Good morning and “thank you” to everyone for being here today.  I know this Sunday between the celebrations of Christmas and New Year can be interpreted as the perfect time to stay home rather than come to church, your being here today is such a joy!  Especially, if you are a visitor here to Holy Covenant Church – I hope that you will choose our church as YOUR church home.  But, if you continue to want to look around, I hope that you will allow Rev. Don Lee and me to be your pastors until you find your church home.  Everyone is welcome here!

Today’s gospel comes from Matthew, 2nd chapter.  As you listen to the story of the quest of the magi to find the Christ child, see if you can receive it as if you’re hearing it for the first time…..please stand as you are able for the reading of the gospel.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our minds so that we may know you.   Open our eyes so that we may see you.   Open our hearts so that we may love you.  Amen.         
How did you do?   Were you able to listen to Matthew 2:1-12 as if you were hearing it for the first time?  Did you notice anything new, surprising or different as you heard it?   Let’s see how good listeners you were.  Didn’t know that at my 2nd time at the pulpit here that I’d be throwing out a pop quiz did you?

• Was it kings or wise men following the star?

• How many gifts did they bring?   How many wise men were there?

• Were the wise men seeking to pay homage to the Christ child OR to worship him?       Ha – trick question.  They’re the same thing.  We’ll talk about that later.

• When did the wise men arrive at the stable?  Ha!  Another trick question.   They arrived at the HOUSE where they find Jesus and his mother.

Good – you all did pretty well with this.  I hope you didn’t think it was too odd of me to ask you to listen to the gospel as if you were hearing the text for the first time.  There’s a reason behind this. This is one of those stories that we’ve probably heard many, many times and we can say it by heart, but in our familiarity – we can often lose some important nuances or meanings of the story.  It’s important to distinguish between the story we are familiar with and the REAL story.

We don’t lack for depictions of the 3 wise men seeking to follow the star and to find the baby Jesus.  We see them in every nativity scene, on Christmas cards such as these.  Hear about them in songs, dress up as them in Christmas plays.  These 3 men are envisioned to be wealthy, exotic kings - foreign men who seek to pay their respects to a new king.  However….there’s so much more to this story.

Matthew’s gospel was written with a Jewish audience in mind.  The gospel writer spends a great deal of time relating the incidences and stories surrounding Jesus’ life back to Old Testament prophecy.  Just the 12 lines we read alone have references to 1 and 2 Samuel, Micah, Psalm 2.

Who were these wise men?  Well, Matthew doesn’t call them kings per se – but they were men of importance – otherwise Herod might have killed them on the spot for wanting to worship someone other than himself.  They are believed to be court priests or astrologers – who spent a great deal of their time basing their decisions, planning their days, etc. according to the patterns of the stars in the sky.

More importantly, these wise men were non-Jews.  Gentiles.  PAGANS – who were seeking God.   They had never stepped foot in a Jewish temple much less know anything about the Old Testament prophecies and stories that would have given them a clue of the one true God. 

However, what I’d like to focus on this morning are the gifts of the magi.  We know they consisted of 3 things – gold, frankincense and myrrh.  Do you know what these things are?  Well, gold is pretty self-explanatory.   Frankincense is a resin from the balsam tree that is burned by the temple priest in cleansing, anointing and purification ceremonies.  Myrrh is a spice used also in anointing and but more so it is a substance used for embalming.   If you recollect the story told on Easter Sunday about the women going to Jesus’ tomb to prepare the body, one of the things they carry with them is myrrh.

I’ve always wondered why these wise men would give this simple, humble and poor little family extravagant gifts such as gold, frankincense and myrrh.  The gold might come in handy – but the frankincense and myrrh were not everyday household items.  In fact, if you think about it - all 3 gifts were pretty impractical.  

However, they are appropriate gifts for royalty and for the one who would grow up to be the savior of the world.  The magi bring gifts of honor to one they deem higher than themselves.  One biblical scholar claims that the gifts are symbolic of Jesus’ fate – the gold represents his being the King of Kings; the frankincense represents his being the royal priest of the world/the head of the church and the myrrh represents the suffering and death that Jesus as fully human will have to face. 

God called these men who were strangers - foreigners; a race of people that did not associate with Jews and yet – within days of coming to earth in human form, God was calling them to himself as well.  Somehow the message got across to these wise men that by following the star, they were seeking someone who would change their lives forever.

God attracted the magi using a method they would understand….a star.  Back in August this year, my family and I took a trip to W. Texas and in all my life, I have never seen stars like you could see there.  In fact, there’s an observatory there.  When you’re away from city shine, there are a bazillion stars to see in the sky.  This is the kind of sky that the magi were used to as astrologers.  If you’ve seen the sky when all the stars are incredibly visible, then imagine how significant the Eastern star must have been for the magi to follow it.  If you recall in most of the depictions you’ve seen of the magi story, the star in the East they followed is pretty much the only star in the sky.  Ever wonder why it’s just these 3 wise men following it?  Wouldn’t EVERYONE have been able to see it, too? 

