Poolesville Presbyterian Church
Rev. David Williams; 01.06.12
Here we are, just under a week past the New Year, which is just under a week past Christmas. And on Christmas, all around America, we unwrapped the latest and greatest bits of electronic gimcrackery. Into our homes flowed screen after screen after screen, each brighter and shinier than the last. Our old electronics, so shiny shiny and magicalicious just last year, are now consigned to the Island of Misfit Toys, also known as the garage. Their now-useless cords and adapters and plugs now sit in bags in our closets like a growing ball of hibernating garter snakes.
And two days from now, just under a week past the New Year, just under a week past Christmas, the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show will start up in Las Vegas. Two days from now, the industry that just sold you that screen will happily tell you that every last screen in your home is now obsolete. Got a 1080p HDTV? Thought your high-def iphone Retina Display was good enough? Hah! That’s old news, boring, stone-age. According to the folks at Gizmodo and Engadget who tell us what we don't yet know we want, this year at CES, the big news may be the 4320p8KUHDTV. This begs three questions. First, what does that crazy mess of letters and numbers even mean, and second, if our eyes can’t even perceive the additional pixels, how will we know they’re not just PRETENDING to put them there, and third, how can we get one?
We’ve been at this game for a while, this endless march of pixels, of ever increasing refinement and resolution. Yet we often feel more scattered, less refined, and less defined. We feel more chaotic and indistinct. It doesn’t focus us. It doesn’t do anything.
Why not? Well, wind back a few years, to a cutting edge electronic toy from thirty years ago, one I once bought with all of my Christmas and birthday money. This was the Pixelvision PXL-2000, a digital video camera produced by Fisher Price. This being the 1980s, it could record 11 minutes of video on a old-school audio tape. Black and white video, it was, at a resolution of 120 by 98. It’s blocky and chunky and indistinct, with thirty times less definition than the camera on your phone, and two hundred times less definition than the TV that may well dwell in your rec room. You look at them, and sometimes it’s not even clear exactly what you’re seeing. Your brain has to work to figure out exactly what it is you’re looking at.
And yet the resolution of those pixels means very little. Those old grainy videos seem strangely more real than the hyperrealism of our televisions or the peculiar over-sharpness of that SuperduperExtra 3D version of the Hobbit that some of you may have shelled out four extra bucks per ticket to see. They are real because they demand our focus and our attention. They derive their definition from our minds and our imaginations, which are called upon to help shape them and bring them alive.
That’s also how we define ourselves, and guide ourselves towards our futures. We’re at a point in the year, in these weeks after the new year, when many of us will have committed ourselves to something different in our lives. Something in our physical well-being or our souls may need to change. A relationship may need to be made or mended, bitterness in our hearts may need to be replaced by forgiveness and kindness.
We can see what that will look like, sort of, in our minds eye. But the reality of it remains unclear. We don’t know what it will feel like to be changed, to be that person in that place that now rests only in our hope and vision for ourselves.
As we chase that vision of ourselves, we find ourselves today encountering a story of chasing a vision, the old tale from Matthew’s Gospel of the wise men pursuing a star in the East.
This is the story that the Western church historically has told every sixth of January, on the day we call Epiphany. Yet every year as it arrives it feels like...well...didn’t we just do that? Christmas is over, and suddenly here are the wise men arriving all over again, just as they did in countless pageants all over the country with their fake beards, surrounded by little shepherds surreptitiously hitting each other with their staffs and toddlers dressed like sheep.
But the story we tell ourselves most Christmases is a mashup, a blending of the different stories of two different Gospels. Christmas is mostly drawn out of Luke’s Gospel for us, of angels on high and shepherds watching their flocks by night. Why don’t we use Matthew on Christmas? Well, because Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus goes like this: “...she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.” The events of the birth itself in Matthew occupy one half of one verse. While that might make for a shorter Christmas Eve service, I’m not sure we’d find it quite as satisfying.
Matthew has other fish to fry, other priorities as a storyteller. He was drawing from a totally different tradition than Luke, one that was rooted much more deeply in Jewish tradition. Whenever Matthew tells us of Jesus, he always puts it into the context of the Hebrew Bible. He makes a point in verse 4, for example, of remembering for us that the priests and the scribes Yet bizarrely enough, what we get out of Matthew in today’s text isn’t the arrival of a group of rabbis. We get Persian sorcerers arriving from the east, a group of diviners and soothsayers and sorcerers.
Speaking of which, just how many magi does Matthew’s story tell us there are? Oh, we know they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and those are three things. But that those are three presents does not necessarily mean each king brought one box. Blowing a giant hole our Christmas pageant memories, Matthew doesn’t actually ever say there are three kings in the Bible. That’s something that arose in later Christian tradition. Sure, there could have been three. But as far as the Bible is concerned, there could have been two. There could have been twelve. This is something that we need to forget before we sing the last hymn, because “We Twelve Kings of Orient Are” would start dragging by the ninth verse.
So as we journey towards that best self that God has set before us in 2013, the journey of the magi has much to teach us. What their seeking has to teach us takes many forms, and there are many lessons to learn from their journey from the East to that manger in Bethlehem. It teaches us that our pursuit of the thing that will transform us will be harder than we think, and will be different than we think.
As we move forward on our own journeys, we need to be willing to press on towards it, realizing as we do that it's not going to be the exact thing we thought it was. If we've got a vision, and are moving towards that vision, we can become completely blinded by the thing we think it's supposed to be. When the magi came Westward following yonder star, the first place they went was to Jerusalem. If you're seeking a king over Israel, what better place to be than Jerusalem? That city is the seat of kings, the sacred city, the holy of holies, the city of David and Solomon and the temple.
What they encountered in Jerusalem was not what they were seeking. What they found there was the sort of power that masquerades as something strong and good, but was simply more of the same sort of corrupt and coercive darkness that had always devoured the hopes of the Jewish people. The bright light of God’s promise that had guided them did not rest there.
They were going to have to move on, and they were going to have to keep their eyes open for something that they didn’t expect. This is particularly true of any transformation that is formed and shaped by our faith. And if we are to push past the expectation, and into the joyous reality of God-driven transformation, whatever we do needs to be shaped by that faith.
So here we are, just under a week past New Years, just a little past Christmas. We’ve heard that story of vision and commitment, of the magi willing to pursue that vision. Right now, that resolution may not be resolved. The reality of that fulfilled commitment may be pixelated and dim right now. Remember, as you move towards it, not to be distracted by your own certainty that you know the exact shape of what the future holds. Be open to the guiding of what God has to offer you.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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