Reflection by Rev. Tim Dayfoot on January 8th
Matthew 2:1-12
Matthew’s story about the wise men who travelled a long way from home to visit the baby Jesus, tells us that the birth of Jesus was something very special. And it was not just special for Mary and Joseph and the people of their own country and the people of their own faith. The birth of Jesus was going to affect the lives of people in all parts of the world. Despite the 2000 years that now separate us from the birth of Jesus, and despite the great distance between us and where that birth took place, this baby can change lives.
I have always found it difficult to answer the question, “Do you like to travel?” I remember being asked this question a long time ago in the middle of a job interview. The job that I wanted was teaching people to drive. When my interviewer asked me, “Do you like to travel?” I had to stop and think. I could not, at first, make a connection between travelling and teaching people to drive, and so I was not sure what the interviewer wanted me to say. I still don’t know for sure how I should have answered that question. My honest answer would have been, “Yes, and no.”
One of the reasons I cannot easily say that I love to travel is because I have done so much travelling in my life. For me travelling is much more than just visiting other places to take a quick look. I remember hearing a minister colleague of mine talking about his summer holidays. He and his family had driven through the eastern part of the United States. And while he was telling me this he was saying that they did New England, and they did New York State, and I thought to myself, “How can you possibly ‘do’ a place in such a short space of time. Surely to “be done” with a place would take a lifetime of living there.” For me, travel is nothing short of a live changing experience. That is what real travel is.
The first time I travelled was when I was taken away from the place where I was born and the country that I called home. I was two years old. I was brought to Canada, to Toronto, to live for a year, and then back we went to my birth home in Trinidad, in the West Indies. That was a pattern that I would follow until I was sixteen years old. I would live for three or four years in Trinidad, and then a year in Canada. Then, when I was sixteen, I came to Canada to stay for good. That is what life was like for me in a United Church missionary family.
Travelling was exciting. As a child I used to secretly feel sorry for friends who lived in one place all the time, or for my classmates who had never been on an airplane. I got to experience all kinds of amazing things because my family moved around a lot. But there were many down sides to travelling as well. Travel meant saying “Goodbye” to friends, and even leaving family behind for long periods of time. Travel meant, sometimes, putting plans on hold until after you were going to be settled down some time in the future.
But for all the travelling my family did, I never thought of ourselves as tourists. I think that tourism is what most people think about when they ask the question, “Do you like to travel?” They are talking about going somewhere for a quick look, and coming home refreshed, but essentially the same. For me, travelling was not about looking at the sights. Travelling was not something that was done primarily for the fun of it. Travelling was about growth. It was about expanding your horizons, growing in your understanding of what it would mean to live in a different culture, a different environment, a different way of life, and becoming, for a period of time, a part of another place in the world. So, my answer to the question, “Do you like to travel?” is, “Yes, I like to travel, but I know that travel may disturb and disrupt my normal, comfortable way of seeing the world and of seeing myself.” Growth and travel go together, and they can both be painful and fun.
When the gospel writer, Matthew, tells us that the wise men, or the magi – which is a word from which we get the English word, magician – when the magi left their home countries, and set out towards Judea, they were not tourists. They were not out on a little travel junket. They did not start out on their journey because they wanted to have some fun, or to get away from a cold Canadian winter season. Now there is a real motivation for travel – to get away from winter. But it is not the kind of travel we are hearing about in today’s gospel story.
The journey of the magi is described as following a star – a bright light far off in the distant sky which is neither very precise, nor is it very reliable. Its light is likely to disappear just when you need it the most. So the decision to follow a star is fraught with danger.
And yet the light shines down on you, and you cannot help but look up to it and imagine in your mind what it might mean and how things might be different if you were to follow.
What are the stars which compel you, the people of Forest Home United Church/Dalston-Crown Hill United Church, to look up? What is it that draws you forward as a church congregation? What are the ideas and the hopes that are being born today in your midst that you want to encourage and honour, even worship, as a potential for new life in the future?
I am sure that I don’t have to tell you that there are many churches, United Churches and churches from other denominations as well, whose primary goal is keeping the doors open. That is their star. And they follow that start with enthusiasm until, well……….. until either the doors close, or, until they realize that God has put many other bright lights up high which can guide them on their journey.
What about the bright light of spiritual growth? What about the light that draws us together into a caring community, a lively community, a comforting community of faith? What about the bright light of faith exploration with young and old together? What about the light of pastoral care and outreach being done by all members of the congregation? If we were to spend less time dwelling on the survival of our congregation and more time focusing on the kind of community we want to be, where would our journey take us? Who else might we draw to that light? Will others join us on our journey because they too can see a light of promise and purpose that is guiding us forward?
The magi were following a brilliant light. The light was far away and not always reliable. They wanted to follow the way that they were being shown, even though they did not have a clear idea of where it would take them. After all, they had to stop and ask for directions. It sounds an awful lot like where we often find ourselves, doesn’t it? We have some idea of where we would like to go as we look to the future. We know what kind of changes would make our lives better, and our world better, but we have no clear idea of how to get there.
And in the middle of all of this, Christ is born. And Christ evades death at the hands of Herod. And Christ grows through pain and joy, and Christ would, in a short time, teach us more than we ever knew before about hope and love and about what God is doing in the world.
May the lights that draw us forward on our travels through this world be the lights that help us to set life-giving priorities. May we not be deterred when our high hopes and our dreams carry us off into unfamiliar territory, and on journeys that ask us to search for the true light of our lives, the light of the world, Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God.