How God Leads Us
A traffic stop last month in Plano, Texas ended unlike any you’ve ever heard about. It started when Hayden Carlo was pulled over for an expired registration sticker. According to and interview, Carlo says he’s been struggling to support his wife and two small children. “You get paid, pay your bills, and there’s your money,” Carlo said. “It’s gone.” He told the officer he had no excuse for the expired sticker. “I said, ‘There’s no explanation for why I haven’t done it, except I don’t have the money,’” Carlo said. “I said, ‘It was either feed my kids or get my registration done.’” The officer wrote a citation and handed it to the 25-year-old. Carlo says when he took it, he could not believe what he saw: a $100 bill tucked into the ticket. “I broke down in my car,” Carlo said. “What else could I do?” The officer never told anyone about the $100 gift. But Carlo’s grandfather, Billy McIntire, was so moved by the kind gesture he wrote a letter to the department. “I get emotional when we talk about this type of thing,” McIntire said. “You just don’t find that many officers who would do this type of thing.”
January 6, 2013
Matthew 2:1-12, Isaiah 60:1-6, How God Leads Us
Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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While other officers around the country have recently been recognized for similar acts, this officer wants to remain anonymous. His coworkers plan to honor him anyway. “As he told me, this man needed it more than him, and it was the right thing to do,” said David Tilley, a fellow officer and department spokesperson. Carlo was able to update the registrations on his car and his wife’s car with the money. He’s now driving to a new job and providing for his growing family, after a gift from the last person he would have expected to help during tough times. “He helped me out when I needed it and I appreciate that,” Carlo said. “I’ll never forget that man. It definitely restored my faith in God.”
There are several reasons to like that story, including that someone totally unexpected shows up and gives a gift that is not anticipated. The result of the encounter is that fear turns to joy, and disbelief is turned into faith through someone you would not expect in that moment to be God’s emissary. That contemporary story has parallels with the Gospel story about the arrival of the wise men in Matthew 2. Listen to the Gospel story:
1 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: 6 “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ” 7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”
God is so determined to proclaim the “good news of great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10) that God reaches beyond fields in the region around Bethlehem to “the East” (some scholars say Persia). God reaches beyond shepherds at the bottom of the barrel to Wise Ones at the top. God reaches beyond people scared witless by God’s glory to those who observe the glorious star at its rising, and methodically, persistently, and sincerely follow it to a king. All along the way, God leads them, first by a star, then via a verse from Micah, and finally in their dreams.
I know many people picture the wise men at the manger with the shepherds, many crèche scenes portray the situation that way including the one that we had out on the communion table, but the truth is the shepherds and the wise men were present at different times. Today is what is called “epiphany” which means “the manifestation of Christ to the world.” Placing the Magi in the manger on Christmas Eve misses how far God reaches to ensure that all people receive the good news of Christ’s birth. While Christian tradition holds that the Magi were kings (an interesting contrast between these kings’ response to Jesus’ birth and the way Herod, king of God’s people, responded), a more precise description might be that the Magi belonged to the priestly caste of Zoroastrianism, which paid particular attention to the stars. This priestly caste gained an international reputation for astrology, which was at that time regarded as a science. So these Wise Ones from the East were scientists and practiced other religions, and God used their faith and knowledge to bring them to the Christ. More ironic, God used scientists who practiced other religions to let King Herod and the chief priests and scribes of the people in on the news that their Messiah had been born.
God seems to do whatever it takes to reach out to and embrace all people. God announces the birth of the Messiah to shepherds through angels on Christmas, to Magi via a star on Epiphany, and to the political and religious authorities of God’s own people through visitors from the East. From a manger, where a child lies wrapped in bands of cloth, God’s reach, God’s embrace in Christ Jesus, gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Jesus eats with outcasts and sinners. Jesus touches people who are sick and people who live with disabilities. Jesus even calls the dead back to life. Ultimately, Jesus draws all people to himself as he is lifted up on the cross. In Christ Jesus, no one is beyond God’s embrace.
God’s radical grace is wondrously frightening. Thinking of the Magi as scientists who practiced another religion pushes us to expand our understanding of both the ways God reaches out to people to announce good news in and through Christ and what it means for individuals to have faith and for gatherings of the faithful to be the church. The Magi did not come looking for the Christ through preaching or worship or prayer. They came seeking the Christ after studying the night skies. God’s own work of embracing all people is more “mystery” than “formula,” because God’s ways are always bigger than our understanding. The alternative is to join Herod in not seeing God’s ever-expanding embrace, or feeling threatened by it, and instead giving way to just plain fear: “When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matthew 2:3). Herod jealously reached out himself to violently protect his position and preserve his power.
