Do Wise Men Still Seek Him?

The Rev. Robert P. Travis

Epiphany Sunday Sermon  – 8:00am and 10:30am Church of the Ascension, Knoxville TN

RCL Epiphany Year C  1/6/2012

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

Sermon Text:

The Epiphany that we celebrate every year on January 6th

is one of the high feasts of the church year.

It’s one of the biggest events we celebrate.

For many Christians around the world January 6th

is much more important than December 25th.

But because of our cultural customs,

many of you here will not have experienced annually

the feast we have on this day,

and that we will have tonight.

But this year it happens that the Epiphany falls on a Sunday,

so we all get a chance to ponder these amazing events.

You all know the story, of the wise men who came

to bring gifts to Jesus?

We see it every year in Christmas Creche scenes,

those three men dressed like kings standing with Mary and Joseph in the stable presenting gifts

of Frankincense, Myrrh and Gold.

But if that is all we know about the story,

then we’re missing the significance of it.

These men are not just important

because they round out the story of Christmas,

or because they complete the scene,

or because they make the first birthday party for Jesus complete with gifts.

That is like knowing the Christmas story only in soundbytes.

These men are important because of

how they received the truth,

and what that shows us about how we might receive it.

The scriptures where we learn about the wise men

do not say there were three. Three gifts yes, but how many carrying them is unknown. It doesn’t even say that this group of foreigners were there on the night Jesus was born.

Angels were there, shepherds were there,

but the wise men come later.

I certainly hope Joseph did not make Mary and Jesus

stay in the stable, with the manger as a crib

for the year or two until the wise men showed up.

(for remember, when Herod is angry that the visitors did not come back, he remembered that he asked when the star

had appeared, and had all the young boys in Bethlehem born in the past two years killed.)

But even if it was not a stable,

we know from the rest of the story that Joseph and Mary

lived in a very modest house.

The wise men probably were already surprised

when they found that the king of the region, Herod,

did not know that a child born to be king

and not just any king, but one important enough

that the stars would announce his birth

was in fact born in his kingdom.

The second surprise for these wise men,

was to find when they went to Bethlehem,

that the star was over this modest house,

the house of a carpenter and his young wife.

Wise men of the world would have taken this

not as a sign of God’s glory,

the wise of the world would have taken this

as a sign that they were mistaken.

They were bearing gifts fit for a king,

and would they present them to an infant

in a backwater town,

in the house of a poor carpenter from another place?

Other wise men of the world,

would find such a presentation foolish.

The world praises wealth, and beauty,

education and stature,

majesty and material glory.

Faced with the discovery that the child born to be king,

that they had sought for so long,

was actually a poor boy

unknown to the royalty of this kingdom,

these wise men would have to become fools

by the standard of the world, to continue

and present their gifts.

But the wisdom of these men suddenly became

much deeper than the wisdom of the world.

And they were changed.

These foreign men, who were not even Jewish,

recognized the truth that was laid before them,

and they were changed.

I submit to you that anyone who encounters the true Christ,

foolish though the revelation may seem to all those around

anyone who has such an epiphany finds themselves changed.

We see the physical manifestation of this change,

in the statement that these wise men

“left for their own country by another road.”

Sure they went that way, the story says,

because they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod.

But even that indicates the change,

which could seem so subtle to some,

but probably seemed huge to them.

They listened to the wisdom given to them in a dream,

this same foolish wisdom that

prompted them them not to turn back

when their discovery was so unusual,

but replaced that doubt with joy in their hearts.

This new wisdom,

given the circumstances of this young child,

probably made a good deal of sense,

when they realized how this birth,

and this glory challenged everything their world

was based on,

everything on which their own

self-achieved wisdom depended.

Their hearts were changed

and they went from those who were seeking,

to those who had been found.

From those who were wise,

to those who possessed a wisdom not their own.

They were the same wise men they had been before,

as He met them exactly as they came to him,

and yet they were changed not by force,

but by the degree to which they

allowed themselves to be open to the truth.

I saw a sign recently, that said,

“Wise men still seek him.”

And maybe some wise men still do,

but it seems to me that many of those

who the world considers wise,

have rejected him in favor of more rational means of salvation,

and many of those who the world considers wise,

consider it foolish to believe

that this child born in Bethlehem could be

the king of all creation.

