Search for the Child
“Search for the Child” Matthew 2:1-12
by Clancy Nixon
January 3, 2010
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, Virginia
The title of my message today is “Search for the Child.” As Herod said at Matthew 2:8, “make a careful search for the child.” When the child became a man, later he would say, “When you seek, you will find; when you ask, it shall be given to you; when you knock, the door shall be opened to you.” Don't stop searching until you encounter Jesus himself.
We just sang of Three Kings of the Orient. Now we don’t know how many Magi really came – three or fifty - the Bible does not tell us. The tradition of three Kings – Caspar, Melchior, and Belshazzar - came much later, because they brought three gifts. An older church tradition says twelve came to visit. Magi used to travel in an entourage. Matthew 2:3 tells us that they made a disturbing ruckus when they arrived in Jerusalem.
The Magi were pagan through and through! These people were star gazers, astrologers, who saw the stars in the heavens as signs of what was going to happen on earth in the future to determine the fate of men. They read widely in different religious traditions, and travelled far to search out the meaning of life. They were pagans, yet Mark Buchanan says, they had this hunch, this wild hair, that maybe there was some truth out there worth living and dying for. This hunch, this faith, was worth a long, dangerous, and expensive journey far from home, far from the comforts of wife, and family, and secure income stream.
I imagine other Magi back in Persia disagreed with the Magi who came, and did not read the star in the same way as a sign from God. Or, they did not link the star to the Hebrew Scriptures. Those who came believed that God was at work, when other people saw only a strange star. That’s faith.
Epiphany is about God’s glory made manifest to the nations. Epiphany means manifestation, and its symbol is a light, or a star. Isn’t it amazing what God will do to make himself manifest to the nations? God’s Plan A is to send people who know him – people like you and me – to tell the peoples who have not heard the good news. But if no one will go and be the light of the world for God to the nations, then God can and does occasionally go directly to them – that’s God’s Plan B. That’s what he did for the shepherds in Bethlehem – he sent angels to put on a song and dance in the sky – what a light show that must have been! That is what he is doing today in the Muslim world, where Jesus of Nazareth is appearing in the dreams of many Muslims as the Christ. Jesus is even manifesting himself visibly in the sky to thousands of Muslims at one time! In Burma, he recently brought a Buddhist monk back from the dead. This monk testified that he had seen dead monk friends and even The Buddha suffering in Hell, and said the Christians are right, listen to them! That Lazarus monk was baptized, and thousands of monks and many others have come to Christ there due to his witness.
In the case of these Magi, God sent a star. Even though the Magi were pagan, God used the knowledge and the faith they had to get them to journey towards him. There is only one way to get to God, and that is through Jesus Christ. In John 6, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father except through me.” Even though Jesus is the only way to God, there are billions of ways to get to Jesus Christ! There are as many stories as there are believers.
Last week I took my family to see a production of The Screwtape Letters on the stage at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington. I highly recommend this brilliant and really funny adaptation of Lewis’ novel. Between laughing out loud, I had several moments of recognition of my own sins in the temptations of the master demon Screwtape. Lewis wrote straight theology, like the Problem of Pain; he wrote fantasy apologetics, like Screwtape and The Great Divorce; and he wrote other kinds of stories. One of the reasons I think C. S. Lewis is a great writer is that he does not fear the power of fantasy stories to draw people away from the true faith. Lewis wrote Christian allegories like the Chronicles of Narnia, but he also wrote non-allegorical stories like the Space Trilogy, and Till We Have Faces. Lewis and his friend Tolkien saw fairy stories as means to bring people closer to the faith, out from their secular, scientific worldviews. Lewis himself was a theist for 2 years before he became a Christian. For most people, coming to faith is a process, and what matters is the direction you are headed – towards God or away from Him.
