Behold Look Come See

So how long does it take? How long does it take to be a Christian? You might say to yourself, “Well, that’s an easy question. It doesn’t take any time. Being a Christian means giving your heart to Jesus, identifying yourself with Jesus, accepting Jesus as your Savior. That doesn’t take too long.” For some folks it happens in an instant at a youth retreat or an altar call or a Billy Graham crusade. For others the process may have been more gradual, but surely when we joined the Church we were Christians, right?

O.K. Let’s accept that. We do call ourselves Christians and however long it took, we are Christ’s. But that’s really not what I’m asking. What I’m asking is – how do we know when we’ve made it? How do we know when we’ve really arrived? When we’re the real deal? I mean, we aren’t perfect yet, are we? Oh, some of us may think we are, but is there anybody in this room who has stopped growing spiritually? We may be on the road to perfection, but we haven’t arrived yet.

John Wesley…you remember John Wesley?...founder of Methodism?...John Wesley called this process of growing up in the faith sanctification and if you’ve ever been on an Emmaus walk you’ve heard a lot about it. When you are walking the path of sanctification you are growing in holiness, claiming the grace God offers and seeking to conform your life to that grace. Sanctification is the fruit of faith and it requires that we live out that faith and not merely profess it. Wesley felt that there was no such thing as a purely private faith. We have to risk that faith daily in our life in the world.

You know this. We talk all the time about walking the walk and not just talking the talk. Politicians get in arguments about it, even though most of the time it seems like they’re doing a lot more talking than walking. Hillary Clinton in a debate a few weeks ago took on Obama by saying, “It’s not enough to talk about hope, you’ve got to make things happen.” Obama’s response was to say, “Yes, but the words of hope can mobilize us to do something we have not been able to do before.”

We are all thirsting for something new. We look around at our country, our economy, our morals, our schools, our broken relationships, our hurting hearts, our leaders – and we ask, “Where are the people who will move us to a new place? Where are the politicians and the preachers who will open the way for change? Where are the artists who will give us new visions? Where are the administrators who will provide us with competence? Where are the people who will not just talk a good game when it comes to following God, but who will show us the way? How long does it take to become a real Christian? Sanctification. Living it out in the world. What a great word.

They were watching him walk by. John the Baptist was there by the side of the road and he saw Jesus walking by. Jesus didn’t say a word. He had not spoken to the crowds yet at all. He was walking the walk, so John started talking the talk. “That’s him,” he said to all who would listen. “That’s him – the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” An odd thing to say, especially since lambs were what the Hebrews led to slaughter. They killed lambs to atone for their sins. This is the first thing he has to say about Jesus? “This is the one who was here from the beginning of time,” John says. “This is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit,” John says. “This is the Son of God.”

Jesus just keeps on walking and we have no idea what the people around must have thought.

The next day John the Baptist in out again and once again Jesus walks by. John turns to two of his disciples who are standing there with him, Andrew and another one. “Look,” John says, “the Lamb of God.” As if everyone will remember what he said the day before. But no one else responds. Only Andrew and this other disciple. Like following a lamb to the slaughter, they set off behind Jesus.

Jesus knows they’re following him. He knows because he turns around to look and there they are. Finally Jesus speaks. Now that they’re already walking behind him, he speaks. The first words of the gospel that Jesus speaks are a question, “What are you looking for?” John the Baptist has told everyone who would listen who Jesus is, but Jesus wants to know what we are looking for.

What are we looking for? What are we looking for?! We’re looking for hope, Jesus! We’re looking for change. We’re looking for a way out…a way up. We’re looking for a golden parachute or a silver spoon. We’re looking for some affirmation that the way things are is not a sign of what is to come. We’re looking for assurance that the powers of this world don’t win in the end…that they cannot define who we are. We’re looking for peace. We’re looking for security. We’re looking for identity. We’re looking for acceptance. We’re looking for salvation, Jesus.

But, of course, Andrew and his friend are not going to reveal all that yet. So they simply say that what they want to see is where Jesus is staying. Jesus says, “Come and see.”

Over the course of the rest of the day, Andrew at least becomes convinced that John was right…that Jesus is the Messiah. He runs and tells his brother, Simon…soon to be known as Simon Peter. The point being that it was the witness of John and their own active curiosity that brought these two to Christ, but it was staying with Jesus and then living with him over the next few years that made them disciples. They had to live it to know it.

