True Wisdom (An Epiphany Sermon)

The scriptures for this sermon are listed below.  To read them in the NRSV, just click the links.

Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

Wisdom, true wisdom, is not something easily come by.
In fact, we usually reserve the word “wise” for those who,
like the good doctor,
have been around awhile and seen and experienced more than a few things in their time.
It’s not something that young whippersnappers have,
and just because you age,
doesn’t mean you get any wiser either.
That’s why it’s important to take wisdom wherever and whenever you find it,
and I believe that the magi in our gospel text have not been called the three wise men for no reason.
In fact, the series of actions taken by the magi–
actions like seeing, seeking, finding, worshiping, listening, and obeying–
are all keys to our understanding what true wisdom is all about.

One of the first things we are told is that these wise men saw a star.
Now I realize that you could say that this, by itself, is no sign of great wisdom.
After all, stars are public things;
anyone can see stars by just looking up into the heavens.
And as far as we know,
the wise men who came to Jesus did not have any secret information or knowledge that made them seek Jesus out.
They merely saw a star.

But the wisdom here is that to see stars you must look up,
and not everyone looks up, literally or figuratively.
Indeed very few people are positive in their outlook,
let alone being as positive as the infamous optimist Zig Ziglar,
who declared,
I’m such an optimist I’d go after Moby Dick in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with me.

Most of us are not like that.
It is so easy to get caught up in the negativism of this world
and to become pessimistic.
It is the easy to keep your head down and your eyes focused on the ground.
There is so much wrong in today’s world that even when things seem to go right it is hard to get too excited.
Bad news is all around us, weighing us down,
causing our hearts and minds to sink like lead weights.
Most of us are like Charlie Brown,
who once announced,
“I have a new philosophy.
From now on, I’m only going to dread one day at a time.”

So while it is true that stars are there for anyone to see,
it is also true that few actually look up and see them.
These wise men were among the few of their day to actually look up,
refusing to let the evil and bad news of their day keep them down.

But even more, Matthew further tells us that not only did they see a star,
they also saw a message in it.
These “wise” men saw the star as a sign,
as something that pointed beyond itself to another, deeper, reality,
to a whole other world in fact,
to what we might call the kingdom of God.

This means, of course, that these men were not just living in the world present around them,
like insects and animals and so many people,
thinking only of food and drink and survival.
No these men believed in a world beyond this world,
different from this world,
and yet a world that was making itself known in this one through the appearance of a star and a new-born king.
And this was very wise,
for these men believed there was more to the world,
and to their lives than what met their eyes.

Because of this we could call them people of faith.
You see, people with no faith believe only in what they see.
People of faith believe in more,
they do not and cannot believe that what they see is all there is.
Indeed what people of faith see on the surface merely points to a deeper and more lasting reality.
And so when these men looked at the star in the eastern sky,
they saw more than just a tiny point of light among other points of light.
They saw a sign,
a sign that pointed them somewhere,
that invited them on a journey.

These men were obviously seekers.
They were on journey of faith,
searching for the truth,
looking for answers to their questions.
And according to many reliable sources, the willingness to seek, to look, or to search, is at the heart of wisdom.

The wise person realizes that he or she does not have all the answers.
One who is wise does not claim to know it all,
No, as the quaint saying of many Christmas cards states:
“Wise men still seek him.”
Those who are wise never stop searching for knowledge or for truth,
and they never, ever stop seeking God.
When you think you have all the answers,
when you come to believe that you can quit looking and searching,
when you are ready to proclaim once and for all the truth for all time and peoples,
then you can rest assured that you have left wisdom far behind.
True wisdom realizes its limitations,
it is always on the lookout for truth,
wherever it might be found.
The men in today’s gospel were searching.
And because they were willing to seek they grew in wisdom.

And to see how rare this wisdom is,
contrast these magi with the people of Israel.
For centuries the Jewish people had waited for a Savior.
Their scriptures had prophesied his coming.
Their worship heralded the promised Messiah.
Yet, when the Christ child was born,
they did not recognize him.
Even the chief priests and scribes,
who quoted their cherished texts to King Herod,
and who told about the coming of an anointed one,
did not seek him.
Doesn’t it strike you as strange,
even unbelievable,
that the long-awaited King of the Jews might very well be cradled a mere six miles from Jerusalem in Bethlehem,
yet not a single religious leader or representative of King Herod’s court bothered to personally investigate or to search him out?

What a contrast to the magi.
Though scholars are not certain about the where the Wise Men were from,
it is commonly accepted that their home base was probably in Persia,
and that they, in seeking out the Christ Child,
had to travel between one thousand and fifteen hundred miles.
And yet this was a journey they made willingly,

Now you might ask: “Why did they follow that star for hundreds, thousands of miles?”
And I have to admit that I don’t exactly know why.
But I believe they must have had some hope or expectation that something new was about to happen in this world,
that the past with all its sin and guilt was going to be taken away,
or least overcome

I think they began their journey,
and traveled all those miles because they were looking for that something we call salvation,
which really means to be saved, rescued.
And in looking for salvation,
these men made another very wise decision.
You see, when they followed the star,
they were convinced,
and this is certain because they say so themselves,
they were convinced that what they were looking for was not a scholarly book that might contain a solution to the world’s dilemmas;
they weren’t looking for a political answer to their problems,
nor were they looking for some psychological or sociological theory to help explain the world situation.
What they were looking for was a person.

