Away From the Manger
Matthew 2:1-12
Christmas Eve, 2007
A social worker was called in on a case that involved a family which was unable to take care of their personal health needs. Specifically, they had trouble remembering to take their medicine. Now that is not an unusual problem for many senior citizens who may have a variety of different medications to take each day.
What puzzled the social worker was that this particular family consisted of a mother and father in their early forties, a daughter who was in Jr. High School, and a grandmother. All four of them were on medication but they kept going back to the doctor because they were always sick. The reason behind their illness was that they just couldn’t remember to take their medicine at the right time – if they remembered to take it at all.
The social worker made an appointment with the family and arrived at their house at the appointed time. She found appalling living conditions. The family lived in a fairly upscale neighborhood, but the house badly needed a coat of paint. Trash had piled up around the side of the garage. Weeds had overgrown the yard.
Once inside, she noticed that the house was a mess. Each room was filled with clutter four or five feet high. In some rooms, there was just a path wide enough to walk through. They sat down in the living room filled with old newspapers and leftover mail, and the social worker discovered something she had not expected. This was a family of incredibly high IQ’s. These were folks who would score close to genius on any standardized testing. All three adults had significant scientific backgrounds and each had done revolutionary research. The daughter was attending college classes while still in 8th grade. But they couldn’t remember to take their medicine.
Their lives were such a disorganized mess that each day was defined by chaos. They could be fascinating conversationalists as they talked about politics, history, and physics, but they couldn’t remember to take the garbage out or fill the refrigerator with healthy food or wake up their daughter in time to get to school before the first bell of the day.
As the social worker drove away from their home that day, she thought, “They are so intelligent. They are so dumb.” Though they had some of the best minds imaginable, they didn’t have common sense or the ability to bring order to their lives. They never learned the basics of being responsible citizens.
Tradition has it that three wise men came following a star, and fell down before the infant Jesus to worship him as King of kings and Lord of lords. They had studied the stars and had come from far away. They traveled over trackless deserts, across swollen rivers, and through inhospitable mountains to bow down to this infant. They knew that the great celestial event they witnessed was a once-in-an-eternity happening, so they followed the star and were led to the Christ child and his family.
Did you ever wonder why there were only three? Were they the only ones who saw the star? Were they the only ones who ever looked to the sky? Were they the only ones who had a sense of adventure? Were they the only ones who had a sense of awe and the presence of supernatural power?
Tradition has it that their names were Melchoir, Balthasar, and Caspar. But don’t you wonder where Abu, Ibrahim, and Jamal were? Why weren’t there more who came to Bethlehem following the star?
I can imagine that there were other wise folk around at that time and place. It makes no sense at all to me that there were only three who saw the star. But perhaps, the others were so smart that they were dumb.
Perhaps their worldview was limited to what they could explain. Perhaps the spectacular had no place in their intellectual systems. Perhaps they saw the evidence, but couldn’t make it fit into their thought processes. Perhaps the explanations for which they searched left no room for the supernatural. Perhaps they didn’t understand that all of the knowledge in the world can never replace simple faith. As Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
On this Christmas Eve, we come to the manger in which we find our Lord and Savior Jesus. We experience him in the candles, the carols, the readings, the Sacrament, and the general atmosphere surrounding us here. Faith is like that. Faith is that which we experience “in our gut.” Yet, we have this tendency to try to explain it. In the final analysis (and I know there are those who would disagree with this), I’m not sure that we can explain Christ.
Before Toni and I got married, her dad owned and operated a Sunoco gas station. He had this old pick up truck that he used for service calls. It was a blue 1963 Chevy with a cap on the back. The roof of the cab was painted a bright gold and had red flashing emergency lights. A few months after Toni and I got married, he sold it to me for $400.
He took the lights off of the cab, so the first thing I did was to plug the holes with bondo and spray paint the roof to sort of match the rest of the truck. After we got married, while we were still in college, we loaded up that old truck and headed out to Denver to visit the seminary I was considering attending.
We had a really nice visit. The Director of Admissions was friendly. We met some faculty and staff members as well as some students. We had a chance to see student housing. One of the things I remember is, while walking across the campus, I heard one student say to another, “I need to get going because I need to outline Matthew.”
That scared me to death. Just the thought of outlining Matthew made me wonder if I had what it took to go to seminary. When I finally got there, we were immersed in the intricacies of biblical content and interpretation. My introduction to Bible study in seminary was a class in which we read it cover to cover (with the exception of the first ten chapters of Numbers) in ten weeks. That was part of the required reading for some reason. To be honest with you, I don’t think I’ve ever read those chapters. That class ended with an exam which was required for graduation.
Following that, we moved into a biblical interpretation class. In that class, we studied, among other things, the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch, historical-critical methods of interpretation, literary criticism, and so much more. We studied structure, genre, setting, and intention of the text. Of course, there was an exam at the end, the passing of which was required for graduation.
Following those introductory classes, we took other classes on specific books of the Bible. Now, a couple of decades removed from that stuff, I realize some things. I loved that sort of study. My seminary years were some of the best in my life as I was being taught so many new things. But now I realize that there is a risk to all of that. The risk is not realizing that there is a limit to one’s intellect. There is a risk that, in trying to comprehend God, you will lose the One after whom you search. You see, God is bigger than my imagination. God is bigger than my ability to understand. God is bigger than my professor’s ability to teach. There is risk in trying to understand before we seek to believe. The risk is that we can be so smart, but so dumb at the same time.
Surely there were other wise men and women in that time when the three came to visit Jesus. Surely there were others who were looking at the same star. But where were they? What blinded them from seeing the miracle in their midst?
Back in the 1960’s, Pat Fulbright had a ministry to street people downtown on the landing. He was one of my teenage heroes even though I had never met him. Years later after I had graduated from seminary and had been ordained, we met and have been friends ever since. He’s retired now but living in Fort Wayne and we see each other every once in a while.
At our District Christmas party a couple of weeks ago, Pat and I were remembering the old days at Annual Conference. Back in those days, there would always be a luncheon for pastor’s wives. We haven’t had one of those for years, mostly because in today’s world, there are just about as many pastor’s husbands as there are pastor’s wives.
But anyway, when our wives would go off to their lunch, we would have our own lunch together. Pat loved the classical European theologians and so he would talk about Karl Bart, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Neibuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rudolf Bultmann. I had spent considerable time in seminary studying Latin American liberation theologians and so I would talk about Juan Luis Segundo, Leonardo Boff, Gustavo Gutierrez, Ernesto Cardinal, and Jose Miguez Bonino. We tended to forget that the congregations we served didn’t really care about all of that stuff. They just wanted to hear about Jesus…and see Jesus through us.
Sometimes I think, we would become so immersed in the intellectual study and discussion of theology that we would forget all about the Savior. We got so caught up in arguments about whether the next great theological system was coming from Europe or Latin America that we forgot all about that babe born in a manger.
Tonight is about him. Tonight is not about intellectual understanding. Tonight is about faith. Tonight is about realizing that we don’t have to have a complete intellectual knowledge in order to know Christ.
It is too easy to get pulled away from the manger today. It is too easy to get distracted by so many competing interests and obligations that remove us from the manger. It is too easy to deceive ourselves into the belief that we are drawing closer when in fact, we are walking farther away.
Tonight is the night to be drawn to the manger. Tonight is the night to look into the manger and see once again, the face of our Savior. Tonight is the night when we step out of our self-centered intellectual pursuits and witness God’s greatest gift. Tonight is the night to hear this word of hope: Jesus will meet you right where you are. He will shine brightly into your life. He will give you peace.
