Going Home Another Way

Going Home Another Way

Matthew 2:1-18

December 23, 2018 • Mount Pleasant UMC

George was supposed to be a lawyer. That’s what his father wanted him to do. But George had extraordinary natural talent as a musician. When he was nine years old, he was playing the organ at his church; by age 12 he had written a musical composition and was substituting for his own music teacher. He learned to play oboe and violin, among other instruments, but when he began college, he respected his father’s wishes and enrolled in a prestigious law school. He tried hard, but it was a bad fit, and it wasn’t long before he had abandoned law and immersed himself in music.

In particular, his skill on the organ was amazing. When he would play the postlude after a worship service, people would stay as long as he played. Sometimes they had to ask him to quit so people would go home. He also wrote music, and for a time his music was popular, but then the public’s tastes changed, and George found it difficult to make a living writing music. It was just as his father had predicted. Church people complained when he performed in secular theaters. Secular audiences were fickle, and soon the stress of trying to make a living began to affect his health. At age 56, George was deeply in debt and might have described himself as hopeless (Kavanaugh in Darden, The Young Messiah, pgs. 10-11).

Even in the best of times, hope is rather elusive. We’re told this is the season of hope, of “peace on earth, goodwill toward all,” but we look around and see a divided world, friends no longer speaking because of differing views, an uncertain economy, ongoing tensions and wars around the world, rampant crime, even sometimes in our own neighborhood. About ten years ago, we woke up one morning to the news that there had been a violent assault just two doors down from our house. And we lived in what most would say was a nice neighborhood. But that rarely maters anymore. Sometimes the fear, the danger gets close to home. We’re told this is the season of hope, but most of the time it looks like the world is pretty messed up. And it’s easy to begin to believe we are, too. We make a mistake, or we’re let go from a job, or our family is really struggling. And the voices begin to whisper to us: you’ll never measure up, you’ll never be good enough, you can’t get it right. Sometimes, like George, we wonder if we’re doomed by our failures. Is there any hope, for our world, or for us?

During Advent, we’ve been journeying with Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ book A Christmas Carol, walking with him as he moves “From Humbug to Hallelujah.” You remember that Scrooge’s story begins late one Christmas Eve, as the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, visits him and offers him a chance to change his life. That “chance,” Marley said, would involve visits from three spirits. As I’ve reminded you, Dickens is not writing Christian theology here. He’s writing a story, a ghost story, but it’s a story filled with profound truths. Scrooge has begun to grab onto those truths as he was visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present. Worn out by that he has seen so far, Scrooge has one more ghost to confront. Despite all he has seen and experienced already, Scrooge is not quite ready for what the Ghost of Christmas Future brings.

VIDEO CLIP: Going Home Another Way

Have you ever taken time to walk through the cemetery across the road? Or any cemetery? Most of us don’t go visit burial places unless we are “visiting” someone who is buried there. It certainly isn’t the place we go to look for hope, and yet, that’s exactly what Scrooge finds there in the middle of the night, Christmas Eve. There, in front of his own grave, Scrooge finds the courage and the desire to write a different ending to his Christmas carol. The questions he confronts that night in that place are ours as well: are we bound by the failures of the past? Is there any hope that things can change?

A couple of weeks ago, I said that joy is a hallmark of the Christian faith. Another hallmark is hope. In fact, I believe hope is at the core of our faith. One author says, “Hope is the power that keeps us going in the toughest times of life. It is the power that energizes us with excitement and anticipation as we look forward to the future. Hope gives us a reason to live…It has been said that a person can live 40 days without food, four days without water, four minutes without air, but only four seconds without hope” (Jackson in Pastor’s Manual, pg. B95). The Apostle Paul said hope is what comes out of difficult times. He wrote this to the Romans: we “glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5). Paul reminds us that hope enables us to look beyond the present and see the possibilities of the future. It was Scrooge’s experiences with the three spirits that gave birth to hope in his heart and life. “Are these the shadows of the things that will be,” he asks the final spirit, “or are they shadows of the things that may be only?” In the cemetery, as he stares into the darkness of his own future, Scrooge grabs onto the hope that there might be a different ending to his Christmas carol.

In the Biblical story, hope inspired a group of Magi from somewhere in modern-day Iran to follow a star. Hope made them travel for possibly as long as two years across the known world to see a newborn king. We actually know very little about these Magi. We always assume there were three of them, based on the number of gifts they bring (and because that number was immortalized in the carol “We Three Kings”), but Matthew doesn’t actually tell us how many came. They were probably priestly sages (Texts for Preaching B, pg. 93) of the Zoroastrian religion. If you’ve not heard of it, you’re not alone, though there are still somewhere around 300,000 people worldwide who still practice it. These Magi or wise men were people who watched the stars, perhaps astrologers, and they had to have been fairly wealthy. They give expensive gifts, and they are also important enough to be granted an audience with King Herod. These are not what we would think of as “ordinary” people. They also had some familiarity with the Hebrew Scriptures. Perhaps their ancestors had learned about this God of the Jews when the Jewish people were in exile in Persia; perhaps the prophecy had been passed on even after the Jews returned home. Maybe they were just interested in all sorts of religious traditions and studied widely, like in a university setting. But however they learned about it, they know that the bright star means a king has been born…somewhere. They don’t seem to know exactly where he has arrived. So they follow the star and they end up 10 miles short. They come to Jerusalem seeking a newborn king—after all, wouldn’t a king be born in the capital? That’s where they go, and the current king is who they approach for more information. From King Herod, they learn that the prophets said the birthplace would be Bethlehem, ten miles down the road. And when they arrive at the place where the child is, they present their gifts. All four of them.

