Matthew 2:1-12
To say I love my GPS would be an understatement. I need my Global Positioning System, I adore my GPS, many times I have wanted to pay homage to my GPS for all the wondrous things it has done for me. Yes the great theologian Augustine would have issue with my inordinate love for my GPS coming close to my love of God but I’ll save that for a later sermon, or confession. Suffuse it to say, without my GPS I would not be able to get out of my apartment. You see, God has given me many gifts, but a sense of direction is not one of them. Friends have observed that my sense of direction is so bad that I have the unique ability to get lost in a broom closet. So you can imagine the glee I feel when I have reached my final destination and I hear that friendly voice on the GPS say, “You Have Arrived.”
Now my GPS works great in bigger cities such as Smallcity and Bigcity, but when you try to use in rural towns such as say…Smalltown, well the usefulness of the GPS becomes quite limited. The GPS can only take me so far. Many of your addresses do not register on my GPS. So as I journey to your homes the GPS will lead me way past the point that I was trying to get to or stop just short of it. As many of you know, quite well unfortunately, whenever I’ve come to visit, about 2 minutes before I am supposed be there, you get a frantic phone call from me where I tell you that I’ve ended up on an unmarked dirt road in the wilds of Smalltown and that I need your guidance to get out.
Now today’s gospel finds the wise men in a similar situation. The wise men have been following their form of astrological GPS, a star from the east, so as to find the child who had been born king of the Jews. We don’t know why they stopped but we can guess that the star could only take them so far, like my GPS in most of rural Smalltown, the place that they sought was not registering completely on their astrological global positioning system. I wonder if they did find where Jesus was born but passed it up thinking, no that can’t be it. No king would be born in a stable!
Eventually, the wise men realize that they had to stop and ask for directions. They go to the nearest big city, Jerusalem, hoping to find someone who knows about the baby Messiah. Imagine if you will, these strangely dressed foreign men coming up to anyone on the streets asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews. We want to pay him homage.” I am sure most of the Jerusalem folk reacted in fear and trepidation. Wanting to avoid the charge of treason, the citizens directed the wise men to the palace of King Herod Antipas, the one whom the Roman Empire crowned as King of the Jews. However, the wise men knew that Herod was not the king they were looking for.
Word gets back to Herod in the palace about these foreign guys from the east running around town asking for directions to a child recently born King of the Jews to whom they wanted to pay homage to. This frightens Herod because he knew there were prophesies that a ruler would be coming from the Davidic family line who would become the Messiah, the one anointed by God to rule over all of Israel. He just didn’t think it would happen in his lifetime. Herod met with his chief priests and his scribes to find out where the Messiah was to be born and they confirmed his worst fears, indeed the Messiah was already born in Bethlehem as it was written by the prophets. So Herod meets with the wise men secretly and sends them to Bethlehem asking them to send word back to Herod so that he may go and pay homage to the child. Really Herod had other plans which thank goodness are later thwarted through a wise man’s dream.
When the wise men are told by Herod that the Messiah is in Bethlehem they set out and there ahead of them came back the star they had first seen at its raising. Their GPS was working again. When they saw the star had stopped they were overwhelmed with joy. Finally they found the place they were looking for, perhaps the place that they had passed by many times before they asked Herod for directions. There in this place was the child with Mary his mother and the first thing the wise men did was kneel down and give the child homage.
The key phrase throughout this text is “to give homage” “Where is the child has been born king of the Jews? For we…have come to pay him homage” (2:3) “When you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage”(2:8) “On entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother and they knelt down and paid him homage.” (2:11) Some note that the Greek word used for paying homage was quite intense, the word in the original text describes “the custom of prostrating oneself at the feet of a king. The physical posture dramatically expressed the idea of giving not just gifts but our entire selves to Christ.” (1)
The wise men’s act of seeking Jesus so that they may worship him was not an easy task; it comes at the end of long and arduous journey, full of wrong turns and missteps. Looking at this text in the metaphorically, the wise men’s journey could be compared to the journey of a life of faith. It is noted that the wise men’s journey “begins with the need to give themselves utterly and completely to the only one worthy of worship.” (2) The journey of a life of faith begins with the need to connect with that which is greater than ourselves. The journey of the wise men was dangerous, as they risked life and limb to travel through unknown lands just so they could worship the Christ. The journey of faith is also quite dangerous because in order to get to the place where we can utterly and completely give ourselves over to God in Christ, we have to leave the security of the familiar worldly things to pursue God’s will and way in the world. The journey of the wise men required guidance, a divine revelation, a GPS if you will, because they did not know where they were going and needed the external presence of the star and then they had to ask for directions from those who could guide them with the prophecy of scripture. The journey of faith also requires the guidance of divine revelation, a GPS that combines the power of the Holy Spirit with the revelation of Scripture to lead us toward God in Christ whom we give our lives utterly and completely to. And there are times where the GPS can only take us so far, where we may pass the place we are looking for over and over again occasionally taking a wrong turn or maybe the destination doesn’t seem to register, it is in those times that we rely on the members of this community of faith, the folks whom we know we can frantically call when we are lost, confident that they direct us towards our final revelation. “You have arrived!” May it be so. Amen.
(1) Thomas H. Troeger "Matthew 2:1-12 - Homiletical Perspective" Feasting on the Word - Year A: Advent to Transfiguration. pg. 215.
(2) Ibid., 215.
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