Where Is This $%*&#h Child!?!
Matthew 2:1-12
January
9, 2005
1In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men£ from the East came to Jerusalem, 2asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising,£ and have come to pay him homage.” 3When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah£ was to be born. 5They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd£ my people Israel.’”
7Then Herod secretly called for the wise men£ and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising,£ until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw that the star had stopped,£ they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Have
you ever searched for something long and hard only to find it in the most
unexpected, outrageous place? I
know all about that experience, first hand!
My
mom can be a very intense woman once she gets rolling.
She is usually doing several things at one time, like rolling yalanchee
for guests expected on the weekend, preparing someone’s favorite dish for
dinner that same night, maybe mante soup, and watching one or two or more of her
grandchildren at the same time. This
intensity has always been a part of her life and I remember times in our lives
when her frantic running around would lead to problems.
For instance she was constantly losing her keys or her glasses.
One
time when we were kids, I think she lost her little wallet/purse-thing and she
finally found it in the freezer, a few days later!
Unfortunately,
I seem to have picked up on some of these traits, her intensity, this doing too
many things at one time and losing things only to search for them frantically.
I
don’t know how many times I’ll be ready to walk out the door usually with a
child on my hip or trailing me and multiple bags hanging from my shoulders, I’ll
pat my pockets and suddenly call out, “Kiiim, have you seen my keys to your
car?“ She’ll say “Noo.” And off we’ll all go on this search of the entire household
until I find them in the pocket of my other jacket or we find it under the seat
in the other car or Alex finds them between the seat cushions
in the couch.
No
matter how quick or how long those searches take, they are among the most
frustrating moments of my life. Have
you ever experienced such times?
And
these aren’t the only frantic searches are they?
One crazed journalist wrote this article just a few weeks ago…
It
is midweek and only a few days before Christmas. Fifty-one shopping weeks gone,
and only several more days to go. It has now reached beyond the critical point.
Those
8,860 hours to plan and make holiday purchases are down the tubes, and I am left
with less than 72 hours in which to shop for the most perfect, caring,
thoughtful gifts for family and loved ones. Ah, high anxiety.
Each
year I wait until the last possible moment before springing into action. I will
battle throngs of last-minute holiday shoppers just like me, and fight over the
last pair of pink flamingo salt and pepper shakers.
I
know that I'm not alone in this dilemma, and even though I promise myself each
year that I will never again be in this predicament, I am nonetheless mired in
the quagmire of Christmas shopping hell. Never again. Each December, I cruise
through the annual after-Christmas-sales rationalizing that it's way too early
to even think about next year's gift giving, and that most of the stuff on sale
will be old gift ideas anyway.
[I
fall asleep on my search the entire year every once in a while, maybe once in
August and once in the fall, I have a pang of guilt saying “maybe I should
start looking for those perfect presents a bit early this year” but then] I
awaken with a start on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving. I have had a
nightmare. Giant electrical appliances are chasing me down long corridors lined
with pink refrigerators with small TVs built into their doors. It is my wake-up
call, and I have, at this point in time, one full month to take care of business
and shop 'til I drop…[1]
Aren’t
you glad we’ve turned that page on the calendar for one more year?
What
do you search frantically for? For
some of us, it’s the silly mundane things in our purses or pockets that we “knew
were just there a minute ago.” For
others, it’s the most perfect gift ever imaginable.
For others, its health. For
others of us, it’s the American dream, spouse, 2.2 kids, 2 cars in a two car
garage, a house with a white picket fence with spot barking at the paper boy who
rides by on his bike.
For
the Magii, religious astronomers, wise men and scientists of the ancient world,
it was truth. And sometimes I think
they must have been a little frantic too. Following
a star for months, they reach a point where they finally believe they’ve
entered the correct land and go to the king.
“Where
is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its
rising,£ and have come to pay him homage.”
The
King, Herod, hears their questions, no doubt after hearing their story of their
journey and their hardships, but he wants to hear no more!
The story as its told in Matthew doesn’t even record a response to the
wise men. Instead, he apparently
dismisses the visiting magi and consults with all his own wise men, scientists
and religious leaders. He is
sufficiently scared by what they tell him about their own knowledge of a coming
Messiah and King that he calls the magi back and tries to get their pledge of
complicity as he tries to find and eliminate this threat, even if it happens to
mean going after every infant boy in his own kingdom.