You’re saying, “Four?” We know about three of the gifts they bring (2:11): gold for a king, frankincense for a priest, myrrh for one who was to die. But there is another gift that is easy to overlook. They traveled long and far to see this baby. They risked everything to bring this newborn king the gift of worship. I’m reminded of the story of a missionary in Africa, who answered the door one Christmas morning to find a young man with beautiful seashell. “Where did you find such a beautiful shell?” the missionary asked. The young man explained that he had walked to a particular bay, many miles away, for it was the only place where such a shell could be found. The missionary said, “I think it was wonderful of you to travel so far to get this lovely gift for me.” The young man smiled and said, “The long walk is part of the gift” (Tan, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations, #6035). The Magi might say the same thing. They journey was part of the gift. Hope compelled them to risk everything to see this newborn king.

But there is another side to the Magi’s story, a dark side to the Christmas story. The same child that gave the Magi hope caused Herod to become murderous. Herod was not a nice man to begin with. He was paranoid, seeing everyone as a potential rival to his throne. He had his favorite wife strangled, arranged a “drowning accident” for a young, popular high priest and had three of his sons executed. The Roman emperor once said it was better to be one of Herod’s pigs than his son. Herod was always afraid someone might be more popular than he was. Outside of Bethlehem, he built a huge monument to himself, a palace at the top of a man-made mountain. It was called the Herodium, and at the base of the mountain was a huge swimming pool—in the desert. A swimming pool where there is lack of water. It was extravagant, but that was Herod. As we learned about him during our most recent time in Israel, someone (I shouldn’t say who) kept repeating, “Herod’s ego is about as big as a senior pastor’s!” At his death, Herod wanted to make sure people would be sad so he arranged for a group of nobles to be executed at the moment he died. If people weren’t crying for Herod when he died, at least they’d be crying for someone. Instead, when he died, the nobles were set free, and there was celebration rather than mourning at his death (Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 50).

When the Magi come to Jerusalem, Herod invites them in. He finds out for them where the prophecies say the Messiah would be born, and he sends them to find the baby. “As soon as you find him,” he tells the Magi, “report to me, so that I too may go and worship him” (2:8). When Herod realizes the Magi are not coming back to report to him, he goes on a rampage, killing “all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under” (2:16). It’s an awful story. The Romans routinely practiced infanticide for deformed babies, but the Jews would never think of doing such a thing (Keener 51). Herod doesn’t care what the people think; he only wants to protect his little kingdom. The hope of the Magi and the hope of the prophets is a source of fear for Herod. Hope can be threatening to those who are in power, because hope upends everything. When we dare to dream of a new and better world, it becomes a threat to those who have power in this world. The Magi and Herod show us two radically different ways to end our Christmas carol. Herod became so consumed with his self-centeredness that he died a lonely and hated man. When confronted with the truth of the Messiah’s birth, he chose denial and desperation. He chose to lash out in anger, fear and death. In essence, he chose to remain the way he always was, only worse.

The Magi, however, choose a different road—literally. Matthew says they were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, so “they returned to their country by another route” (2:12). They went home another way. Physically, that would not have been easy to do. All the main roads from Bethlehem went through Jerusalem, but they knew they could not get through Jerusalem without being noticed. They would have had to go south, on the first-century equivalent of back roads, following a rugged coastal road around the desert (Keener 50). It would not have been easy, but then doing things differently never is. Not only did the Magi have to reroute their GPS when they left, they also became different people. They were willing to do whatever it took to protect this baby—a child they had only just met. What made the difference? It was the child, the baby in the manger. Though he doesn’t say a word, it is his presence that makes the difference in the lives of every person in this story. The Magi come to the manger, they worship and then they go home another way. Herod stays away, plots evil things, and dies the same way he lived. The one who is a king, but not an earthly king, “a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel” (2:6) but not on an earthly throne—he is the one who enables all persons to write a good ending to their Christmas carol. He is Emmanuel, God with us, and he has come to pour out his spirit upon us, to show us what real life and real hope are all about. He has come to change our lives.

