Magi

Matthew 2:1-12

It must have been a long trip.

But now, after all the exhaustion of travel — the lines, the traffic, the bad food, the strangers, the never-quite-right-ness of sleeping in different places — finally they’ve made it to Jerusalem, they’ve accomplished their goal, they are ready to see the king.

So they start asking around, confident that anyone in town will know where the big events are taking place.

“Where is the royal baby??” they ask, “we saw his star, saw the signs in the heavens. This great thing has happened and we have come to be part of it, too, to honor and celebrate your new king!”

The people of Jerusalem are baffled, and it doesn't take long for the people in charge to hear about these disruptive visitors, insisting on finding a new king. Herod’s upset, of course, but so are the normal folks.

Would you want some crazy foreigners wandering around here insisting on a radical change of government? Announcing that they know, from indisputable signs and study, that the overthrow of our government is already underway?

How long do you think it would take Homeland Security to get involved in that one?

If a delegation of folks with funny accents from Azerbaijan or Myanmar or someplace else you can’t quite place on a map came around asking to meet with President Trump, or announcing that they’d seen the future and America is about to become a benevolent dictatorship governed by some direct descendant of George Washington they’d just discovered online?

No doubt we’d think they were crazy.

But if we believed them, or they got credible coverage on your favorite news channel, you might start to worry. 

I might.

Might be glad to hear that Homeland Security had rounded them up, and were taking steps to make sure that no one was interfering with the 2016 election.

So Herod called the magi to his palace, got them out of the streets and the media, sent them to Bethlehem, and took steps to insure that this “child king” of theirs wasn’t a threat to his lawful government.

Do you know how that story ends?
Know how - when the magi didn’t come back to identify the particular dangerous baby they were looking for - Herod had all the infant and toddler boys gotten rid of?

It’s a terrible story, a massacre none of us would stand for, one that would never happen here (right? right??), but at the time, it made sense to Herod and his leaders: For the greater good, for the protection of the people, to keep some unknown stranger from threatening our way of life, our security, our comfort.

It didn’t work, did it?

Didn’t work for Herod to eliminate infants;

doesn’t work for us to ban Muslims from entering our country, take off our shoes at the airport, put cameras on every police officer, or build a better border fence. 

It doesn’t actually stop the change that comes, or eliminate the fear. Sometimes it just feeds the fear, the perfectly normal, human fear that change means loss. That “justice” or “reform” or “welcome” or “security” is going to mess with my rights, my access, my normal, my freedom.

It gets me all the time, but most of the time I hardly notice. Because that fear of loss runs mostly under the surface, not very conscious, but still powerful.

Powerful enough to make it sensible and easy for most folks in Jerusalem to go along with Herod — unsatisfactory Roman puppet-king that he was — and be happy to see the foolish or disturbing foreign visitors fade from the scene, to know that “steps were being taken,” and that inconvenience for some meant protection for us all.

There’s a deep and broad and subtle connection between Herod’s reactive and preventive measures, and the TSA-enhanced, crazy campaign politics, uncomfortable with religion, money-driven world that you and I live in.

And when the magi —when the weirdos and the strangers and the protestors insisting that everything must change — show up in our lives, it’s worth remembering this story.

It’s worth remembering that we’re all going to fear loss or pain from the change we can’t choose or control, and it’s worth facing those fears, not just obeying them when they whisper to us below our conscious thought. 

Because we never get to choose or control the changes God is busy bringing.

That rumored government-changing baby didn’t do what anyone expected or wanted. Not once in his life, despite what the carols will tell you about his “meek and mild” appearance, or unchildlike obedience and sleep habits.

He didn’t drive the Romans - or even Herod - out and restore a free and independent Israel, didn’t bring the religious renewal the rabbis might have wanted, disappointed his best friends and closest supporters, and wouldn’t even stay decently dead to be cherished in grieving memory.

Didn’t do what anyone had prayed for, but went around defying the social and religious order, bringing God intimately and undeniably into the messiness of human life, ruined the sad but essential certainty of death, broke down the security of “us” and “them,” and eliminated “impossible” as an excuse for anything.

That’s why the crazy magi got it right.

They stuck with mystery — with the impossible and improbable, with astrology and dreams — and were led by a star to meet God made flesh, and protected on their homeward road.

They didn’t worry about the bizarre impracticality of their baby gifts, and got to worship the King while he still had that adorable infant face that makes all the inconvenience and ridiculous demands worth it.

The magi are the people who tell stories of wonder and joy when the chemo fails, or the pain is chronic, and all the losses are vivid, and new life sounds like a ridiculous fairy tale.

The magi are the ones who keep stirring up the protests that no one takes seriously, until the momentum for healthy change has taken hold. The magi find inspiration and hope in an unjust system, and spread that good news to the satisfied and the hopeless alike.

The magi believe their hearts, and risk disappointment and embarrassment, for the chance of glorious love and joy, in the little things and in the big things.

The magi make us laugh, at them and at ourselves, until the laughter shows us changes we actually want to embrace.

Change is hard on us. Even change we choose, even - or especially - God-given change. But right now, the news and the internet are bursting with enthusiasm for change, for new commitments for a new year: resolutions and hopes - and sales! - that encourage us to choose the new, embrace change, and believe in the improbable. 

So perhaps, if you’re making resolutions this year, it’s worth trying something improbable,

and commit to being a magi, being a little foolish, impractical, irrational — in just one thing, if not everything.

Commit to listen to your dreams, laugh with your half-conscious fears until they become old friends, follow stars instead of conventional wisdom, or go exploring in the foreign lands of race, religion, science, art, age, illness, love - whatever holds mystery for you.

Choose wonder and trust and change, because God is leading us there, whether we plan the journey or not.

We won’t ever get to choose or control what God is up to in the world, and it’s entirely, naturally, human to be uncomfortable with that. Even afraid.

Herod is always going to show up in our story.

But the magi are always there, too. Fools, strangers, odd folk, different in ways that make us uncomfortable, asking questions we don’t know the answers to, but telling stories of promise and wonder that are truer than we can possibly believe.

The good news is that God doesn’t stop making things new when we get anxious, doesn’t worry about our unintended, unconscious fears, but keeps inviting us on adventures of mystery and wonder, as non-sensical as dreams, improbable as a baby king, but truer than we know how to believe.