Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Not the End of the Journey, But the Beginning"
Date: January 6, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Matthew 2:1-12

My daughter Amy set out on a journey last Sunday.  She was driving alone from Long Beach to meet up with her boyfriend at his parents’ home in Santa Rosa.  I was concerned about her making the drive.  Now, Amy is a good driver, and heaven knows, she puts more miles on her car each year than her mother and I combined.  She’s 28 years old, and by her age, I had driven many times to seminary up in Berkeley on the same highway, and cross country by myself three times.  But she’s my daughter, you see, and she had never driven that far by herself before.  Nor does Amy drink any caffeine.  Most of us would nurse a Coke or coffee or two on such a drive.

I asked her to call us when she left, so she called at 6:30 last Sunday morning from the corner of 7th and Ximeno.  Her mother called her at 7:30, and she was past Magic Mountain.  Amy called at 8 a.m. to tell us she was over the Grapevine.  We were in the movies at 1:15 when she left a message to say she was pulling into David’s driveway.  Now I didn’t do the math to figure the mileage and calculate just what her average speed was in that six hour, 45 minute drive up to Santa Rosa, nor do I probably want to know!  All I wanted to know for sure is that she arrived safely at the end of her journey.

Today we were reminded again of some wise men who also made a journey, although presumably much farther.  Where exactly in the East they departed from, or how long they traveled, we do not know.  But Matthew tells us that when they arrived “at the place where the child was … they were overwhelmed with joy.” (2:9-10) 

Perhaps they were joyful because they were on a journey, a search.  Many of us look forward to trips we take, and sometimes we are exceedingly joyful to reach our destination.  Maybe these wise men/magi/presumed three kings were joyful because looking at the baby Jesus, they knew that they were at their long-awaited destination.  It is possible their fellow astrologers or magic men stayed back at home, took no journeys toward the east, refused to go off on some wild camel ride to see a baby on the basis of nothing more than a star.  These wise men were the sort of curious and determined people who were looking for something, willing to risk a journey, brave enough to venture forth on the search.  And when they got to the goal of their search, they felt joy.

Matthew introduces us to another major player in this drama:  Herod, a fake king over the Jews, put into place by the Romans.  When Herod heard about the one whose star had risen in the east, “the one born king of the Jews,” he got very nervous.  He became fearfully nervous.  His position, his wealth, his power were all in jeopardy.  First, he tried to find out from the wise men exactly when and where this baby was born.  Then, to end the threat, he ordered the slaughter of all babies in and around Bethlehem under the age of two.

There is no other historical account of such a slaughter.  However, historians say it fits with the modus operandi of Herod.  He was one of history’s great villains.  He not only murdered one of this wives, but at least two of his sons.  He was threatened by everybody, so when Matthew says that “Herod was terrified, and all Jerusalem with him,” we can understand why they would tremble with fear.

We’ve got quite a story here:  the wise men in their huge joy and Herod and all of Jerusalem filled with murderous fear.  Where do you find your place in this story on the twelfth day of Christmas?  As you stand before this new infant king, are you the fearful Herod and populace of Jerusalem?  Or are you the joyful wise men?  I expect, if we’re honest, we feel kinship with both.  Before the advent of a commanding new Lord of Life, I expect that we’re a mixture of both joy and fear because this baby is beckoning us to go on a journey and, in every trip, there is fear and joy.

Your journey may be off to college, or to a new job in a new setting, maybe even a different city or state.  Your trip may be into a new relationship, or a new house.  Maybe it’s journeying to keep your New Year’s resolutions, or seeking a deeper faith.

At any church on any Sunday morning, in the light of our interpretation of today’s Epiphany Gospel, you have mainly two kinds of Christians.  First, you have those who have arrived.  They may have been on a journey but now, having found what they are looking for, they are at their destination.  They are full of joy, having reached their heart’s desire.

When children go on a road trip and get to the destination, be it their grandparents for Christmas, or a favorite vacation spot, or even the parking garage at Disneyland, there is a palpable excitement about them as they pile out of the car and dance around chanting, “We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!”  Joy is the emotion of the successful end of a journey.  No wonder that so much of our worship is filled this Epiphany Sunday with joy.

A second group of Christians at most any church consists of those who are at the beginning of, or in the middle of, a journey toward Christ.  Often the most difficult part of a journey is the beginning or the middle of the trip.  There is anxiety about when and how you will reach the destination.  “Are we ever going to get there?  How much farther?  When will we get there?” someone asks, often more than once.  Will the final destination be worth all of the perils and difficulties along the way?  Therefore, we feel fear.

Joy and fear.  These are the two conflicting, sometimes complimentary emotions to be found in any church on any Sunday morning.  They are the emotions of travelers.  And according to scripture, all of us who walk with Jesus are travelers.  Are we willing to go on that journey with joy, to relinquish our sense of comfort and control and go to where the star, and its Lord can lead us?  Can we, as the church, rise with this shining new star and rise to a new sense of adventure, forsake our cozy boundaries, and go forth following him?

Perhaps that’s a chief requirement for being a Christian—a willingness to go on a journey.  There’s a danger that too many of us might gather here in order to settle in, settle down, as if church were the end of the journey with God, rather than its beginning.  Yet we follow a living Lord, a demanding Savior who leads us forward, in whose service is high adventure.  Let’s follow the star.  The wise men did.  And arriving at Bethlehem wasn’t the end of their journey.  Matthew reports that in choosing not to report back to Herod, “they left for their country by another road”, changed, no doubt, forever by what they had seen and experienced.

 

(Portions of this sermon adapted from a sermon on the same text

by William H. Willimon, entitled “Starstruck”, in Pulpit Resource,

January-March, 2008, Logos Productions, Inc.)