2025-01-14
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
Pastor Vicki McGaw
January 5, 2025
Epipihany Sunday
My friend Anil was born to a nurse from Avon Lake who, as a young woman, went to serve as a missionary in India. There she met and married an Indian doctor and the two served several rural mission hospitals as they raised their family.
After growing up in India and training there to be a doctor himself, Anil also married an Indian doctor and started a family of his own. After several years working with his parents, he decided to move with his wife and children to the US to find what he thought would be better opportunities for his family.
Anil served as a surgeon at Baptist Hospital in Nashville for a number of years before determining that he wanted to return to India. He found the lifestyle of doctors in this country too focused on material measures of success and wanted his children to value helping others more that the things that they possessed.
And so I had the opportunity to meet this family when they sought to serve as missionaries to India, just has his mother had. The assignment Anil was given was at a rural mission hospital that had been abandoned years earlier.
Uncertain of the situation he was entering, Anil chose to go ahead of his wife and family to sort out their arrangements before bringing them along . . . and he was very glad he did. Because when he arrived at Mungeli, a poor village in the center of the country, he found that the hospital had trees growing out of its roof and monkeys roaming through its rooms. The home in which his family was supposed to live was equally dilapidated and in dire need of a new roof.
And yet, in just over a decade of service at the hospital, Anil refurbished the operating and patient rooms, started a nursing school and a community school, built a hostel where patients’ families could stay, and called a pastor to restart the local mission church. Suddenly people in this rural region could seek safe treatment for illnesses from which they had previously died. It was hard, but very rewarding work.
As I reflected on the story of the Magi this past week, I thought about Anil and the decisions he made. Like the Magi, he could have chosen a different, far easier path, but he felt called to follow the more difficult, less traveled road. And the results, both for him and the community, were transformative.
We know well the story of the Magi, the three wise men who followed a star to pay homage to Jesus and bring him their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. In fact, like other well-known bible stories, we stop listening closely since we think there is nothing new to hear. But after focusing on this text over the last many days, there are a few things that have struck me in new ways.
The first thing that occurred to me was the distance the wise men traveled. I pulled up Google maps and, knowing that these were Persian priests, I calculated the distance from the most western border of Iran to Bethlehem so that I could figure out the shortest distance the Magi would have traveled. And I was stunned to learn that even the shortest route was just over 800 miles – about a 12 day walk.
But here is the part that really struck me: this group of men stopped to ask directions when they reached Jerusalem and there, the questions raised the interest of the paranoid and malevolent King Herod. First of all, I found it ironic that a group of men would ever consider asking anyone for directions, especially without a woman present to nag them to seek help.
Second, by the time they reached Jerusalem, they were literally 99% of the way there. They had just five more miles to travel on this 800-mile trip. Why suddenly stop now? But, having done so, they are summoned to meet with King Herod who wants them to share where the child was born. “Return to me and tell me where I can find this child so that I can go to pay him homage too,” the king commands.
But in a dream, the Magi are warned to take a different route home so that they can protect the safety of Jesus and his family. They then make a bold, subversive decision to ignore the manipulation of the king and avoid harm coming to Jesus, even though a choice to defy the king could have had great consequence for them.
In the same way that Anil chose a difficult path when he returned to restore a decrepit hospital in a very poor region, the magi also choose a much harder road than the one they traveled to reach the baby. Although the route home was longer, passed through more dangerous territory and put them at greater risk, they did so to ensure the safety of Jesus.
Another thing that struck me that I hadn’t really considered before is that, upon arriving at Mary and Joseph’s home, Mary didn't hesitate to throw open the door and invite in three strange men who arrived with wildly inappropriate gifts. It was as though she knew they would come. Perhaps not these particular strangers, but she realized that others would come to meet her son.
In the same way that Mary throws open her door to welcome the strangers, it seems to me that we are called to do the same thing: to throw open the doors of our church, our homes, our community to welcome the stranger.
With so much talk recently of ridding this country of immigrants, the very people who make up the fabric of this nation, I wonder if perhaps we are not being called to make a bold, subversive choice to refuse to follow the instructions of those in power. At a meeting sponsored by SJAM in November, there was discussion of what people in the community can do to support immigrants and refugees during this time.
One suggestion that was raised in that meeting was to offer sanctuary to the undocumented who are most at risk. Could this be a call that Federated might be able to answer? Just like the decision the Wise Men faced, choosing this path may be difficult and full of uncertainty, but just as they made the choice to protect Jesus, could we be called to protect other innocents in this time and place?
I find it interesting that the people who followed the star to pay homage to the baby Jesus are not other Jews, not chief priests or Pharisees, but Persian priests. And yet, when we pause to think about it, doesn’t God always gather the most unusual people to spread God’s word: a stuttering Moses, the Samaritan who stops to help the injured Jewish man after a priest and Levite pass him by, Paul who persecuted early Christians, and a group of no-name, often bumbling fishermen from some backwater town who serve as Jesus’ disciples.
And while Herod, with all his imperial power, is kept away, who are the others who came to meet Jesus at his birth? A bunch of outcast shepherds and some unwed, teenage parents at an inn full of strangers. Why then are would we be surprised if God is calling us to stand with the lost and outcast in our community today?
Finally, I would like to share with you an epiphany tradition that I have loved in recent years. The idea of sharing star words, as I described to the children, began growing among mainline churches about a decade ago. Just as the star guided the magi to Jesus, this tradition is based on the concept that a simple word, written on a paper star and hung in a place of prominence, might become a guideword in the coming year for those who receive it.
My hope is that if you choose to take a word, you will reflect and pray about it throughout the year, and along the way find how it might draw you closer to God and deepen your faith. Many people report that even a word that they think has absolutely no meaning for them turns out to have great impact on the way their life unfolds in the coming year.
And so, when you come forward to receive communion in a few moments, I invite you to accept a word that will be handed to you at random. Place your star in a spot where you will see it daily, read it as a kind of mantra, pray about it and pay attention to how it is impacting your life in the coming months. If you are willing, I’d love to hear how this word intersects with your life, bringing new insights, new revelation and new ways of living your faith.
As Southern Baptist pastor Scott Spencer notes in his excellent sermon on this text, there are two routes we can choose to take: Herod’s way, the scheming manipulative way, the violent, jealous and thieving way, the narcissistic way consumed by self-advancement and power politics. Or we can choose the Magi’s way, the giving, sacrificing way, the attentive, faithful way consumed with seeking God’s light gloriously revealed in Jesus the Christ. In this new year, let’s be true wise people, not allowing Herod to rob us of the true meaning of the season. It’s about giving, not taking; serving not ruling; loving God and neighbor with all our beings, not using others to promote or protect ourselves.
Friends, in this new year, let’s go home – let’s go home by another way. Amen.