Sermons from the Pulpit

     The world as an economic entity finished the old millennium on a roll, riding a tide of record stock prices, full employment, booming sales, rising property values and consumer confidence. Y2K turned out to be a shaggy dog story, so anticlimactic as to be comical. The doomsayers and worriers have been publicly humiliated yet again.

     What can a preacher say, what can a church offer that will nourish such a well-fed, unthreatened world? Sometimes I yearn for hard times, so that I the preacher and we the church will not be up against this conundrum, of how to convince rich people of their own emptiness, neediness and helplessness in order to soften them up for God.

     Consider the Magi, the wise men. They were rich folks. Not necessarily kings, as in "We Three Kings of Orient Are," but not peasants either, not by a long shot. Gold, frankincense and myrrh did not come cheap, still don't, and here they are just giving them away to this no-account kid who doesn't even have his own crib.

     As charity it makes sense. Noblesse oblige. The rich should do for the poor. And somebody pointed out that gold, frankincense and myrrh were the perfect practical gifts for Jesus, Mary and Joseph, because they are valuable, marketable, portable and to some degree medicinal. Just what a family would need if they were dead broke and somebody like Herod the King was trying to catch them. Better than travelers' checks.

     But you get the impression that it wasn't charity toward the less fortunate that brought the wise men to Bethlehem of Judea. They came for their own sakes. This is provocative. How did they know this child might have anything to offer to the likes of them?

     They were led by the star, of course. But who looks at the stars, who follows stars? Searchers, that's who. Restless people. People who aren't all that satisfied with their condition, even if their condition is one that anyone in their right mind should be satisfied with. You search the stars if you wonder what else there is. You can't do it when you're inside the mall.

     Thus the wise men went where they might never have gone, and their example invites us to believe that that would be holy wisdom for us, too, this questing, this chasing after promising possibilities.

     Now what's a promise from one point of view can be a threat from another. Herod the King of the Jews is afraid of the child called King of the Jews for the very same reason that the wise men travel to welcome him. Herod doesn't want to repeat the ill fortune of that old Pharaoh of Egypt who failed to stop the newborn Moses from growing up to set God's people free. But Herod can't come up with any better strategy to get rid of the threat than the one the Pharaoh tried, this absurd massacring of the weak and the helpless. An absurdity of which there are still plenty of examples today in the year of our Lord 2000.

     The remarkably comfortable and secure world which we inhabit is subject to certain threats which unfortunately have more staying power than Y2K. You can list them as well as I can. The human population could destroy the only environment in which it can survive. The economy could take a nose dive. The ice caps could melt. The air could become unbreathable. The planet could run out of extractable petroleum. Grudges and grievances could go on thriving and multiplying between rich and poor, white and nonwhite, clean and unclean. Aggrieved people of all sorts could continually improve their skill and dedication to terrorize those whom they perceive as responsible for their misery. Road rage could become the model for all human interaction. All of these are dangers to life as we know it.

     Well, what about life as we know it? Is it what God intends? Why should it not be threatened? Maybe all these threats, as our culture understands them, are in fact promises, and we would be wiser to travel toward them in a welcoming frame of mind, than to plot how to eliminate them.

     I don't mean that we should welcome global catastrophe of any kind as God's purifying scourge, the way some folks have welcomed AIDS or looked for ways to hasten the Second Coming by provoking hostilities in Jerusalem. To my mind that's blasphemy. I do mean to suggest that this third millennium may be our high time, our proper season, to follow the example of the wise men, and travel by another road from the one we are so used to.

     You notice that the wise men traveled new roads twice in this Epiphany story, the first time to follow a star towards a birthplace, the second time to avoid King Herod. Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. You can detour towards something good or away from something evil. I think we're in a position to do both at once.

     We have no map for that other road. It's uncharted territory. But I find a signpost for it in these words of Jeremiah's, words of comfort to the remnant of an exiled and scattered nation: My people shall be satisfied with my bounty, says the Lord. They won't just be brought home and well cared for, as you and I already are. They will be satisfied, as I believe we largely are not. They will sing. They will be radiant. They shall rejoice and be merry.

     Ours is not a culture of bounty and rejoicing. It's a culture of poverty and anxious grasping. This is a spiritual condition, and our actual material wealth and security are beside the point, but we don't seem to realize that in practice. We can't seem to leave well enough alone. We're in dread of losing what little we think we have and then not having enough, and we put a lot of energy into preventing that or at least worrying about it. We exacerbate our predicament by the way we try to relieve it.

     It's time to stop needing more. We don't need that need. It sickens our souls, and it makes us bad stewards, bad neighbors, and bad citizens of God's world. With the accumulated wisdom of all these millennia, it's high time to start down another road, toward the promise, away from the threat. Time to thank God for the feast that is set before us, and share it and enjoy it to the full. May God so grace us at this holy table.

Amen.