When I lived in England back in the early 90s and serving a church there, one of the things that absolutely mystified me was cricket. It was on TV all the time and it went on forever. Some matches lasted five days. There was big cricket field near our house and we’d walk by there and watch it every so often. I would ask people the rules and they would say, “Oh, it’s so simple!” Then they would rattle off a bunch of rules that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

We have a tea towel with the rules on it. It reads: You have two sides: one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out, including the not out, that’s the end of the game. Got that?

What I eventually decided is that cricket, like baseball, is one of those things you have to live with for many years to really understand. You can’t anticipate all the things that need to be said about it because each match develops differently and different skills are required at different times. The rules may even be fairly simple to grasp, but you can never really describe the spin that is used by the bowler or the angle used by the batsman to hit the ball—at least not to a novice.

It’s the same with parenting. Who can tell a new parent everything they need to know before the child is born? It’s a matter of experience and trial and lots of error. It’s the same with marriage. Who can tell a young couple, or even an older couple, all that they need to know?

Well, I think being a Christian is the same way. We come into the Christian life not knowing everything. Hopefully we know the essential things, but knowing more is a lifetime’s work. That’s why Paul uses the language of growing up so often. Those who are new to the faith are babes not ready for solid food, he says. It is only as we grow and develop that we are able to understand all the mysteries, and even then it is only in part.

Because when you get right down to it—how do you describe the difference Christ makes in your life? How do you explain to the harshest skeptic how bread and wine can represent Christ’s offering of himself for us? How do you explain what happens in baptism? These are things that seem very simple on the surface—it’s just food, it’s just water—but when you get right down to it, they are deeper than any words can explain.

In the end we have to say what Jesus said to Andrew, “Come and see.” He had no way of telling them what they were getting into. He had no way of describing for them what it would require. Perhaps if they had known at first they would never have taken that first step in his footsteps. They had to learn over time, every day, one day at a time, walking daily with Jesus.

Becoming a disciple of Christ is what we are all asked to do as Christians. That requires that we leave old understandings behind and give ourselves over to a new way of life, a new lifestyle. It requires that we follow Christ. That journey is the journey of sanctification. This journey moves us to prayer and contemplation. This journey moves us to involvement in the world. This journey moves us to take seriously the challenges caused by sin in the world.

I want to call you to take this seriously in your own life, but I also want to challenge you today to consider how God might be asking you to lead someone else to Christ, too. Especially I want you to think about how a young person might need you to invite them to “come and see” what this Jesus thing is all about. Somebody is waiting and watching and you can help them claim what it is about this Christian life that excites and moves and saves you.

Tomorrow we recognize the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King took seriously the call to sanctification and he knew that following Christ for him meant fighting against the sins of racism and injustice in this country. It’s a story we know very well. We read about it in history books and we study it in school and we celebrate it in TV programs, but King’s journey was not just about changing history, it was primarily about living out the implications of his faith. King challenged others to walk with him out of their own calling as people claimed by God.

King knew what we often forget—that faith is not something to be guarded like a porcelain figurine that we set on the shelf to be dusted off on regular occasions. Faith is something to be lived and used for God’s continuing work of creation. If we truly believe that God is present even in the least of our brothers and sisters, they we follow Christ by accompanying our brothers and sisters in their journeys. And as we go we continue to discover new things about God and ourselves—we come to see ourselves as chosen by God and changed by God’s grace.

How long does it take to become a Christian? How long have you got? What difference does Christ make in a person’s life? Come and see. Because it’s only by taking the risk of living a Christ-like life that we can hope to participate in God’s kingdom, which is coming…soon.

John 1:29-42
On the next day, he saw Jesus coming toward him and he said, “Look, the Lamb of God, the One taking away the sins of the world. This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who comes ahead of me because he was before I was.’ And I did not know him but, in order that he might be revealed to Israel through this, I cam baptizing in water.”
John witnessed saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove from heaven and it remained on him, and I did not know him but the One who sent me to baptize in water then said to me, ‘The one upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him – this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
On the next day, John and two of his disciples were standing and as he watched Jesus walking by he said, “Look, the Lamb of God.”
The two disciples heard him saying this and they followed Jesus. Now when Jesus turned and saw them following he said to them, “What do you seek?”
They said to him, “Rabbi,” (which, translated, means Teacher), “where are you staying?”
He said to them, “Come and see.”
So they went and saw where he was staying and remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. Andrew, brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard Jesus and followed him. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah,” (which is translated Christ). He brought Simon to Jesus.
Looking at him, Jesus said, “You are Simon, the son of John. You will be called Cephas,” (which is translated Peter).

