After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the rule of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. 2 They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.”
3 When King Herod heard this, he was troubled, and everyone in Jerusalem was troubled with him. 4 He gathered all the chief priests and the legal experts and asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5 They said, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what the prophet wrote:
6 You, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
by no means are you least among the rulers of Judah,
because from you will come one who governs,
who will shepherd my people Israel.”
7 Then Herod secretly called for the magi and found out from them the time when the star had first appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search carefully for the child. When you’ve found him, report to me so that I too may go and honor him.” 9 When they heard the king, they went; and look, the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stood over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were filled with joy. 11 They entered the house and saw the child with Mary his mother. Falling to their knees, they honored him. Then they opened their treasure chests and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 Because they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another route.
7 Then Herod secretly called for the magi and found out from them the time when the star had first appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search carefully for the child. When you’ve found him, report to me so that I too may go and honor him.” 9 When they heard the king, they went; and look, the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stood over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were filled with joy. 11 They entered the house and saw the child with Mary his mother. Falling to their knees, they honored him. Then they opened their treasure chests and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 Because they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another route.
Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Y’all, I am generally a morning person. I am pretty nonfunctional by the end of the day, but in the morning I can generally get up and moving and — fueled by a good double shot of espresso — be a fully functioning human being. Generally. I have my mornings when that’s a bit more difficult.
So when Isaiah says,
Arise! Shine!
I’m generally pretty good to go.
Some of y’all are morning people, too. I’d invite you to read Isaiah’s song from that kind of perspective. We could approach it metaphorically, but let’s live into the scene instead. I feel like it’s informative.
Especially in this season, when we’re just beginning to pull away from the longest night, and the sun is still pinking the clouds at half past seven, early risers like me find ourselves in the darkness for a while.
Though darkness covers the earth
and gloom the nations,
the Lord will shine upon you;
God’s glory will appear over you.
When it’s early and dark, I do what I can to make sure I’m being quiet so the rest of the house can sleep. I turn off the alarm quickly, tread softly to the bathroom — I’ve made a point, the night before, to mark where things are I might kick and make a ruckus. I shut the door and turn on a gentle light. When I go down the hallway, it’s in silence. Every noise in the night, when you’re sleeping in the quiet, sounds ten times louder than it does during the day. I don’t want to startle anyone. I want to let them sleep.
When I dress to run, I barely crack the bathroom door enough to make out which way my socks fit. All I need is the light around me. I don’t need to illuminate the room.
Darkness covers the house.
Nations will come to your light
and kings to your dawning radiance.
It doesn’t really take much light to make out what we need to. We have, I think, grown accustomed to being flooded with electric light all the time. Most of us, I’m sure, grew up with the convenience of having a light switch in every doorway that worked around the clock. It’s a convenience that we depend on so much that we view it as a right.
That troubles me.
At Buffalo Mountain Camp and at Camp Wesley Woods, one of our regularly programmed activities was a night hike. Campers left their flashlights in their bunks, and we led them on a single-file hike silently up a trail. We helped them discover how much more of the world they could experience when they opened up their range of vision beyond what a flashlight can illuminate. It is astounding how much you can see by the light of stars and moon. It is also inspiring to realize how much more you can experience when your other senses are sharpened.
It is also necessary to rid ourselves of our more redundant and distracting lights in order to find the light we’re looking for.
The magi were students of the stars and what wisdom their movements could impart upon observant people. It was an early science, one that we find laughable today. I wonder how much of our science will be laughable in fifty or five hundred years. We do our best with the tools and the collected knowledge we have available to us, just as the magi did two millennia ago. And it would seem that, regardless of the primitiveness of our science, the Holy Spirit is able to use our science to gift us with revelation.
By the way, isn’t it amazing that God is willing to self-reveal to us in our foolishness? God doesn’t make fun of our foolishness or dismiss it for the bungling effort that it is. God uses it. In fact, I’m going to be so bold as to say that the presence of God that we observe in our foolish attempts at comprehending the world around us validates and affirms our those attempts that we do make.
God isn’t asking us to get our science and art and study absolutely perfect. God doesn’t even seem to care that what we’re finding isn’t necessarily wholly true or factual or sound. It would appear that what God is concerned with is that we’re making an effort.
Which, by the way, is not the same as either not making an effort or obfuscating a genuine effort at finding truth. God is not going to bless or affirm our attempts to promote falsehood and deceit. That is chaff that God is going to burn with the rest of the garbage.
But our genuine, well-intentioned efforts God will affirm.
So if revelation is what we’re after; if truth is what we’re after; if seeing God is what we’re after, then maybe what we need to be doing is spending more time and effort eliminating all the distractions around us and opening ourselves to the possibility that God is already present. Maybe it’s time to take a night hike, leave the flashlight and the phone and the pager behind, out of sight and out of sound, and open our eyes and ears and heart and mind to the wider world of God’s presence everywhere in our natural and social environment.
Arise! Shine! Your light has come;
the Lord’s glory has shone upon you.
A lot of our images of the magi show them heavy with rich fabrics and bejeweled headgear, grasping at the silly old idea that they were kings of some sort. We would do well to make our scientists kings, I think. But I want to invite you to focus not on the magi themselves, but rather on the light they were pursuing.
Find a way to let go of all the distraction and rediscover that light. It is all around you and it is within you. It is leading you to the only one truly worth finding.
Your light has come.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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