Morning Prayer: Shannon Cook Coral Amen Hymn of Adoration *What Child Is This* The Witness of Scripture: Matthew 2: 1-15 Anthem *As with gladness men of old* arr. David Willcocks. FCC Chancel Choir Sermon * Unexpected Itinerary* David Spain
Recorded on January 1, 2023
Unexpected Itinerary
Matthew 2: 1 – 15
January 1, 2023
“I met a man who lives in Tennessee and he was heading for Pennsylvania and some homemade pumpkin pie; from Pennsylvania folks are travelling down to Dixie’s sunny shore, from Atlantic to Pacific, gee the traffic is terrific! Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays, cause no matter how far away you roam, when you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze, for the holidays you can’t beat home, sweet home.” Perry Como sang that in the 1950’s, the Carpenters sang it again in the 1970’s as have many other artists since. The happy melody and sentimental words touch something deeper than a romanticized perspective of the season. At a very deep level, so much more is at stake when someone asks, “Are you going home for Christmas?”
Such a sojourn is never done easily especially at Christmas, and this year the challenges have been formidable. After a three-year hiatus due to Covid, many people took to the roads, the rails, and the air to journey home. The Siberian slam of Christmas week followed by multiple logistic problems have led to so many people being stranded at one destination while their luggage is piled elsewhere. It has been a Christmas to remember because, well, the traffic is terrific.
Travelling at Christmas is not simply the subject of crooners named Como and Carpenter nor a reality of modernity, for the gospel of Luke reminds us that travelling is the story of Christmas. The advent of ‘God with us’ is what sets everything in motion, is what rearranges everyone’s itinerary, is why ‘the traffic is terrific’ is more than an alliterative line in a sweet song.
As the Christmas decorations are returned to their familiar storage spaces, we reflect on all that gets moved at Christmas time. Luke tells us that when the angel Gabriel transcended the distance between heaven and earth to inform Mary that she was expecting the unexpected, she responded not by nesting a nursery but by making a trip to see her elder kinswoman Elizabeth, who was likewise on a journey she had not expected, and that without ever leaving the house. Since the angel had seen fit to move in with Elizabeth while zipping Zechariah’s lips, Elizabeth had time on her hands to listen to someone else, even as she was experiencing unexpected movement deep within. Mary made last minute reservations (‘set out and went with haste,’ is how Luke writes it) because even with her acquiescence to Gabriel’s prodding, she still had questions and sought the comfort of a good guide for the unexpected days to come. While the two matriarchs compared
notes and wondered about details, Mary was moved to sing a song that was the overture to Good News, the overture of God’s way of moving in the world. It was all unexpected itinerary. Difficult as that trip must have been, it was far from the last one Mary would take —in fact looking back on it all, it was the easiest trip Mary made because as we know, less than nine months later Mary in the company of Joseph this time set out from Nazareth in Galilee where they were living to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem. Joseph had left home at some point in the past, but he still had family back in Bethlehem. We do not know if their trip was made with haste, we only know that it was ordered by Augustus who sent most of the population packing that year without even knowing it was about to be Christmas. To be sure his was a different kind of message than the one delivered by Gabriel, but it still meant people were on the move and the traffic was terrific.
Shift scenes now to a cold night in the Judean hillside, sheep safely grazing, their bashful faces burbling along the ground shortening the grass and drinking the water, while off to the side shepherds have gathered around a flickering campfire gently popping the wet wood, with an occasional ember dancing toward the darkened sky, eyes kept firmly on the fields while leaning into the flame for warmth. Luke wrote that into the long night of one more routine watch came an image, a figure, a messenger whose first message was to move them away from fear and toward what they would never have even dared to dream, after which the midnight sky lit up brighter than a thousand noon days accompanied by a celestial song that if we listen closely reveals God’s itinerary—“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace, goodwill to all.” Deciding that their sheep were in fact safely grazing, these shepherds like Mary before them “went with haste” and found Mary and Joseph and the child who would one day be called “Good Shepherd.” Their unexpected itinerary has moved them from isolation to adoration, from exclusion to inclusion, from incredibility to informants.
