After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born.5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. 7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.” 9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
In most of the Christmas card images of the wise men coming to Bethlehem, they look quite strong, vibrant and regal. We even sing about “We Three Kings,” even though the Gospel doesn’t call them Kings, nor does it tell us how many there were. Now, how can they look so fresh and regal when they had probably just come over the long trade routes through deserts, over mountains, on a journey that may have taken three months at least, and through the war zone between the world’s two biggest enemy empires of the day, Rome and Persia? That also makes the journey of these magi, through a war zone, a peace mission, effectively. However road-weary they looked when they got to Bethlehem, the magi probably looked even worse when they got back home.
And what would bring these pagan magicians, sorcerers and astrologers looking for the newborn Jewish Messiah? Especially when the Hebrew Bible expressly forbids magic, sorcery and astrology in the most strenuous terms? It’s from the word, “magi,” that we get the words “magic” and “magicians.” Magi were by definition into astrology, sorcery, divination and fortune telling. Which also makes me wonder, “If they’re such great fortune tellers, would people have to make appointments ahead of time to go see them?”
And how would the magi have even known that the Jews expected a king of their own, other than Herod, and his overlord, Tiberius Caesar? That brings us to the first of two questions in today’s sermon outline: What brought the magi to Bethlehem (besides a star?) The first answer is probably the presence and the witness of God’s people, the Jews. Until 70 years ago, the Jewish community in what are now the countries of Iran and Iraq, was quite large, lively and vibrant, and had been, ever since Israel’s exile in Babylon, starting 2600 years ago. The magi then were neighbors to what was once the biggest Jewish community in the ancient world. For a long time, Baghdad was the chief center of Jewish scholarship. I’m guessing that those Persian magi were very knowledgeable about the faith of the large Jewish community in their empire. Like many Gentiles in the Roman Empire at the same time, I suspect that they found themselves increasingly attracted to Jewish traditions, their teaching and their wisdom, and to their God. First of all, then, the witness and the presence of the people of God, had a role in the magi’s coming to see the King of the Jews.
A second reason for their coming is that the magi were longing and looking for something other than what they already had. To make as tough a journey as theirs, they had to have been more than just curious. They must not have been entirely satisfied with the ways in which they had long tried to fill a universal hole in the human soul which only God can fill. As for that “hole in the soul,” St. Augustine famously prayed in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” King Solomon expressed it another way in Ecclesiastes 3: “God has made everything beautiful for its own time, [and] He has planted eternity in the human heart.”
Why the connection there between beauty, God and eternity? Well, is it not the beauty in this world that often stirs up feelings and longings for things infinite and eternal within our hearts? Like whenever we’re looking at the mountains, or listening to beautiful music, or singing or playing it? Ancient philosophers often spoke of beauty, goodness and truth as the thumbprints of the Creator on Creation. To goodness, truth and beauty, the Bible adds love. We love because God first loved us, and because God is love.
C.S. Lewis called this hole in the soul, “an inconsolable longing for we-know-not-what” exactly. Our stirring, inspiring experiences of goodness, truth, beauty and love feed this hole in the soul, this “inconsolable longing,” but only for a moment. They nourish us, even as they stimulate our appetite and leave us longing for more. The inspirations we get from goodness, beauty, truth and love are not finally nor fully the goal or destination of our lives; they are only signposts pointing to the real goal and destination of our existence: God. Our inconsolable longing to fill that God-shaped hole in the soul, or to find the matching piece to our broken treasure, is what also brought the magi to the Christ child in Bethlehem.
But there was no guarantee that, on their own, the magi would go the right way to the right person to fill that hole in the soul, not without divine help. And that brings us to the third reason for the magi’s journey. For their coming I give credit to the Holy Spirit of God. It is He who stirs up our hunger and a hope for something, or someone, better, more capable of filling the hole in the soul. It is God’s Spirit who points us to the heart’s fulfillment in Emmanuel, the One who is God-with-us. That’s precisely what Jesus said His Holy Spirit would do, “…the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me (John 15:26).”