Now I think this was very wise because if you think about it,
you soon realize that salvation can only come from a person.
Let me try to explain.
Jesus once told a parable about a prodigal son coming home and a father who was willing to forgive.
It is a nice story, a classic story,
but the story doesn’t really mean much unless we can believe that the father,
in this case representing God,
is a real person,
a real person willing to risk love and compassion even on one who does not deserve them.

It takes a real person.
We experience this, for instance, when we go to the hospital.
Hospitals are filled with the most wonderful and amazing machines and equipment.
But all the equipment in the world is worthless without a person there to operate it.
It’s the same in school.
All the books and computers and teaching aids are of little value if there is no teacher.
It is the teacher who makes the school or breaks it.

Or here is another way of seeing this.
A neglected child is not helped by a report, a plan, or a building.
He or she is not ultimately not aided by government programs or subsidies,
regardless of how invaluable they may be.
The child is helped when a human hand reaches out to touch,
and voice says:
“I am going to help you,”
and then proceeds to do just that.

The wise men knew the salvation they were looking for would not come from their studies,
neither would it come from their material possessions,
no matter how wealthy they might became.
Their salvation would come only in a person,
in this case the hand and voice of God in the form of the baby Jesus.
And I believe they found the salvation they sought,
and having found it,
they went home changed men, by another way.

Now if we think about it,
we are in the same position.
While we may not be as wise as these seekers,
we do have their same hope.
We too look for salvation, and for good reason.
At least I know I do anyway.
I know all too well my own faults and failures.
I can unfair, forgetful, stubborn.
I know that I sin,
and I would like assurance that all this can be restored and forgiven,
and better yet,
even forgotten.

I am looking for new life,
for another chance,
for more integrity and love and compassion and strength to live my life as it should be lived.
And I know that I will not find this in any political program, psychological theory,
or self-help book.
I know that I do not need a theology, or a policy, or a philosophy or anything like that.
I need a person.
I need Jesus.

The wise men found a small baby named Jesus many years ago.
And I think their lives were changed by that encounter.
It is my hope that my life and yours will also be changed by meeting the Christ child in this place,
at this time.
But for this to happen, for salvation to come to us,
we must be willing to seek, to look, or as the Bible says “to knock or ask.”
We also have to give up the notion that we can save ourselves,
that our own knowledge, power or prestige is enough and all we need.
For nothing we can ever do or accomplish or have will ever be enough.

We must look up.
We cannot let the evil of this world control our attitudes.
To be saved we have to believe that salvation is possible,
we have to believe that a star can sometimes lead us to the messiah,
We have to have faith that light can dawn in the darkness of our time.

And most importantly we need to look for a person,
a real, live presence known as God,
which has been revealed to us in the person of Jesus the Christ.
For it is only through God,
through this Jesus that we can be saved.

I believe that this story of the Wise Men holds the key for understanding Jesus, the light of the world, for all people,
and we would do well to emulate their actions.
They saw the star.
They saw the light from far away,
from their own homes.
But to see the light of the world,
they had to leave their homes behind,
they had to journey for days, even weeks, perhaps months to a foreign land.
They had to seek and search.
They had to come to Christ.

If they had stayed in Persia (or wherever they lived),
they wouldn’t have seen the light of the world.
They had to come.
And coming to Jesus wasn’t easy for the wise men,
but come they did.

Now we can sit at home,
twiddling our thumbs,
blaming somebody, anybody,
else for our troubles is no way to find a light to lighten the dark path in life.
But what we need to do is to get up and come the way the wise men did.
And I don’t just mean to come to church, either.
To find the light of Christ for your life may mean more inconvenience than an hour a week.

To find the light of Christ in your life may make you tired and hungry;
you may have to sit up nights and read books and study!
You may have to ponder and puzzle and pray and steel yourself for harder labors than you ever imagined before you find the light of Christ.
You may have to cut some things out of your life because you don’t have room in your mind for daily televised talk shows and Jesus of Nazareth!!
I don’t know what you might have to do to find the birth of Christ in your life.
But I will guarantee that it will not be an easy birth,
and that it will, in fact, be quiet costly as well.

For not only will you have to seek and search and come to the light,
you will have to come genuinely, not under a pretext,
not halfheartedly, not with mental reservations;
you have to come with your whole self.
All of you.
The Wise Men brought gifts–not just any gifts but gifts that were central and essential to the tasks they had as Magi–
gold and incense and special ointments,
gifts that said,
we bring ourselves, we bring who we are,
our best selves,
we hold nothing back.

And not only must you come,
and genuinely come,
bringing yourself,
you must come in humility.
The wise men fell down and worshiped him.
Not everyone recognized Jesus in his lifetime.
Not everybody who ran across Jesus worshiped him.
Some argued with him;
some spit on him;
some laughed at him;
some ignored him;
some killed him.
But the Magi came seeking.
They wanted to find the source of the light.
They didn’t come with all the answers.

They came genuinely and humbly,
and when they found what they were searching for,
they knelt and worshiped.

On communion plates used in the early church,
there was engraved a star,
the wise men’s star.
It was placed there to show that now the star leads those who would be wise to Christ’s presence here.
Come.
It’s time for the journey.
Someone is waiting.
Come and receive what is more precious than gold,
more fragrant than frankincense.
Follow the star.
Receive him here at the table.
Here are the gifts of God for the people of God.
And when the star moves from here into the world,
follow it.
It will surely lead you to the place where the Child of God is waiting.

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