All Washed Up (and Someplace to Go)

I was reading Psalm 29 this week and I felt a rumble. You might have heard it, too, when we read it this morning. “The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over mighty waters. The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, ‘Glory!’” [Ps 29:3-8, NRSV]

How can you not read a passage like that and not feel moved? I want to hear that voice! I want to stand on the beach on Cobb Island and hear the voice of the Lord over the waters of the Atlantic. I want to feel the wilderness, the desert rumbling as the voice of the Lord shakes it. I want to see God making nations leap with life and swirling oak trees and every creature on earth shouting, “Glory!” Don’t you?

The strange thing is I think I have seen all those things. I feel it in here sometimes. I’ve felt it for the last few weeks. Have you felt it? Sometimes it is so clear to me that God has something to do with us yet. That God is not through with us yet. And it has nothing to do with how well the choir is singing or how well the preaching is going; it’s deeper than all that. There is a rumble in the earth and there is a creative disturbance in the air and there is a spirit moving across the face of the waters. There is, as C.S. Lewis describes it in his Narnia books, a deep mystery about this place in which we live. There is a deep truth invading Franktown Church, and if we don’t look out, God is liable to shake things up.

This is a mysterious Sunday in the Church year. Did you know that? It’s a mysterious Sunday. I say that because, in many traditions, including the United Methodist tradition, this is the Sunday when we read the gospel story of Jesus going to the River Jordan to be baptized by that old, wild man of the desert, John the Baptist. You remember how we talked about John the Baptist during Advent? Well, he’s baaaaaack.

They call this Baptism of Christ Sunday and it is a day to remember, not only Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, but also our own baptisms in whatever water we were baptized in. That’s a great thing to do. I’m going to preach about baptism today. I’m going to gesture at the water and if I get really wound up I might start flinging it around the sanctuary. But it doesn’t matter how I say it; when all is said and done today, more will be said than done and baptism is still going to be a mysterious thing. And that’s a good thing. It’s OK to have a mysterious Sunday every so often.

About 16 years ago I went to be the pastor of the Orange Circuit in Orange County. On one of the first Sundays I was there a woman came up to me and said, “I want to get my son baptized.” Her son was about ten years old at the time. “But I want him dunked,” she said. “None of this candy dish sprinkling I know you Methodist preachers like to do. You’ve got to have more water than that.” So I nodded my head and agreed with her that many times we don’t use enough water and I told her that in the United Methodist Church there were actually several ways to be baptized, including full immersion. Did you know that? There aren’t many baptismal pools in United Methodist Churches, but it’s legal.

I wanted to talk to her a little more about this, though, and I asked her why she thought now was the best time for her son to be baptized. I mean, he was not quite to the age when we generally do confirmation and he was a lot older that the infants I was used to baptizing. She told me that she came from and interesting church background and that she was just Pentecostal enough to believe that you ought to be old enough to profess your faith before you got baptized and just Catholic enough to believe that if you died without getting baptized you’d go to hell. I realized right away that we had a lot of talking to do about baptism, and we did have some great talks together, the three of us, and a couple of years later, on a youth retreat at Virginia Beach, I had the honor of baptizing that boy using the biggest baptismal font I could find—the Atlantic Ocean. And it was full immersion.

So what do we get from baptism? It’s not really about when we’re old enough to understand what baptism is. In the United Methodist Church, we’ve always baptized people of any age, including babies, because we feel that there is NO age when we completely understand what baptism is. Can a 90-year-old man comprehend God’s love any better than a 2-week-old baby girl? He may have a little more experience of that love, but he’ll probably be the first to tell you that he can’t get his mind around God no matter how long he’s been walking the earth. Nobody can claim that. So we’re all equal before the waters of baptism.