I was struck reading this familiar passage from Matthew 2 how God led the magi through their science and study; through God’s Word, and through the direct revelation of a dream. I believe God still leads us in all three of these ways. Jesus says we are to love God with all our mind and that means we need to read and study and reflect and think and learn all we can. The wise men studied the stars, if they hadn’t, they never would have made it to Bethlehem. As humans study the night sky – the planets, galaxy, and the universe – what we learn can help us appreciate the creativity and vastness of God. It is unfortunate that the church has not always embraced study and science, historically, the church responded too many times like King Herod, threatening, silencing, even killing those whose ideas or discoveries were seen as a threat.
Driving back from New York state last night after visiting Jill’s brother and congratulating him and his fiancée Kate on their engagement, the stars were very pretty. Jupiter outshines everything else high in the sky these evenings, although most of us don’t notice it. “Four hundred and two years ago this month, it was a different story. In the city of Padua in Italy during the Renaissance, Galileo Galilei was just beginning to publicize a record-breaking new claim. Using the magic tubes with which he was already building a reputation — but which were notoriously hard for anyone else to aim and use — he declared to have seen, at Jupiter, proof that the Earth is not creation’s only center of motion. This was a world-shaking claim for the time and place, and if Galileo wanted attention, he got it. He was announcing that the planet Jupiter was attended by four satellite stars circling closely around it. Conservative scholars had argued that Copernicus, with his new theory that Earth moves around the sun, had to be wrong because Earth could be the only center of motion. Galileo declared that anyone with a spyglass could see otherwise.
You still can. It doesn’t take much of a telescope to show Jupiter’s four big moons. A pair of binoculars usually shows at least two or three of them lined up on opposite sides of the planet. History records what happened with Galileo and others: the denialist arguments, the threats and imprisonments, book burnings, demonizations, the increasingly extreme intellectual retrenchments, and other known bugs of human nature that come to the fore in the presence of unsettling new evidence. It’s too bad the church wasn’t able to say, “Once again, as the Psalm declares and at Jesus birth with the visitors from the east who studied the stars, “The heavens are telling the glory of God…” How would history have been different. Yet within a generation or two of Galileo it all gave way, and the medieval view of the cosmos started yielding to the modern one as confirming evidence spread. As John Adams would say much later (during the Boston Massacre trial), “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” (From an article by Alan MacRoberts in The Boston Globe, 1/5/13) We want to study and learn all we can in a broad variety of subjects. A philosopher once asked Saint Anthony, of the Desert Fathers, “Father, how can you be enthusiastic when the comfort of books has been taken away from you? He replied: My book, O Philosopher, is the nature of created things, and whenever I want to read the word of God, it is usually right in front of me.”
We also want to read, study, learn, and practice God’s Word. The Magi needed the chief priests and scribes who were familiar with God’s word to tell them where the Messiah would be born. They didn’t know, they needed someone to teach them from the scriptures. It is vitally important we read and learn and share truth from God’s word.
Finally, we want to be open to God continuing to speak to us and others in other means of revelation, including dreams. God speaks to people through dreams in the Bible at several key times, from Jacob and Joseph in Genesis, to Joseph the father of Jesus and the Magi in Matthew to the Apostle Paul in Acts. God didn’t disappear after the Bible was complete. We believe God is still living and moving and active and if that is true then it shouldn’t surprise us that God will still lead us through our minds as we study and learn, through God’s Word, and even through dreams. All these were part of the magi coming to worship Jesus in Matthew 2 and they can be part of how people come to worship Jesus today.
In the epiphany story of the magi and their gifts someone totally unexpected shows up and gives a gift that is not anticipated. The result of the encounter is that fear turns to joy, and disbelief is turned into faith through someone you would not expect in that moment to be God’s emissary. Keep your eyes and ears open, God may be leading people to you or leading you to people, in ways you don’t anticipate.
Howard Thurman wrote,
“When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and the princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with the flocks,
then the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal those broken in spirit,
to feed the hungry,
to release the oppressed,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among all peoples,
to make a little music with the heart…
And to radiate the Light of Christ, every day, in every way, in all that we do and in all that we say. Then the work of Christmas begins. The message of the Feast of Epiphany announces to all people, everywhere: Rise up in splendor… your light has come.