broken body and poured out blood: that crucifixion freed us from our sin and released us to live as we should, as image bearers of God before the rest of creation. Through the wounds of Jesus we die, and so we can start over and learn anew how to enchant the world with praise to and acknowledgement of the glorious God…instead of stooping to worship and serve fellow creatures. By the suffering of Jesus we are saved to our original purpose: back to God for the sake of the world.
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