That’s why, in the early Church, they stripped all those who were going to go under the waters of baptism. Stripped you right down to nothing. Then it was clear. It didn’t matter what your social standing was. It didn’t matter how fine your clothes were. It didn’t matter how many Sunday School perfect attendance badges you could pin on your chest. When you went under that water you were God’s child and there was nothing you could do about it. And when they came up from the water on the other side, everybody got a new, white robe and everybody got the same new, white robe. So yes, we’re all equal before that water.

It’s also true that what really matters in baptism is NOT how you receive the water. Some folks use a candy dish font. Some folks use a bigger font that can stand up by itself. Some folks use a large tank behind the pulpit and some folks use Occahannock Creek, like we did last summer at camp. Folks probably use fire hoses, for all I know. I used the Atlantic Ocean. That really isn’t the point. Lots of water helps us see, in a physical way, how excessive God’s love for us is, how it surrounds us, cleanses us, and gives us birth, but even the little bit of water most Methodists use is enough to point to the one who’s really acting in baptism. It’s enough to point to God.

But I still haven’t told you about the mystery. There is deep mystery at the heart of this story. So let’s go to the Bible.

The first thing that you notice when you go to the gospels is that the baptism of Jesus is not something that gets a lot of explanation. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this story and none of them takes more than five verses to tell it. Luke gets it done in two, but Matthew, which is the version we read, gives us the most detail.

Jesus comes out into the wilderness where John is baptizing people for the repentance of sins. Matthew tells us that Jesus comes in order to be baptized by John but, of course, there is a problem here because Jesus certainly doesn’t need to be baptized to repent of sins. He is the one coming to save people from sin. John recognizes him and recognizes the problem immediately. He says, “Hold on just a cotton-pickin’ minute here, Jesus.” (He doesn’t actually say this, but I’m using the Alex Joyner translation.) “Wait a minute. I need to be baptized by you and you’re coming to me? What’s wrong with this picture?”

Jesus knows the problem but he calms John down by saying, “This is the way it has to be. Let it be for now. This is the way we will fulfill God’s plan.” So John relents. He stops trying to prevent Jesus from coming to baptism and he leads him into the water.

So far, so good. This is a strange conversation that John and Jesus have, but we can understand why they’re having it. They’re sorting out their roles in this whole drama. Now, though, is when things really get mysterious. Jesus goes under the water to be baptized, but as he comes up from the water, the skies split wide open. Have you ever seen this happen? Me either. And we’re not really sure if everybody around can see this or if it’s just Jesus who does. It’s not really clear and that’s OK. At any rate, it’s craziness. Skies just don’t split open and loud voices don’t just speak from the heavens, so if we’re not really sure who’s speaking and who’s listening, well, that’s just par for the course.

Then the Spirit of God descends in the form of a dove and rests on Jesus. Then this mysterious voice speaks which can only be the voice of God. The voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”

Now that’s something you don’t see every day. At least when Jesus was talking to John we could keep the players straight. Now we don’t have a dialogue, we have a declaration, and we don’t just have Jesus the Baptized, we have Jesus the Son of God. This is a mystery.

Somehow, as Jesus rose from the waters and as the dove descended from heaven, the border that separates earth and heaven gets blurred and voice that comes from nowhere and everywhere says, “This is the One. You are the one. I am pleased to have you as my child.” It may have only taken five verses to get here, but this earth-shattering, mind-blowing, brain-bending stuff. To think it all happened because of a little water!

And brothers and sisters let me tell you, it happened at your baptism, too! Oh, sure, most of us didn’t see the skies open up, didn’t see a heavenly dove descending, didn’t hear a heavenly voice on the day we were baptized. If you did, I want to hear about it. None of us went through those waters of baptism as Jesus did because none of us it the only begotten Son of God. But, let me tell you something—all of us went under those waters and came up as children of God and THAT is what is so special about baptism. We all followed Jesus into the water, and because he led the way, because he represented all of us, none of us can ever be the same.

Because of all this…because we are followers of Christ and saved by his life and death and not by our own…because we bear Christ’s name and are Christ’s people before we are anything else…because God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him…because of all this, the words which were spoken over Christ at his baptism in the Jordan River are the same words that are spoken over each one of us as well: “This is the one. You are the one. I am pleased to have you as my child.”