[SLIDE] So how do we write a good ending to our Christmas carol? Like Scrooge, we have to face the reality that we are mortal and one day we will have face God. Life insurance agents used to ask what your family would do if you were to die; now they ask what your family will do when you die. They sell more life insurance that way, but they are also being more truthful and realistic that way. The Scriptures remind us that we only have a limited time on earth, and we don’t get a second chance (cf. Hebrews 9:27). Life is wonderful, life is good, but life is also uncertain. Bishop Woodie White used to remind us at the end of Annual Conference every year that we would never again gather as that unique body again. Some of us wouldn’t be there the next year. I’m at the age where some of my seminary classmates have passed away, and that is sobering. Life is uncertain, but it’s not just death that confronts us. There are other things that happen that leave us spinning, or wounded, or discouraged. We lose a job, we lose a house, our marriage breaks up, our child rebels, the economy tanks. Anything could happen between now and next Christmas that could cause our world to spin out of control. The good news of this season is that God doesn’t leave us in the midst of a mess. Into a world that is dark and often seems hopeless, God has provided hope and light and life everlasting. The Bible tells us of a God who loves us so much that he sent his son to show us the way to eternal life. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus the Savior, is a call to hope, no matter what has happened. Christmas is an invitation to a renewed life, and a reminder that there is even hope for the Herods and the Scrooges of our world.

To receive that new life, we have to pay attention to God. The Magi saw the star because they were looking for it. They were looking up. Scrooge found hope in a cemetery because his heart had been softened enough to look for it. When I ring bells for the Salvation Army, as we did a couple of weeks ago, it’s always interesting how many people come out with their heads down, staring at the ground, as if they’re afraid that you’re going to somehow make them put money in the kettle. This year, I actually had something happen that I’d never had happen before. A woman came over to the kettle with her hand in a fist, put her fist over the kettle, but didn’t open it up or drop anything in. She pretended to give. I’m wondering who she was trying to impress. We don’t force anyone to give, but by ringing the bells, we simply offer folks a chance to look beyond themselves and to be blessed by giving. We live a lot of our lives with our heads down, consumed by our own world, rather than paying attention to the larger world where God is working, where God wants to bless us. I wonder if it’s because we know that if we pay attention to God and listen for his direction, we may be asked to change. We may not get the answers we want, or the answer we think we deserve. Because they were paying attention, the Magi left their home, gave extravagant gifts, and put their lives on the line to protect the baby. Herod could have sent troops to hunt them down and it would not have mattered. Once they had worshipped the child in the manger, they could not go back to the way they were. Their lives had changed forever.

[SLIDE] Writing a different ending to your Christmas carol won’t always be easy. Remember, Paul said hope comes after suffering. Many times the things that cause us to grow are painful, but they always lead us into God’s mercy and into a better life. It’s easy to be infected by the humbug virus, especially in these last couple of shopping days before Christmas. We’re tired, we’re stressed, we may be hurting, and we’re often not doing the things we need to do to keep our spirits strong—things like personal study of the Scriptures, prayer, fellowship with other Christians, corporate worship. We may know we need it, but we don’t believe we have time to participate. Yes, worship and all those other disciplines take time, but without them our spirits will wither and harden. We become bitter, angry, and only a shell of who we could become. When you are willing to do whatever it takes to come close to the baby of Bethlehem, the hope that grows within you will not disappoint you. God is faithful, and God is good. God will help us write a hope-filled ending to our Christmas carols when we let him.

George learned that. His heath was failing and his money was gone. He was ready to give up on music, but he had one remaining obligation. He had taken a commission from a charity to compose a musical work for a benefit concert. He had some text a friend had given him, really nothing more than a series of Scriptures strung together that were meant to paint a picture of the life of Jesus. His friend had suggested that George might want to put some music to it. It was better than nothing, so he went to his small house to begin the work. For twenty-four days, he was consumed by the work. Yes, twenty-four days. Most great compositions take months or years, but George wrote as if he were under a spell. He didn’t leave his house, didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, and those who saw him during that time claimed he was losing his mind. He told his doctor, “I think God has visited me,” and to a friend he said, “Whether I was in the body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not.” Twenty-four days later, the work was done, and eight months later, it was performed for the first time in Dublin, Ireland. The work was The Messiah, and “George” is George Frederic Handel. It was when Handel was most desperate, most hopeless that he was most open to what God wanted to do through his life. Messiah not only changed his fortunes; it changed his life (Lucado, Kavanaugh in Darden 6-14) and it continues to change the lives of those who hear it yet today, nearly three centuries after it was written. God is faithful, and there isn’t any situation he can’t turn around if we let him into it.

Scrooge asks, “If we change the direction of our lives, can our futures be different?” The witness of Scripture is yes, they can and they will. So what story are you writing? If things stay as they are now, how will it end? If you could write a different ending, what would it be like? One way we can begin this week is by coming and worshipping, like the Magi, tomorrow evening, Christmas Eve. It’s a lot to ask, in a way, to give up time, but what better gift can we give ourselves and our families than to renew our hope and our joy through worship? Or maybe you’ve never given your life over to Jesus, and this Christmas, you need to do that. Today could be your day; there are folks here from our prayer team who would love to pray with you this morning. Wherever we are in our lives, like George Frederic Handel we can trust that God still has something for us, still can use us, even in our most desperate times. What gift of hope does God want to give you this Christmas? How will you write a new ending to your Christmas carol? Let’s pray.