Now, the Spirit did not immediately make everything one hundred per cent clear to the Persian magi; they seem to have come to Christ with a confusion of Hebrew and Persian hopes and ideas. The Spirit spoke to them through something they were used to looking at—stars—even if they were looking at them for the wrong reasons. But that’s the grace and the goodness of the Holy Spirit. He meets us where we are at, works with what we have, but He also leads us gently, persistently, toward the fullness of the truth in Christ. He loves us just as we are, just however and wherever he finds us. And he loves us so much that He won’t leave us that way. The work of the Holy Spirit is the third thing that brought the magi to Bethlehem. The Spirit, along with, secondly, our universal God-shaped hole in the soul that only God can fill, and, first, the presence and witness of God’s people to Jesus.
As for the next question: what does the magi’s journey to Bethlehem tell us about our journey homeward, to see Jesus? Two things, briefly: 1) To treasure our treasure; and 2) trust the Holy Spirit to bring us home to see the king.
As for that first one, treasuring our treasure, usually we think and talk about our own precious treasures as our unique strengths, our resources, our gifts, our talents and our training, those positive and practical things that we can contribute to each other and so make the world better. And that’s true. But this morning I’m talking about a different treasure that we carry, a surprising treasure, because at first glance it looks more like weakness. This treasure speaks and reminds us of our incompleteness; it does not distinguish us one from another, but is one that we all share in common. I’ve mentioned it already this morning; it’s that inconsolable longing for we-know-not-what at first, that hole-in-the-soul which only God can fill. That is perhaps the most valuable treasure we carry through this life, as a tribute to bring to God. Because it leads us to an even greater treasure.
Yet so much human effort and energy boil down to flight, denial and distraction from our treasure, that God-shaped hole-in-the-soul, because we’re so afraid of our incompleteness and need. So we may engage in so many frantic efforts to stuff it with counterfeit things, like so much entertainment, busy-ness, illicit sex, celebrities to worship, or enemies to fear. That’s why one highly inebriated man in a bar asked the drinker next to him, “Have you found God in any of those bottles yet?” But those counterfeit God-substitutes can also be good things, even respectable and religious things, like family, ministry, and crusading for the right politics and theology. We can turn even the things of God into God-substitutes.
The most dangerous God-substitute is ourselves. Ever since the serpent in the Garden of Eden first said, “You shall be like God,” we have been trying to make of ourselves our own gods. Exhibit A would be Herod, who was disturbed and distressed by news of the Messiah’s birth. Because that meant that there was another God in town, other than himself. His inborn hunger for God did not just go away. No one’s does. It just degenerated into a destructive, all-consuming lust to dethrone and displace God, even to be God.
You don’t have to be a Herod or a Hitler for that to happen. I also see that frustrated hunger for God turning into a lust to be God whenever we try to deny and redefine truth and goodness simply to suit ourselves. Or when we pretend that the laws of consequences for conduct or character do not apply to ourselves.
All those God-substitutes and diversions can kill time and distract us, for a while. But then they typically leave us empty, like the man who went to see a counselor and complained that, even though he was prosperous and popular, his life was empty, meaningless and unfulfilling. He could no longer hold off a deep and growing resentment and sadness about that, he said. The counselor told him, “Oh, you should go to the circus tonight to see the great clown, Pagliacci. He is so drop-dead funny, he will have you in stitches, laughing your head off. That will help you forget your blues.”
“But Doctor,” the patient replied, “I am Pagliacci.”
We go through this world like orphaned and separated siblings, or like long-separated lovers, in a Shakespeare play, each of us carrying one broken half of a heart-shaped medallion on a locket, hoping, longing, trying and seeking to find the the other broken half of the same medallion. Find that missing half, put them together, and the bearers know they too are supposed to be together, as siblings, or sweethearts. Our culture’s worship of sex and romance tells us that we should fill each other’s hole in the soul, as lovers, or spouses. But no mortal, however good, can carry that burden or live up to that expectation. The holder of the missing half to what we carry is God alone.
And so the magi came to Bethlehem, carrying through the darkness and the desert their half of the medallion of love and longing for God with which we all journey through this world. Persian magic, astrology, sorcery and secret arts obviously did not match their broken half, nor fill the hole in their hearts, or else they would have stayed home.