Lewis was from Ireland, and starting with St. Patrick, the Irish used some brilliant ways of bringing pagan peoples into Christian faith, and that was to show how the pagan faith was a shadow, a forerunner, a type of the true faith revealed best through Christ. So the pagan symbol of the circle with a cross in it was baptized into a Celtic Cross. So the Pagan holy places of pilgrimage were baptized into Christian Church sites. Of course, where any story, whether a fantasy story or religious writing, conflicts with the truth of the Bible story, there Christians must insist that those stores do not carry the full truth, because the Bible is true and trustworthy in many ways that no other story could ever be. But that does not mean that God cannot use those other stories. You and I can use them as well, to help show people the connections between what they have believed in the past with the truth of the Scriptures.
The Jews in Herods’ court were orthodox Jews, and they knew the story of the coming of the messiah without even looking it up – they knew that the messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. Even though they had awaited the messiah for hundreds of years, when presented with the opportunity to actually go and see their messiah, they were not as spiritually hungry as these ignorant pagans. The people who are least in possession of the truth are the most passionate in pursuit of it. The Magi have travelled hundreds of miles for many months, on a hunch. The religious leaders have five miles to travel from Jerusalem to Bethlehem based on their knowledge of the Scriptures, and they can’t be bothered. Probably the Jewish leaders thought that it was impossible for a gentile to lead them to the Jewish Messiah. The Magi are so excited to see the King! The religious people are too busy with their lives to be bothered about what might be the most important event in world history.
So you see the rebuke for us here? We religious people can be deaf to the manifestations of the glory of God. Study is good, orthodoxy is good, but never let any of that get in the way of encountering God, of seeing God for yourself. Be open to the possibility that a pagan can show you something about what God is doing.
The Magi saw the Lord themselves. They were given the gift of an Epiphany, a manifestation of God. The light was one thing; it was just a sign. A sign points somewhere else. The star pointed to Jesus. When they came to his house after their long journey, they got to see the Lord for themselves. Like the Wise Men, we need to see Jesus for ourselves. It does help to have others point us to Jesus, to paint their own pictures of Jesus for us so we can understand more of what he is like. I get that help every day when I read articles and books by writers I respect, and when I listen to others about their spiritual experiences. It helps, but it is not enough. Each of us needs regular unmediated experiences with God. You need to look at the Lord through your own eyes, not my eyes, not your parents’ or friends’ eyes. Matt Redman, the songwriter and worship leader, needed to learn to worship God without any music at all. That experience produced the song, The Heart of Worship. Sometimes you need to turn the music off. God is very real.
Herod told the Magi to search for the child. Then he added, dishonestly and unctuously, “so that I, too, may go and worship him.” (Matt. 2:8) Herod was not a Jew; he was an Idumean, and a pagan. Oh, he curried favor with the Jews by rebuilding the Temple for them, but he also built other temples to other gods. This pagan gave the Magi, and gives us, good advice: “search for the child.” Do whatever you have to do to encounter Christ.
One of the best ways to encounter Jesus is through the Bible itself. Encounter Him through the Bible story –picture the Lord in your mind, using your imagination. Picture yourself entering the story, like the story of the Magi. Imagine how you would react if you were in the Bible story as you read. What would your thoughts and feelings be if you were one of the Magi? I want to ask you to close your eyes and imagine with me how it might have felt. Feel the excitement of the discovery of the star’s relationship to the Hebrew prophecy of a coming king. Hear the plea of your colleagues not to waste your time or money on such a long journey, all for a hunch. Feel the blistering cold of the night as you lay in the desert to sleep after another day of your journey. Sense what it is like to arrive in Jerusalem, to hear the hubbub and stir, and to meet murderous King Herod, heedless of your own safety. Imagine your excitement at seeing the star again, pointing you now to Bethlehem, where before it looked like it pointed to Nazareth. Imagine your wonder as you look at how the star shone right over the place where the child lay. See the humble beginnings of the king of the universe. Look at the baby Lord yourself. Stop and just take in this scene. Smell the small town smells. Place your gift at his feet. Bask in his presence. Let everything else go as you come to worship him.+
