The Patient Star--January 8, 2020
"When the Magi had heard the King [Herod], they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy." [Matthew 2:9-10]
So here's a funny thing: God can bear with our wrong turns, our false starts, and our missed cues. God can work with us even when we blurt out the wrong answer, when we jump to the wrong conclusion, and when we get ourselves lost, rather than simply trusting the guidance God has given.
That's a big deal.
This part of the story of the Magi always makes me smile, because it seems the most good-naturedly funny. Here, the Magi have come so far, traveled so long, and gotten so close--only to take a wrong turn by stopping in Jerusalem to see King Herod where they expected the new king would be born. Once they had their hunch confirmed that the star they had seen was leading them to the land of Judea, they just figured that God must be sending them to the seat of power there--to the capital of Jerusalem. The moment almost has the feel of when you are typing something onto a computer or smartphone or web browser that has the "Autocomplete" function, and the computer's algorithm takes the start of what you typed and comes up with something completely wrong as the end of your sentence.
Now, in fairness, going to see Herod might have been an understandable assumption: if you were sent as an emissary to a foreign country with official greetings to celebrate a new ruler's birth or election, you would assume the capital is the place to go, right? That's just standard conventional wisdom: you go to where the powerful people are. But, of course, God has never been bound to our sense of conventional wisdom, and God has never been all that impressed with our sense of who is "powerful." So when the Magi head to Jerusalem and Herod is taken by surprise, Herod ends up being used by God to send the Magi back on the right path.
Isn't that interesting? The worst character of the story--the dangerous and boastful buffoon of a puppet king, Herod, put in his position by a foreign power--ends up being used by God to get the Magi back on track, even if his intentions are terrible. Herod, after all, wants to use the Magi to find out if this promised Messiah is real, so that he can destroy him. But God is able to use the first part of that impulse and then block the second, so that in the end, it turns out that Herod is used by God to thwart Herod's own plan, as the Magi find the Christ-child but do not report back to him where he is. And that, in turn, buys Mary and Joseph enough time to get out of Judea and flee for refuge in Egypt, out of Herod's jurisdiction. Herod doesn't realize he has become so obsessed with squeezing the life out of any resistance to his rule that he lets the true King slip through his fingers.
But the flip side of the scene is that even though the Magi made that wrong turn by assuming Herod's palace was the place to go, God doesn't give up on them. God doesn't cut the Magi loose because they went in the wrong direction. God doesn't punish them for failing to trust in the star's guidance. And for that matter, God doesn't send a heavenly lightning bolt to chastise them for believing in astrology, either. God bears with them, misguided faith, missteps along the way, and all, and then reroutes them. Again, to borrow a moment from our modern technological lives, it's almost like the star is the voice on your smartphone's Map feature that catches when you've made a wrong turn or missed your exit and then says, patiently, "Recalculating... recalculating."
There is good news to be heard in there for us, as well. Ours is a God who can work with our mistakes, our wrong turns, our misplaced trust, and our weak faith. The star is still there, even after the Magi realize that Jerusalem was the wrong destination, and it starts moving again when they are ready. In other words, the star didn't leave them behind when they were delayed talking to Herod. It--and I know it is funny to suggest this, but I'm going to anyway--waited for them... which is to say that God waited for them.
How much of our lives is spent figuring out how we are going to get ourselves out of wrong turns, bad choices, and missteps we cannot take back? And how much more of our lives is spent wondering if there's any coming back from the mistakes we make and the exits we missed? What the story of the Magi says to me at this point is that God is perfectly able to wait, to correct our courses, and to turn us around, without leaving us behind.
I read something someone had written in the last day or so that said, "If you trust God, God will protect you." And at one level, I get that. Sure. But I almost feel like there is more to be said than just that. That sounds so... transactional, as though God's willingness to protect people is depending on how well they trust God. But I think the Magi offer us a glimpse of something more from God, because, honestly, the Magi don't just trust the star God had given. They don't even realize that God has sent the star in the first place. And even once they start going where it leads them, they decide at some point in the journey that they know better than the star where they should go, and that's how they end up in Jerusalem. But God doesn't stop leading them just because the Magi get it wrong. God meets them where they are. God bears with their wavering trust in the light. God sends a patient star to get them back on course. And God is willing to keep drawing even these folks who got themselves lost along the way.
That's good news for this day: for whatever places we have gotten ourselves off track, we are not at the end of the journey. And for whatever places our faith in God has wavered, or our trust in God has gotten flimsy, God doesn't give up on us.
Look out, and look up: even on the darkest night, God has hung a patient star to draw us nearer to Christ.
Lord God, pull us out of our wrong turns and mess-ups, and keep calling to us despite our weak and wobbly faith.
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