Do you know what an incredible gift this is, my brothers and sisters? Do you know how amazing it is that you and I could be called the children of God? Do you know how fantastic it is that me with my bald head and Aunt Lucy with her bad knee and Cousin Gertrude with her arthritis are all walking towards the kingdom and we can do it with our heads held high because we are baptized? Do you how wild it is that my cranky neighbor down the road, who annoys me no end, who plays his music too loud and who seems to be living a questionable life still shares one very important thing with me because we are both baptized?

You know, the story is told that Martin Luther, the great Reformation figure, used to get up every morning and make the sign of the cross on his forehead and say out loud, “I am baptized.” He said it to remind himself that he had nothing to fear from the demons he imagined around him. He said it to give him confidence that despite everything the world could fling at him, it could not take away the sign of water, which is God’s promise that we can be more than conquerors through the One who loves us.

So why am I telling you this? Because we are still looking for that rumble that tells us that the way the world looks can be deceiving. It just may NOT be true that you’ve got to accept who the world says that you are, who your peer group says that you are, who the ads on TV say that you are, or what the latest rap song says that you are. Because as “advanced” as a civilization as we are, the options the world allows for who men and women are are still pretty limited.

But you are more than a consumer, more than an observer in this world. And the world itself is more than a place of dead ends and broken hearts. The world is filled with the glory of God. There is a rumble just below the surface reminding us that God’s got plans for us…that God’s got plans for you. The voice of the Lord is flashing forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord is claiming you in the waters of baptism, saying, “You are a child of God.” And mysterious as this is, this is the best news of all—a church of baptized people who live out of their baptisms is unstoppable and Franktown Church is just such a church. Thanks be to God.

Matthew 3:13-17
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John in order to be baptized by him. But John stopped him saying, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me?”
But Jesus answered him, “Let it be for now, because this is appropriate for us to fulfill all righteousness.”
Then he relented. When Jesus was baptized, just as he came up from the water, look, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And, look, a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”

Walking For Wisdom

Last year about this time a movie came out that seemed like it was a pretty far-fetched science fiction movie. Children of Men was set in Britain in 2027, just about two decades from now. But things in this Britain of the future are falling apart. The movie imagines what would happen if the world stopped having children. This is caused by a worldwide epidemic of infertility that nobody can seem to explain. When the movie opens this has been going on for 18 years and the youngest person on earth, a teenager by the name of Baby Diego, has just died in a barroom fight.

Things had been going badly already, though. As things collapsed in poorer parts of the world, people were struggling to get into richer countries like Britain and there is a huge battle by the government to keep out and to detain the African and East European immigrants. There are running battles between rebels and nationalist groups. In the midst of it, though, it is discovered that one of the young African immigrants is pregnant. The drama of the movie is all about how a disillusioned government bureaucrat named Theo, (the Greek word for God), helps a rebel group named the Fishes (seeing any Christian parallels here?) get the pregnant woman to the coast to establish new hope for the human race. And, of course, this being Hollywood, there are car chases and explosions along the way, but that’s the heart of the story: a child disrupting the world and yet by its very promise offering salvation to a dying race.

You know, we have been spending a lot of time these past few weeks talking about children and the disruption they cause here in church. A few weeks ago we talked about Joseph and what the birth of Jesus was like for him. Last week we talked about the horrible story of the slaughter of the innocents. And today we’re going to go back into Matthew one more time to get a prequel to that story – the tale of the Wise Men coming to meet with King Herod on their way to find the Baby Jesus. But before we go into that story I think we may want to stop and think about how close we are to that dystopia that the movie Children of Men portrays. And I want to make a theological affirmation.

The truth of the matter is that we can imagine a world like the one in that movie because it is uncomfortably like the world that we’re in. We feel like we’re living on the edge of extinction, too. Events of recent years have taught all over again, as if it weren’t always true, that the way things are is not the way it will always be. Skyscrapers will fall to the ground. Nations will break apart. Brothers and sisters will go to war with one another. Neighbors will sell one another into slavery. Democracies will falter and politics will fail. Families will be torn by abuse and violence and neglect. Sea levels will rise. New Orleans will sink beneath the Gulf. Polar ice caps will melt. Sanjaya will win American Idol. Or not. At least some catastrophes have been averted. But the point is that things are changing and we’re not too sure that ANYTHING, even the ground beneath our Eastern Shore feet, is permanent.

