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Seekers: Following the Light

Sermon by Peter Terpenning
January 6, 2008    

Matthew 2:1-12

            Early in my career in ministry I was discussing theology with a elderly woman in my congregation and we were sharing our doubts as well as our faith experiences that led us to call ourselves Christian. I remember she commented with an air of certainly, “O, I see, you are a Seeker”. She said it as if her conclusion explained everything and gave a kind of blessing to my journey and doubts.  We talked about it and I tried to understand what she meant by that, and I decided that she was and perhaps is still correct in that assessment of me. I also think that perhaps that name, as she used it, applies to many of us who struggle to make sense out of the contemporary, religiously plural world and some who have found our way to progressive, Christian churches.
            To be a Seeker in this sense is to be searching for faith, to be searching and wishing for God. Usually out of an awakening to human suffering, or an experience of personal suffering, the individual discovers an empty place in their souls. Sometimes it comes as a rebellion from a strict, legalistic form of religion, from which compassion and love draws the person out and sends them searching. It may be a traumatic experience of war or disease, addiction or abuse that sends us on our way. The collapse of a marriage, the death of a beloved relative, the battle with depression, or a deep, gnawing sense of emptiness that refuses to be filled with the usual distractions of entertainment, education or romance. From this awakening to suffering, the person finds themselves adrift, on a pilgrimage of sorts, searching for truth, searching for God, or at least a way of life that will lead to truth. It is really an archetypal story, one that is told over and over in our legends and stories. It is Ulysses trying to find home and peace after the Trojan War, it is the search for the Holy Grail, it is the Tibetan’s search each new generation for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, it is Conway in Lost Horizon, seeking Shangri La, it is our current fascination with pilgrimage, it is to walk a labyrinth, and it is of course, the journey of the Magi as they leave Persia following a star.
            I love the story of the Magi, partly because as Gentiles, non-Jews, over educated priests of Media, they come a long way to stand by the Manger and so they represent my life. I who am over educated, a priest of an institution that is sometimes very far from Jesus and his teachings, I, a non-Jew, a non-believer early in my life, who found my way to Jesus. But thinking of them as Seekers brings the story to life for me in a new way. They represent all of us who, when awakened to the suffering and mystery of life, go in search of Truth.
            For Matthew, the Magi represented the non-Jewish nations and peoples who were going to find rest in Jesus as the Messiah. The prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah had predicted that the Messiah would not only offer salvation and justice to the people of Israel, but that all nations would stream to mountain of the Lord. “In the days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established….peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come” (Micah 4:1-2) The Messiah was to offer peace and justice to all people. By repeating the legend of the visit of the Magi, Matthew was showing that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and was fulfilling this prophecy. Look, at his birth he was recognized by these Gentile magicians to be the King of the Jews in the house of David.
            Magi, the Greek word Matthew uses, stood for the priestly class of Media, in Persia, present day Iran. They were wise men or astrologers and interpreters of dreams, magicians and one commentary called them Sorcerers. That these ancient scientists came in search of the baby Jesus was extremely significant to Matthew. He was writing to a church in Jerusalem at the end of the 1st Century that was divided over whether non-Jews could be Christian. Most of his church were Jewish converts and believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and anyone who converted to Christianity had to become Jewish first, get circumcised and adopt the Jewish law. Paul, Peter and others argued against this and eventually won out, allowing Gentiles to convert without becoming Jewish. These Magi represent all the Gentiles who would someday come and follow the light of Jesus, as the Magi followed the light of the star.
            In the second chapter of Ephesians, Paul tells how Jesus brought the Jews and Gentiles together. He wrote, “For (Jesus) is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall of our hostility. He has abolished the law with its commandments...that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of two, thus making peace.” (Eph. 2:14) The Magi are the first Gentile converts for Matthew, and remind Jews and Gentiles alike that the Messiah will bring peace to all people, and the coming of the Magi is proof that Jesus was indeed the Messiah that humanity was waiting for. All humanity – not just the Jews.
            Someone said that Jesus is the fulfillment of all human longing for salvation and justice. Out of the immense suffering of humanity through the ages, the Messiah arises. Jesus the Christ is the culmination of human longing for deliverance. He is the incarnation of human suffering, he is  “the everlasting light, the hopes and fears of all the years, born in thee tonight”. Some would say that his coming was inevitable, like the valley of dry bones. You may remember the story from Ezekiel, where Ezekiel is led by God into the valley of dry bones, the sight of a great war, where the bones litter the valley floor and death hovers over the place, like standing in Flanders Field in 1919 after WWI. And Ezekiel is shown the breath of God blowing over these bones, and the bones come to life, bone attaching to bone, sinew to sinew, flesh and skin, until the armies stand alive again. So Jesus came to life out of the suffering and longing of humanity, as God’s breath blew across Israel amidst the horror of the Roman occupation.  
            Whatever we might believe about the historical reality of the Magi as actual people who traveled across Iran and Iraq to Palestine, Matthew tells a true story that resonates with every one of us who has been a seeker for truth. My experience has been that this quest always leads to the same truth. It leads us to compassion, to a sense of unity with all people, and indeed, with all creation, it leads to the discovery of love and non-violence as the way to peace and justice, it leads to forgiveness, it leads to a belief in a higher power, the existence of whom remains a mystery. For me it leads to Jesus of Nazareth who embodied all these qualities; he was love, he was forgiveness, he was non-violence, he was compassion and mercy.
            For Matthew and for me, Jesus of Nazareth embodied what all Seekers seek, the Truth. He is “the way, the truth and the life”. To follow his light is the way, not the only way, I guess, but one way for sure, to journey through this life and live in harmony with God.