Perhaps none of these sojourns captures our imaginations quite like the journey of the magi. Luke does not tell us this part of nativity; instead, Matthew gives us this movement of the Christmas story. They have been variously called wise men, kings, astrologers, or magi and years later Longfellow decided they were worthy of the names Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar—perhaps permanently fixing in our imaginations there were three of them although Matthew does not say so, only that they brought three gifts. Matthew does say they came from the East, perhaps it was Persia which does give an exotic flair to the whole story. Unlike Mary or the shepherds, whose guiding light was a gabby Gabriel and a heavenly host, these travelers did not make haste
but were lured steadfastly by a distinct star landing them in a district ruled by a man named Herod—the one character in the Christmas play no one wants to be, and with good reason. For reasons that are not entirely reasonable, these travelers ask the sitting king about the newborn King who would soon be ascending the throne although no one at that time knew what that ascension would be like. Herod, who as we note is the only one in the entire Christmas play who does not move, bids his advisors to come to him to see if anything in their history would indicate the advent of a replacement king. After some research of the scriptures, Herod’s hirelings said there was mention made in a minor prophet named Micah about an infant king but that was written a long time ago and was nothing much to worry about. But, we know Herod and his kind who never met a hysteria he didn’t mind whipping up all in the service of benefitting him, so he tells the magi to find this new king and bring back the good news so that he too can pay his respects. After their visit with Herod, which left the magi more than a bit queasy, they found the night air and the steadfast star refreshing, renewing, reorienting. We know the story—they went into the house where the toddler Jesus was playing, knelt in front of him and laid their gifts there, the unexpected itinerary culminating in overwhelming joy. And yet, Matthew tells us this was not the end of their journey. In words as imaginative and inviting as any in the Christmas story, Matthew writes they returned to their own country by another road, which is to say that after bowing before the Christ, their lives were redirected and reformed. It was the trip of a lifetime, it was the unexpected itinerary that transformed their life’s time.
If we stay all the way through the Christmas story, we know that Matthew tells of one more trip and it is the harshest one of all. Herod, who is unmoved by the movement of God in the world, unleashes his destructive worst when he realizes the magi are wiser than they first appeared to be. And so it is that one more time—this time with a two-year old in tow rather than one about to be born—Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt to avoid Herod’s hysteria become madness. That’s the way it is with Herod and his minions, and his countless imitators through the years, who may never ascend a throne but who see themselves as lord of their own territory and do not see that something, some One greater is calling them to live for more than themselves. Herod, wise enough to know what the heavens have come to earth to proclaim, sits on his throne and uses his destructive power to try and stop the movement of God’s love come to this world. From this distance and this perspective, we know that Herod-like arrogance is no match for God-like love; but we also know that when God’s love comes, there will be those who push back, there will be those who resist
moving God’s way, there will be those who prefer the love of lording over to the sanctity of love’s lordship, there will be those who wherever they are and what-ever the situation, will opt for the right of might rather than the might of right. The gospels of Luke and Matthew remind us that when it comes to Christmas, everything and everyone is set in motion—the angelic chorus and Caesar Augustus, the heavenly hosts and the horrific Herod, and the contrasts could not be more telling.
Matthew says the magi returned home, but they did so by another path and when he wrote that he was not describing a route on a road but a way of walking which is what the earliest followers of Christ were called—people of the way. What happened with Christ’s arrival was prelude to his adventure of being Emmanuel—God with us. God in Christ comes home for Christmas, which is to say comes to this world, not so much that we can take Jesus into our hearts but so that Jesus can take us where his heart needs us to be; God in Christ comes to this world not so much that we can construct altars of certainty but so that we will accompany him with acts of compassion; God in Christ comes to this world not so much that we will make idols of individuality but so that we will recognize our commonality; God in Christ comes to this world and because that happened in Bethlehem in Judea and is still happening in Norman in Oklahoma and anywhere and everywhere the world prepares him room, then as it was that first Christmas so it is still today—Christmas is the unexpected itinerary.
Matthew and Luke tell us that when Christmas comes, everyone is on the move, first and foremost God in Christ who comes wondrously, unexpectedly to make home with us. “Oh there’s no place like home for the holidays, and thanks be to God, that traffic is terrific!