One response to all this is a perverse fascination with what the world would be like if we WEREN’T here. The world is overpopulated? We’re having trouble feeding all those mouths? We’re facing environmental catastrophe? Well, maybe the answer is that we shouldn’t be here.
One of the most popular books of this last year is one called The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Weisman talks about what would happen to the earth if we suddenly disappeared – if there were no more humans. As he tells it, there would be some huge events. Nuclear reactors would melt down into radioactive blobs and petrochemical plants would eventually blow up spectacularly. The New York City Subway, without pumps to prevent it, would fill with water within two days. Lexington Avenue would be a river. But most of the changes would be more gradual as nature reclaimed the human landscape.[i] As Weisman tells it, it would be beautiful. Birds would sing. Rivers would flow unpolluted. You should see what the world looks like without us. Only you can’t.

We’re not likely to disappear so quietly or so quickly, but we do exhibit a worrying tendency to talk about ourselves as an invasive species rather than as children of God. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve made a mess of things and there’s a lot to clean up. We don’t exactly live in harmony with the rest of creation and we should beg forgiveness for the way that the environment has suffered because of our shortsightedness and hubris, but the answer is not to listen to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which claims that we should all just refuse to have any more kids. After all, children are a bother. They take a lot of resources to support. They interrupt our work lives. Our love lives. Our plans.

A recent news report talked about how in some European countries like Italy, the birthrate is half of the death rate. The population is not even replacing itself. The government is paying people to have children and they aren’t having children. One 27-year-old woman in Genoa said, “Kids are not important - the priority has to be to have a steady job and make a living, to give yourself some security.” On the playgrounds you see more old people than children playing.[ii]

What is it about this developed world that we live in that sees children as a threat? What are we fearful of? Most of the abortions we see can be traced to a fundamental fear of how much children will change our lives. We assume that it cannot be for the good. But what is sadder to imagine than a playground on which there are no children’s voices?

So here’s my theological affirmation – God saves us through children. Though the world is always only generation, one day away from losing everything that is not the narrative we should be telling ourselves. God’s narrative says that we are always only one birth away from changing the world.

Which, of course, is what scared the dickens out of King Herod. I was a little rough on Herod last week. I called him out. Told him to take his best shot. Told him that he was pretty toothless and pretty powerless as a rival to Jesus. Questioned his manhood. But when you think about it, Herod was caught up in a political system that made him like he was. He was a puppet of the Roman Empire who was called King of the Jews, but he didn’t have any real authority of his own. It was given to him by Rome and Rome could just as easily make somebody else King of the Jews. It wasn’t given to him by the people who were always ambivalent about their so-called rulers. Herod was perched on a pretty precarious throne.

So how do you THINK he felt when these foreign astrologers appear out of nowhere from the eastern horizon and come to ask him where the King of the Jews was? If I were Herod, I would have said, “The King of the Jews? You’re looking at him! What do you mean you saw a star leading you to somebody else? What do you mean it’s a baby?” Talk about a child causing a ruckus! Herod was shaking in his sandals.

Matthew tells us that Herod the King (he makes a point of telling us that it was Herod THE KING) was stirred up by what he heard from the magi. And not only him but the whole city of Jerusalem because when the king ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. So Herod did what people in power do when there’s a scandal brewing – he appointed a blue ribbon panel as a study commission. He called in the chief priests and the scribes and let them answer these impertinent foreigners.

Now to their credit, the chief priests and scribes of the Law don’t cover over the fact that Herod was not the Messiah. Even though they will be Jesus’ biggest opponents at the end of the gospel story, they are able to read the scriptures and to understand that the promised one was to be born in Bethlehem of Judah, about six miles from Jerusalem.

Herod called the magi in secretly to tell them the news and to find out a little more about this star. He decides to do something else that people in power often do. He tries to co-opt them for his interests. Tries to make them his agents. He sends them on to Bethlehem to do the searching he personally wants to do. Then he tells them, “As soon as you find him, come back and tell me where he is so that I can go worship him.” Of course, as we know from last week’s story, that’s not what he intends to do at all. Herod is scared to death of this child, this rival, and he wants to put him to death. But also, as we know from last week, he doesn’t have a chance of succeeding.

