“Ours the Journey” – Sermon on Jan 6, 2012
January 6, 2013
Scripture: Matthew 2: 1-12
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 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.”
When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 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. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
“‘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.’”
Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 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.”
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. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 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. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Sermon: Ours the Journey
by Rev. Doreen Oughton
You may call me Melchior. I am from Babylon, a scholar and priest of Zoroastrianism. I study the sky – the stars and planets, the whole cosmology. I want to keep learning more and more about its order, the way everything works together as a harmonious and integrated whole. I’ve been fortunate that my people have a sense of the largeness of the world, and recognize the importance of sharing observations and insights and questions with others near and far. Over the years I’ve developed wonderfully stimulating connections with my brother priests and scholars – Balthazar from Egypt and Caspar from Persia. We had been in touch over the months about the strange things happening in the sky, sharing our resources, references from other religions and cultures about what it all might mean. And as this amazing star we’d all known was coming, appeared, we decided we had to follow it. We would meet up and travel together because we knew we’d be led to something, or someone, amazing. We knew what was happening would change everything.
Some have asked me, and of course we asked each other, why did we travel so far to be there when it happened? Why was it not enough just to know the secret without having to be there ourselves to behold it? To this, not even the stars had an answer. The stars said simply that he would be born. It was another voice altogether that said to go – a voice stirring as deep within us as the stars are deep within the sky.
Why did we go? I could not tell you now, and I don’t think I could have told you then, not even as we were on the journey. You see we didn’t have one clear motive, but we had so many. Curiosity, I suppose: to be wise is to be eternally curious, and we were very wise. We wanted to see for ourselves this One before whom even the stars are said to bow down – to see perhaps if it was really true because even the wise have their doubts. And longing. Longing. Why will a person who is dying of thirst crawl miles across sands as hot as fire at simply the possibility of water? But if we longed to receive, we longed also to give. Why will a person labor and struggle all the days of his life so that in the end he has something to give the one he loves? Can you say exactly why? And yet you know that it is so.
So finally we got to the place where the star pointed us. It was at night. Very cold. The Innkeeper showed us the way that we did not need to be shown. A harebrained, busy man. The odor of the hay was sweet, and the cattle’s breath came out in little puffs of mist. The man and the woman. Between them the king. We did not stay long. We set our foolish gifts down on the straw, gazed for awhile at the babe, and left, almost in a daze.
I will tell you two terrible things. What we saw on the face of the newborn child was his death. We all saw it. We talked about it on the journey back home. A fool could have seen it as well. It sat on his head like a crown or a bat, this death that he would die. And we saw, as sure as the earth beneath our feet, that to stay with him would be to share that death, and that is why we left, giving only our gifts, withholding the rest, withholding our interesting, neat, orderly lives. But I have to wonder, did we short-change ourselves? Could it be that the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, is that to live without him is the real death, and that to live and die with him is the only life worth having? What do you think? What would YOU have done?
