Worth the Wait--December 23, 2022
"In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, magi from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, 'Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage'." [Matthew 2:1-2]
Whatever it was the Magi saw in the sky that led them to find the Christ-child, it took a long time to do its work.
For starters, of course, it took the Magi a long time to actually arrive in Judea to find Jesus. Based on the age of children that Herod targets after the Magi go back home, it seems plausible that their journey might well have been years long, and that was for a one-way trip. Just that by itself seems amazing to me--that these travelers were convinced from what they had seen in the sky that it was worth going on this journey to Who-Knows-Where and deal with Who-Knows-What along the way, all to find someone born as king of a people other than their own... and then to go back home. Clearly there was something compelling that drew them, but it is amazing to me that the Magi had the patience to keep on with their journey considering how long it took and that there was no treasure for them to take home, but rather for them to give and leave behind. Given how easily I get frustrated and give up on things halfway through, the patience of the Magi to keep on keeping on astounds me.
And maybe just that much by itself is worth reflecting on--that maybe patience isn't about sitting in one place, but active and persistent in the work you are convinced is worth doing. Maybe it really is, as Eugene Peterson once observed, borrowing a line from Nietzsche, "a long obedience in the same direction." That's what the Magi do--they keep going on the mission they have begun, convinced that it is worth doing. Our own practice of patience, not just in these remaining few days of Advent but all our lives, has to look something like that--we are not called to sit on our hands and stare at our feet, but to keep at the good work we have been given to do, even when we aren't sure what good will come of it or where it is leading us. In that sense, the Magi keep leading us by their example--to keep going in the direction God is leading us even if we aren't sure what will happen along the way, but simply to trust that God is at work while we put one foot in front of the other.
But that's just from the human perspective of this part of the story. Once again, if we zoom out, we'll see there's an even bigger thing going on here. Sure, for the Magi, the whole project of following that light in the sky to meet the Messiah took a few years of their lives. And yes, on the scale of a single human lifespan, that's a lot of time to invest without knowing what you will have to show for your efforts at the end. But how about the light in the sky itself? How long before had it been set in motion to appear at the right time to guide those pagan astrologers on their way? Because, no matter what it actually was, the "star of Bethlehem" wasn't an afterthought on God's part thrown into the mix at the last minute.
Nobody really knows what the object in the sky was that Matthew reports about, but often candidates like comets, planetary conjunctions, or supernovae are offered as possible explanations. And any of those events would have taken a HUGE amount of time to set up in order to be seen at a particular time for particular observers to see. Scientists tell us that comets in our solar system formed along with the planets, something like four and a half billion [with a B] years ago, and their orbits keep getting nudged and tweaked as they do their gravitational do-si-do with the sun and the planets. If the Star of Bethlehem was a comet or an alignment of planets in the sky, it would have been the result of literally billions of years of orbital mechanics playing out. If it were a supernova--the light from an dying star that became visible to the naked eye only because it exploded--the light from the explosion would have easily taken thousands of years to reach the eyes of the Magi from outer space, not to mention the whole life cycle of the dying star itself that would have had to be set into motion in order to run out of fuel at a certain time and then go out with a bang. In other words, whatever it was that the Magi saw, it sure seems likely that it had been set into motion before there was life of any kind on our planet. God, you might say, has been patient all along, even since the creation of our solar system, or the universe itself, to get through to us the news of a Savior. My goodness, that's patience. And it certainly is playing the long game.
I can hardly fathom the idea, but it seems at least plausible that billions of years before Mary had that conversation with Gabriel about an unexpected pregnancy, God had begun to lay the groundwork for getting the world's attention to announce the birth of Mary's baby. God doesn't get distracted, bored, or frustrated by the length of time that requires--God is willing to keep at it for the sake of reaching us in love. And this is the real wonder to me: before this season of Advent is about OUR waiting in patience and hope, it is about God's patient love that keeps on keeping on, even when it seems like there is very little pay-off for God, or when we remain totally oblivious to what God is up to. It is God who has been patient with us, loving us from before we were born, and unwilling to be distracted or discouraged by the wait. It is God who has decided that we were worth the wait.
My goodness, what an amazing notion: God decided you were worth the wait, not just of centuries between the first prophets' announcement of a Savior, but even billions of years of gravitational mechanics, just to get through to you and me and the Magi, that God's love reaches in all directions to include us, too. You, and the whole world full of us from every time and place, you were worth the wait.
Just let that sink in.
Lord God, thank you for the lengths you have gone to in order to reach us with your love.
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