I think it was Johnny Lee who sang “Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places” I’m a little bit young to remember that song but it sort of describes where the Magi are at in the beginning of our Gospel story. Not that they that know they’re looking for love! They have an idea of what or who they’re seeking but by the end of their tale what they’ve sought and what they’ve found are not entirely the same.
In Huw’s sermon a few weeks ago he talked about how through this very strange and unsettling year we’ve had, many people have either been searching for something- whether it be meaning, purpose or hope in the wrong places, or that when we have found something which has meant something to us or given us joy or hope amid the hopelessness it’s been something and somewhere unexpected.
Our Magi are searching for a king, an important king; they know there’s going to be something very special about this king, worth them embarking on what would have been a very long and not very easy journey. Scholars have tried to pinpoint over the years where these men may have journeyed from and the best guess is part of the Persian empire, estimating a 400-700 mile journey.
This would not have been an easy or safe trip so they must have placed a great deal of importance on what they were doing. And they did the really obvious thing, after losing sight of the star which had led them to Israel they headed to the capital city of Jerusalem, headed to the palace and asked the guy in charge if he knew where the new king was being born!
This was a pretty foolish error on the part of our travellers, they couldn’t have had an understanding of the political situation, that news of a powerful leader being born would cause a man like Herod to take cruel and divisive action. The actions of the Magi, looking in the wrong place, directly leads to the massacre of innocent children.
But they knew a powerful king was being born and so they go to where they think the seat of power is- in the palace.
The news that the Messiah was going to be born should have delighted the people of Jerusalem and the priests but they, like Herod, are greatly disturbed. They know their leader has power because he’s in the pocket of their Roman occupiers and is ruthless enough to hang onto this power by any means. Herod is so feared that the news of the birth of the leader predicted to liberate the Jewish people is not recognised.
In defence of the Magi, when the star which has led them disappears they mustn’t have felt they had any other option. They haven’t come all that way to fail and by going to the palace they have access to Herod’s advisers and can pinpoint a town where the king is to be born. When they leave Jerusalem their guiding star reappears and they’re able to fulfil their objective of finding what they had come so for to seek…or had they?
Because what they thought they were going to find and what awaited them as I’ve already said were not entirely the same.
They come looking for the one who would be the king of the Jews, the prophesised Messiah, long predicted to be a great military leader to liberate the Jewish people with military power. To empower the nation to take control back as the Jewish people had done generations earlier when they’d marched into this land and took occupation from those that lived there before them.
But that’s not the leader Jesus was destined to be. I wonder what the Magi thought when on arriving in this unremarkable town the star led them to the outhouse used for the animals? When they discovered the king’s parents to be so…ordinary, when measured against the human makers of power and greatness?
Whatever and whoever they expected to find at the end of their journey what awaited them was both ordinary and extraordinary.
They found a family, ordinary by appearances. They found God’s love made physical and embodied in a human child and in the love he generated in his parents.
They had thought, as did the people of Jerusalem, that power resided in the palace with Herod, but God’s statement by choosing to have his son born to these people in these circumstances is to declare that the greatest power lies in the lives of the most seemingly ordinary people.
Throughout this last, most extraordinary, twelve months we’ve seen the power of ordinary individuals. As governments and those in authority in many countries have struggled in their response to the global pandemic we’ve seen how the actions of single people can effect so many.
We’ve realised the measures a single person can make in their daily lives to help contain the virus and seen reports of how a lack of personal responsibility has had dire consequences for many.
We’ve also seen the people who have gone above and beyond in their personal actions to make things better for others, we know of the heroes of the pandemic such as Sir Tom Moore, and those with high profiles such as Joe Wicks and Marcus Rashford but then there’s the likes of my friend Camilla, supposed to be traveling the world at the start of 2020 but she returned to her home-town in Italy when their hospitals were at their fullest to work nursing patients with covid.
There’s the NHS staff who’ve returned from retirement or other careers to support the frontline, shop workers ensuring our essential and non-essential needs are met, teachers negotiating moving from in person to online teaching and back again. And then there’s the teams of individuals the world over who’ve poured all their time and resources into developing vaccines to ensure we eventually return to the lives we love and miss.
So many unnamed and unknown to us, have individually and collectively been extraordinary. As we’ve looked to those we believe hold the power to control and help our current situation it’s people like ourselves, our neighbours and members of our communities who’ve had the power to help, uplift and inspire us; through love, through duty, through a sense and needing to do what was right or just trying to do their jobs in whatever way they could.
Regarding Epiphany I read this week that only in darkness can we see the stars, and in our recent darkness many stars have revealed themselves.
The message of Epiphany is that of the revealing of Christ to the Gentiles, the realisation that kingship means something very different to God than to humankind and that a tiny child can hold all the power in the world. This is the great revelation; the greatest power on earth is love and God is the source of that love.
In every act of love God is revealed over and over again and my greatest source of hope through all this has been the constant revelation of people’s goodness and kindness, as goalposts have moved and the hope of the things I usually have to look forward to have diminished, my own epiphany is that my hope doesn’t live in a wish to return to our lives as they were, although I dearly do wish for it; my hope, as it always should be, is in the continual revealing of God in the goodness of the ordinary and in the simplicity of love.
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 in the east 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 Christ 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 be the shepherd of 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 make a careful search 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 in the east 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 worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