I
can almost hear the words of the wise men:
Do you know how far we’ve come from?
We’ve
been looking for this child forever!…
We’ve
been following this star for hundred’s of miles and it brought us here!
We
brought all this valuable stuff!
We
come to you the king and you play political games on us!
Where Is This $%*&# Child!?!
All
they were trying to do was seek out the the truth.
Seek out God himself. You’d
think somebody would support them.
However,
think about one of the most enduring images of the wise men that we have, second
perhaps only to the image of them kneeling of otherwise paying tribute to the
infant King and giving them their gifts. That
is the image of the lonely caravan of 3 camels on a dark night, out in the
desert, trekking along under that traveling star. On the road to find God.
How do you think people seek God today? What are the paths and things
and methods that help people “find” their way to God? How might the star in
the Matthew reading represent things in the world today as they “point” to
God?
The
Church is One place we should be able to find what we’re looking for, to find
the Christ Child, the King of Justice and freedom and mercy and peace…
In
her book Broken We Kneel, Diana Butler Bass describes the Church of the
Epiphany in Washington, D.C. The 8:00 service each Sunday is geared toward the
homeless, and in that crowd of 200 worshipers you will find a woman talking
loudly to her invisible friend, several men sleeping on back pews, and some
people standing and singing the hymns. This is “an amazing cross section of
humanity for a church,” writes Butler Bass, “unruly, disorderly and utterly
hospitable. And holy.” A church member who first came to the church
when she was homeless once said to Butler Bass, “Epiphany is the first church
I ever visited that treated me like a human being. Nobody looked at me as if I
was going to steal something.”
What a truly hospitable, stranger-welcoming, InnoCentive Church.
For those who are searching frantically for all the great
things than we hear in our culture are the real thing, the true pot at the end
of the rainbow, the truth is that:
-- Not everyone who expected to own a home or reach other financial aims will
realize these goals.
-- Not everyone who expected to attend undergraduate, graduate or professional
school will be able to afford it.
-- Not everyone who expected to reach career objectives set in earlier, less
competitive times, will succeed.
-- Not everyone who expected to marry will find a mate.
-- Not everyone who expected to be a parent but deferred childbearing will be
able to have a family.
-- Not everyone who simply expected companionship will find someone to be with.
-- Jane Ciabattari,
Will the '90s Be the Age of Envy?
Psychology Today, December 1989, 47.
This
is truly sad, but for those who like the wise man were looking for God, a few
more rays of hope do exist.
The
Church is One place we should be able to find what we’re looking for, to find
the Christ Child, the King of Justice and freedom and mercy and peace…
In
her book Broken We Kneel, Diana Butler Bass describes the Church of the
Epiphany in Washington, D.C. The 8:00 service each Sunday is geared toward the
homeless, and in that crowd of 200 worshipers you will find a woman talking
loudly to her invisible friend, several men sleeping on back pews, and some
people standing and singing the hymns. This is “an amazing cross section of
humanity for a church,” writes Butler Bass, “unruly, disorderly and utterly
hospitable. And holy.” A church member who first came to the church
when she was homeless once said to Butler Bass, “Epiphany is the first church
I ever visited that treated me like a human being. Nobody looked at me as if I
was going to steal something.”
What a truly hospitable, stranger-welcoming, InnoCentive Church.
But
even if we don’t find exactly what we’re looking for each and every time, I’m
willing to bet that God finds us on that journey itself, on the way, in the road
and en route.
But
maybe the constant moving, the constant search is the right way… God doesn’t
intend for us to just sit, contented that we’ve “found it”… but will
meet us on the road as we are searching.
In her book The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design
(Norton, 1998), architecture professor Galen Cranz encourages no fewer than six
postures in which to work: standing, sitting, lying, perching, squatting and
autonomous sitting (on a stool).
In photos from the Upper Volta Cranz noticed two men with fabulous posture:
spines erect, heads balanced, necks relaxed. Not coincidentally, they were the
only people in the village who had not attended missionary school [and sat in
chairs]. For Cranz, this was an epiphany: The problem wasn't poorly designed
chairs; the problem was chairs, period. The body is designed to move. As she put
it: 'What's the best posture? The next one.'
--Alfredo Botello, Don't Just Sit There, Utne Reader, March-April, 1999, 99-101.
Amen.