You see, what the magi see that Herod can’t see, is that this child that scares him is the source of salvation, even for Herod. Who are these crazy magi that show up in our nativity sets with their strange, vaguely inappropriate gifts? Surely Mary would have appreciated a few more Pampers and a little less incense. What is that they see? What are they trying to tell us by showing up like they do? Why do they cross deserts following a star? Why are they so darn joyful? Why can’t they just be afraid and anxious like everybody else living in these troubled times? Why can’t they admit that things are not looking so great? Home sales in Judah are at a record low. The religious leaders are corrupt. Civil liberties are being curtailed. Terrorists are threatening. They’re crucifying people left and right. What’s with their giddiness? What’s with their gifts? What’s with their joy? They’re not even from around here! What have come here’s got to tell US about our salvation?

What the wise men see, what gives them joy, what sends them off walking for enlightenment, what makes them wise is that they can see that the things that trouble us, that are at risk, that are so vulnerable to the worst that the world can do are the very source of our strength. They can see that this child will save us…that this event on the margins of history will transform the world. They can see that there are journeys still to take and places still to go for God’s people. Even though God’s people themselves couldn’t see it, they could see that God still wanted to change the world…that God was not going to let the death-dealing powers of this world define the life God has to give…that the dreams of the old and the visions of the young would not be lost…that the hope of the ages and the light of the nations would yet come…and a little child would lead them.

Which brings me to us…the people of God in Franktown Church this day. I look around at the churches around us…at the community around us…and I fear we may one day be as barren as those swing sets in Italy blowing in the wind.

You know that one of my roles, that I will soon be shedding, is as the chair of a committee in our conference looking at the culture of the call. From that perch I see a church in which less than 5% of our clergy are under the age of 35. Less than 5%. It’s a symptom of something gone wrong. Partly is a result of our failure to present the call to ministry to our young people. Partly it is a result of our failure to have young people! As Elizabeth Mitchell Clement put it when she was talking to me while she was here last month, we have a fear of reproducing. And for the church, as for the human race, when we are afraid of reproducing ourselves it means that we have lost faith in the present as a life-giving experience of God’s presence…we have lost faith in the past as a tradition and a story worth passing on…we have lost faith in the future as a time when God will bring to completion the work begun in Jesus Christ…we have lost faith in God when we stop producing new Christians! And here I’m not just talking about having babies…I’m talking about our work of being a place that regularly gives birth to new Christians through that baptismal font.

This is a work for the whole church. God still wants to change the world and God is still using our children to do that. Nothing gives me more energy and hope than being with our youth and young adults who persevere in searching for meaning even when they live in the cesspools of cynicism that our culture produces. They look for deep answers and reasons to hope even when the school system they’re a part of us is underfunded and troubled and torn apart by the sinful chasm of racial misunderstandings. We cannot fail these children who are around us, who will lead us, who need us to give an account for the hope that is within us. If we fail them, we fail ourselves and we fail this gospel message to which we give lip service. Because God will change the world. God will not fail to be faithful. God will not abandon these children. How dare we do that! God wants everybody on board but God doesn’t want bystanders or cheerleaders, God needs participants who will give themselves to the work of bringing forth life.

King Herod is dead. But there are still wise men and women among us who see what God is up to and who are calling us to recognize what is already among us. Jesus is here. We see it in the world around us. We see it in the faces around us. We see it in the faces of our children. What are we going to do?

Go forth and multiply. Thanks be to God.

Matthew 2:1-12
Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King. Look, magi from the eastern horizon came to Jerusalem. They asked, “Where is the one born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star rising in the east and we have come to worship him.”
When Herod heard this he was stirred up and all Jerusalem as well. He called together all the chief priests and scribes of the law and inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judah, for this is written by the prophets: ‘And you, Bethlehem, of the land of Judea are by no means least among the leaders of Judah. For out of you will come a leader who will shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod called the magi secretly to determine from them exactly the time when the star had appeared. As he sent them on the Bethlehem he said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report back to me, so that I also can come to worship him.”
When they heard the king, they went, and look, the star, which they had seen in the east, led them until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. When they came into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They fell down to worship him and they opened their treasure boxes to offer him gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.
After receiving instruction in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed by another way to their own land.

[i] Review by Jennifer Scheussler, ‘Starting Over,’ New York Times Sunday Book Review, 2 Sept. 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/books/review/Schuessler-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
[ii] Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Empty Playgrounds in an Aging Italy,” International Herald Tribune, 5 Sept. 2006, http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/04/news/birth2.php