An Alternative Way--January 9, 2026

 An Alternative Way--January 9, 2026

"And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road." (Matthew 2:12)

Yes, the Magi go home--but they go home differently. These would-be wizards and sky-watching gurus who appear out of nowhere, following a light in the sky to find the true king of the Jews, they do return back to where they started, but you get the sense that they will never quite be the same again.  Not to steal from the well-known musical Wicked or its recent two-part cinematic adaptation, but they "have been changed... for good."

We can't say, of course, exactly how they have been affected by this journey--although, I suppose like anyone who makes a religious or spiritual pilgrimage, maybe the Magi themselves can't quite put their finger on how they have been changed by the experience. But they still know that they have been. I think of how T.S. Eliot imagines their contemplation and remembrance in his poem, "The Journey of the Magi." He voices one of these wise men saying they "returned to our places, these Kingdoms/ But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation/ With an alien people clutching their gods." Everything about their old lives has faded in comparison to being in the presence of the Christ-child, even if they struggle to put that difference into words.  I think something like that must have been the case for Matthew's Magi.

But even without that kind of faithful imagination and scriptural speculation, I think Matthew has given us evidence of at least one other important change that comes from this encounter with Christ.  He mentions that after the Magi find the Christ-child, having been drawn by their belief that stars and astrological phenomena could tell them about truths in the world, they no longer need the star--or at least, it doesn't seem to be their navigator any longer.  Now, an angel visits them in a dream (the same way Matthew tells us that God had communicated with Joseph when he was about to break up with a pregnant Mary!), and they learn that they are not supposed to go back down the route that leads them back to Herod. The Magi are to go home "by another road" and not to play into Herod's schemes any longer. Perhaps they had been fooled before by his ploy, but now they can admit it and refuse to be bamboozled any longer. They know that they must choose a different way--there must be an alternative to Herod.

At this point in the story, that is quite literally "different way," that is, "another road" to get them back to their homes in "the east" without taking them through Jerusalem and back into the clutches of Herod and his political machine.  But in a sense, Matthew is preparing us for a major theme that will come back throughout the story and message of Jesus in his Gospel: a choice of which "way," which route, which path, we will take in life.  Jesus himself will describe later a choice of two "ways"--the wide one which terminates in a dead-end, or the narrow way that goes in his footsteps. He will also continue to contrast his own sort of "kingdom" and way of life with the world's sorts of "kingdoms." The world's way of operating--whether typified by Herod or Caesar or "the rulers of the gentiles"--is always one of domination, conquest, and violence. And Jesus' way of operating--which he unapologetically claims is also God's way of operating--is the opposite. There is no invading, no conquering, and no killing in Jesus' way; his path is quite literally an alternative way, and a different road from the one that leads to Herod.

Now to be sure, the Magi don't know yet all of Jesus' teaching, and they cannot yet have gotten a preview of the Sermon on the Mount with its call to enemy-love and self-giving.  But at least they must have witnessed the stark contrast between an insecure bully of a ruler holding court in a palace decked out in gold on the one hand, and a vulnerable toddler with his mother in a modest peasant dwelling in a two-bit town like Bethlehem (remembered, at least in part, for its smallness in the prophets).  And when the angel makes it clear to them not to return to Herod, perhaps at least that much came into focus: they could choose one or the other--Herod, or the child--but not both.  The way of Jesus always runs counter to the way of Herod, the same way that the choice to bear being crucified meant refusing to be the one crucifying his enemies. If we are going to seek after the same Christ whom the Magi found, we will also be called to walk the alternative way of Jesus. There is no going back.

Like I say, we don't really what became of the Magi after they saw the Christ-child and made their way home by "another road." They were changed, we can presume, but we dare not assume it was an easy life or that they could pick right up with their comfortable old routines once they arrived back home.  The same can be said for us if we are followers of Jesus who walk his alternative way.  We will be changed, certainly.  It will not always be easy, for sure.  And we will often feel the pull to go back into the old violent ways of the new Herods and Caesars, or at least to keep our heads down and not call them out. But the witness of the Magi sure seems to be that it is worth it to direct our lives down that other road, the one that does not lead back to Herod and his insecure outrage.

Like the poet says, when we take that road less traveled--the way of Jesus--it really does make all the difference.

Lord Jesus, lead us on your way, even when it runs counter to the prevailing order of the day.