I HOPE you like these Magi as much as I do. You can almost feel them tugging at your elbow, speeding you up and guiding you, wanting to assist you in the search. That’s why most of us are here, you know? We are born searchers. It’s in our blood. We are hot wired to search. The Bible is very clear about this. It says in its opening pages we are made in God’s image. We are looking for God. If we will sit tight for even a few minutes, we can sense the restlessness within our hearts. Our hearts are yearning for a destination. Our destination, though, is not a place but a person. Our inner radar is scanning endlessly, searching for that mysterious blip that will tell us how to find the way, something like a shining light or star. And the church is the gathering, unlike any other, with the job of shining in the direction called hope.

Like the Magi, we are looking not so much for a place but for a relationship. We want to worship God in the flesh, and then having knelt before the Holy Hiddenness, we go back, to travel another way. We want to be transformed. We want to go through the rest of life differently from the way we have been. We want to serve God’s glory no matter how strange and new it is to all our previous ideas, goals, and smaller hopes.

This story of the Magi who search and travel and end up kneeling at the feet of the baby Jesus is such a vivid story that all who enter its field of meaning are caught up with our imaginations and all of us find ourselves connecting to it. We all know the story continued to be developed long after Matthew finished its initial telling.

For one thing, the tradition arose that there were three wise men. Matthew doesn’t say that. And where do we get the idea they were kings? Matthew calls them Magi. They were star gazers. They were searchers. They were human beings who knew, who just knew, someone was out there. Someone is there waiting for us to find them. This someone is even helping us, guiding us with light. The trick is our paying attention and being aware of the light, the hints, the clues. What Matthew is very clear about is that these people were on a journey, seeking something, following a star. And you and I are doing the exact same traveling, searching, following this morning.

I like the Magi because they were strange and foreign. That’s really how I feel when I am in church. I feel strange and foreign in worship. Perhaps this surprises you that being here doesn’t seem natural to me. Worshiping God, gathering around the stories of Jesus, sacraments, texts, hymns--these things make me feel somewhat out of place inside as if I am a foreigner to them, as if I really don’t understand what is happening in this place called church. I believe this is a good thing. I think it could be very dangerous to be comfortable in church, to assume I know what will happen before it happens.

These Magi were probably from Persia. Modern-day Iran is the best guess. They were not Jews. They didn’t know their Bible. They didn’t even have a Bible. Did you notice in the story they had the star, but they didn’t have the sacred text to tell them what the shining meant? If you handed them a Bible, they wouldn’t know where to look. They were not people of the book. They were aliens.

That’s why I find it beautiful and full of wonder that Matthew who is the most Jewish of the gospel writers presents these Magi as the very first to see who Jesus is. It’s Luke who points out the shepherds, but it’s Matthew that says these clueless searchers from outside the faith were the first worshipers, the first to offer gifts. Matthew realizes part of the Jesus story is that God wants to reach out to anyone and all whether they know or not the religious “do’s” and “don’ts,” whether they know or not when they are supposed to sing or chant or bow or how to spell Presbyterian or when to stand or sit. Matthew realizes the story of God in Jesus is for anyone and everyone who searches, not for who is certain but for who is simply a raw searcher.

Now right here is where the story really teaches us how to go about being church in 2005. Look at Mary and Joseph. The Holy Family received these outsiders and opened their doors to them. They didn’t tell them to go away because they were outsiders, because they didn’t know the Bible, because they were not familiar with the order of service. The Holy Family received them and welcomed them.

The Magi were exotic. They were aliens from another land. And even though they didn’t know the scripture and even though they practiced magic which the scriptures of the Holy Family clearly condemned as pagan, the family of the Baby Jesus received their gifts and did not turn them away as they worshiped at the feet of Jesus. To me that is the essence of church: being a hospitable family of God, welcoming, inviting, accepting.

Wouldn’t it be great if in this new year we claim both the Magi within us and the model of the Holy Family as well? Wouldn’t it be great if we claim that part of us which searches and seeks, refusing to settle, close, and idolize any interpretation of Scripture and the strange and new story it tells? Wouldn’t it be great if we constantly resist the temptation to familiarity with our beliefs and Bible because more than anything we believe the God who creates, redeems and consummates is always beyond us in a holy hiddenness? Wouldn’t it be great if this hiddenness rather than disappointing us serves instead to invigorate us as a church and keeps us from a religious arrogance which so easily turns holy ground into an idolatrous playground. That’s what the searching Magi within us offers in 2005.

At the same time in 2005, we can be like the Holy Family that first Christmas, welcoming anyone and everyone, whether they are our type or not, whether they know how to be Presbyterian or not, whether they are like us or not; welcoming anyone and everyone who simply wants to enter and bow before the Christ Child. Does this mean abandoning our core Reformed convictions? No, it simply means our beliefs have the purpose of converting us into a warm and welcoming people so that strangers and new people aren’t made to be aware they are even strange or new but instead welcomed members of God’s family of searchers.

So, here we are. Searchers one and all. And we have brought what we have. In all these ways you can identify with these Magi. You are one of them. This day is for you. It’s your day. I have no idea why any of us are really here today. I doubt if you, yourself, really know why. Let’s just say a hunch brought us here, a hunch that an important clue is to be found in just such a place.

What I do believe is that if you and I will come to the Christ Child and humbly kneel and present whatever it is that we bring, I know that when we leave this place this morning, we will go home by another way. And that way is the way of life with God.