When we come up to the edge of that hole in the soul, and the usual efforts to distract ourselves and deny it no longer work, then most blessed are we. That’s our personal invitation from heaven, written on our particular piece of brokenness, to go on a pilgrimage like that of the magi. At the end of it we will find that our brokenness and incompleteness are actually priceless treasures, especially to the One who holds the other half.
Treasuring our treasure also means that we learn to feed that hole in the soul rightly, instead of denying it, fleeing from it, or trying to stuff it with things that don’t fit. Think of our spiritual disciplines as food for the hungry, hollow soul, such as worship, prayer and Bible reading. Or by doing and pursuing goodness, truth, beauty and love. That inkling you feel to call or visit a sick or suffering friend, don’t ignore it; it will give that hole in the soul some proper nourishment, both in the person you help and in yourself. Or that desire to go on a hike, or to listen to beautiful music, that also is the sweet song from that hole in the soul drawing us toward the One to whom all truth, beauty, goodness and love point. So again, treasure our greatest treasure: accept and embrace our incompleteness, the hole in the soul that we all share, which God alone can fill. For it is the doorway into the eternity which God has planted in our hearts; it is our personal invitation from heaven to pilgrimage.
But this pilgrimage is too dangerous and strenuous to undertake on our own. And so the second thing today’s story tells us to do: to trust the Holy Spirit. Trust the Spirit to bring us to the king, just as He did the magi. Trust the Spirit of God to guide us by means of the Word of God, like when the scribes in Jerusalem directed the magi the last leg of the journey to Bethlehem, based on the words of the Prophet Micah. Trust the Spirit of God also to guide us through the people of God, like when the magi picked up from their Jewish neighbors their longing for their promised king. Trust the Spirit, especially in those times when our journey does not seem to make sense, and we wonder if God has ditched us along the way somewhere. Or when we wonder, What’s the point? And Will this have any effect, or do any good for anyone, anywhere?
And trust the Spirit to do more with our journey, and to do more with whatever tribute we bring, than we can see or understand at any given moment, because He works on a much greater timetable than do we. A tradition of the Assyrian Orthodox Church says that, when the magi returned to Persia, they told their Jewish friends that they had seen their long-awaited Messiah. Members of that Jewish community in Persia would then wait for decades, long after the magi had died, wondering, Just who was this baby those magi found beneath the star, and whatever became of him?
Then a disciple of the Apostle Thomas came to Persia to tell the Jewish community there about Jesus. And so was born the Assyrian Orthodox Church. By the 9th Century AD, theirs was the most widespread church in the world, with missionaries, monasteries and churches into China, Siberia, Mongolia and India. They are also the Christians who lately have suffered the most from ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Recently, theirs have been the most powerful testimonies the world has seen to Jesus in the videos that ISIS has posted of their executions for their faith. But other refugees from the homeland of the magi are now being baptized as Christians in churches in Sweden, Germany and Austria, because of the contrast they see between the people who drove them out, and the people who welcomed them in. The church that the magi started, unbeknownst to themselves, almost in spite of themselves, has endured a long journey of suffering and struggle, and looks to be very much alive, and even growing again. That I credit to the agency of the Holy Spirit.
There’s something else for which I give the Holy Spirit credit: our presence here, and our worship of God. Isn’t the miracle of our own pilgrimage of faith toward Israel’s promised Messiah just as surprising as that of the magi twenty-one centuries ago? Or do we think we’re so much wiser than the Wise Men, or any better, more virtuous, or more holy, or deserving that we believe in this King of the Jews and seek him? Who would dare claim that? We may object to the magi’s astrology and secret arts, and we should. But are we so sure there are no complications as objectionable in our lives, like racism, consumerism, nationalism, or materialism, that we too must journey out of, and leave behind?
What brought us here, to worship the King of the Jews, are the same things that brought the magi to Bethlehem. Our own weaknesses, incompleteness, our own inconsolable longings that are that God-shaped hole in our souls. Add to that the work of God’s Spirit, and the witness of God’s people, together, lifting up Christ and drawing us toward him as the only One who can fill that hole in the soul for us. Those are the reasons why we too have come today to worship.
So, stay on the journey and trust the Spirit of God to bring us home. On this journey, each of us carries a sacred treasure through the deserts of this life, a treasure that we will exchange for an infinitely greater treasure, when we too finally see the Christ.