Don’t you wish God would communicate with us like he did with the magi?  Put a big star in the sky for us to follow…  It’s a shame that God quit using stars or burning bushes as a way to get our attention any more.  As we struggle to find our way in this world with no star to guide us,  don’t you find that you second-guess yourself a lot and wonder if we’re going the right way?  I’ve prayed on NUMEROUS occasions for God to show me a SIGN that would help me make a decision, go the right direction.

It seems God’s into more ‘subtle’ measures to attract our attention these days.  Maybe we don’t get a star that leads us to God – but perhaps instead we get a nudge or a situation or a desire, or maybe someone we know or love helps lead us to God.  Or maybe it’s that deep need to have a spiritual or guiding force in our life that gets us started on our journey to seek God. 

Not knowing where they were going or what they would find when they got there required a HUGE leap of faith from the magi.  They were called to leave their countries behind and bring gifts for this new God.  And not only that – but they traveled for miles and miles to pay homage.  And while the words “Paying Homage” means more like “paying respects” to us – you should know the Greek word translated into “pay homage” means to kneel down and worship.  If you can, picture in your head for a second 3 very important people or dignitaries you know and imagine them bowing down in worship before a baby.  Even though the baby was God, it took a great deal of humility and trust to be able to bow down!

Seeking God takes sometime a huge leap of faith for us, too.  It’s not easy.  It required an enormous amount of time and effort on behalf of the wise men to reach the Christ child.  It required faith to follow the star; it required an earnest seeking to find the newborn King of the Jews; it required them to leave the pagan gods and traditions they knew behind and go and worship this new King.  It required them to give a gift that was very precious to them.

There’s a wonderful story that was written in the late 1800s called The Gift of the Magi by a writer named O. Henry.  You all may be familiar with this - it’s about a young couple who are short of money but desperately want to buy each other Christmas gifts. Unbeknownst to Jim - the husband -  his wife Della sells her most valuable possession, her beautiful hair, in order to buy a platinum chain for Jim's watch; while unbeknownst to Della, Jim sells his own most valuable possession, his watch, to buy jeweled combs for Della's hair.  The gifts they purchase for one another are out of love – pure love.  It’s this kind of love O Henry believes is demonstrated by the magi.

In our calling, we are asked to give this same kind of pure, unconditional love to God and to one another.  Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that “the only true gift is a portion of yourself.”  We are asked to give ourselves as gifts.   This should make gift-giving rather simple. 

So often, my gift to my husband for his birthday or Father’s Day has been to help clean the garage.  He didn’t want a tie.  He didn’t want another coffee mug proclaiming him the best husband in the world.  He wanted my time and something that only I could give – myself.    Inside the chest of treasures that we bring to worship – is our heart, our minds, our hands and our feet – our entire selves.  This is the greatest gift we bring.   

But just like the magi who had to travel – who had to take some action; we, too, have to take some action to bring our gifts to God.  What about coming to worship more often?  Or, visiting a Sunday School class? Or helping with our children’s ministry?  Or, donating your time to one of the many mission projects we have going on here at this church.   We have only to seek and we will find.  There is no doubt that our presence in any of these activities will have an impact on the life of another.  Jesus says later in Matthew – “Truly I tell you just as you loved or served the least of these who are members of my family, you did it for me.”    The gifts we bring are more precious than gold, frankincense or myrrh.  We are the gifts.

If we go back to the magi story that we are most familiar with – we still have 3 wealthy kings representing their own country who know that there is one even greater than themselves.   These kings will not see this baby grow up to give sight to the blind or to eat the world’s best fish and bread on the hillside with countless others.  Nor will they learn about compassion through the parable of the good Samaritan; or be taught to pray the Lord’s Prayer.  They bow down and worship a baby – and place them above themselves.  The gold, frankincense and myrrh they bring are nice – but not necessary.   They are appropriate for the occasion, but not needed.

There’s an old joke that says - You know what would have happened if there had been three wise WOMEN instead of three wise MEN, don’t you? They would have asked for directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, and given practical gifts.    
The magi acknowledged Jesus as God, worshipped him and gave of themselves.   This was the perfect gift.  They alone were enough.

The tenacity and adventurous spirit of the magi – and their unrelenting desire to seek God are great models for us as we come to a close of the gift-giving season and prepare for the New Year that is to start on Tuesday.  Like them, God calls us into relationship, too.  God wants us to seek and to follow.  Doesn’t matter who we are, where we are in our lives, what we’ve done, how many times we’ve been to church, how much we know about God, Jesus, United Methodism.  Doesn’t matter how much money we have/don’t have or what we look like.  God wants US.  We are the only thing on God’s Christmas wish list.  WE are the greatest gift we can offer.  Let’s make a New Year’s resolution together that in 2008 we will seek, follow and worship together.  There is no greater gift we can offer.  

Let us pray:
We rejoice O God, in your countless gifts to us, and most especially for the gift of your Son Jesus.  With gratitude and thanksgiving, we invite Christ into our lives, whether it be for the first time or the 100th time.  And we come…following our star….finding our way to God by whatever means God uses….and like the magi – we bring our gifts.   We bring ourselves.
Amen.