Sometimes wise men and women today,

come to recognize that they must embrace a degree of foolishness, to come to faith in this God,

because believing in this story seems so foolish.

One of the early church fathers, Tertullian,

confronted by his contemporaries demanding a reason for his faith in a fully human being who is also God incarnate,

wrote, “because it is absurd, I believe.”

But in order to come to terms with something,

that may seem like foolishness to some,

and to realize the magnitude for our own lives,

of believing that the same God

who created the whole universe,

actually became one of us,

in the flesh of a child born to a poor man,

and a young mother

in a tiny backwater town,

one must be presented with the truth,

in its fullest form.

In today’s world so many people don’t allow themselves

the time,

the space to do that.

So many of us are content to get our truth,

in soundbytes, in snippets of information.

Not even responding to ideas with our thoughts,

or our own struggle;

we’re content to respond

just by clicking or ignoring the “like” button.

rather than exploring the whole story

and responding with our own.

Many assume that they’re Christian,

because they live in a supposedly Christian country,

and they feel they’re just like everyone else.

i.e. they’re Christian because they’re not Muslim,

or Jewish or Atheist.

They believe in a higher power,

and think they know that Jesus

is an important religious teacher.

But they haven’t explored it enough to allow themselves

to be confronted with a truth that is transformative,

they haven’t give the truth enough consideration,

to have their lives changed.

So they go on living,

assuming that this is all there is,

that there is nothing more to life.

And certainly thinking it’s kind of foolish,

when other people who are so caught up

in a relationship with someone they can’t see,

that they’re willing to say and even do things,

to make it clear that this Jesus is the most important thing

in their whole lives.

I think most of my friends from college

probably think of me that way.

After all, I went to an Ivy League school,

and many of my friends make millions of dollars each year,

and have all sorts of important titles and jobs,

and houses and families,

and prestige.

Actually I called one of my fraternity brothers

a couple of years ago to congratulate him on a new job,

he’s in San Francisco now.

And he got my call in a bar with another fraternity brother,

when they heard I was in Tennessee and working for a church,

they had to laugh, and had a good deal of fun at my expense,

probably wondering why a person like them,

would do something so foolish as work

for a seemingly dying institution,

in what to them seems like such an

unsophisticated part of the country,

and throw away such earning potential.

But I don’t see it like that, of course,

I think serving the Lord is the most wonderful thing I could imagine, and Knoxville Tennessee is a glorious place to do it,

though I would serve him in a truly desolate place

if that’s what He wanted.

My heart has been changed,

God gave me my own Epiphany.

I have confronted the truth

and embraced this truth with my whole life.

Maybe you know some people

who might call themselves Christian,

but everything about them shows that they

haven’t given Christ real consideration.

They seem wise by the wisdom of the world,

but they’re missing out on that deeper wisdom.

They’re seeking the truth, but haven’t found it.

We have a course starting up,

At Chick-fil-A of all places,

a week from this Wednesday,

and Alpha Course, which is a good way

to explore the full truth of the Christian message,

to consider who Jesus really is,

and how He can have such significance to so many.

The way Alpha does this is by presenting the message

in a simple, non-pressuring way,

and then giving people a chance to respond,

again without pressure,

but rather with genuine interest on the part of the team,

in what these guests think,

where they have developed their beliefs

and respecting who they are in their individual lives.

God does that for us as well,

he cares for us and takes us right where we are.

And his loving acceptance becomes the ground

of the transformation only God can accomplish in us.

Many have come through Alpha here already,

and some have found it to be

that very transformative experience.  

Without their permission I will not share their individual stories with you.

But I can tell you that,

Our new Archbishop of Canterbury is one of those people.

He was a successful businessman in the English oil industry.

But he had lost a child, that rocked his world

and he did not know where to turn,

when he went on an Alpha Course

at Holy Trinity Brompton in London.

He found the truth he was seeking,

and the transformative relationship with

God incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Now he is about to lead the third largest communion of Christians in the world.

You have the ability to invite people you know,

to consider the truth in a deeper way

than by mere soundbytes.

To explore this truth for themselves,

and see how their own lives might be changed.

If you don’t invite them, how will they ever know?

Amen