When I was growing up, meals were a pit stop I hurried through to get on with the race. I remember my mother asking me to sit down at the table instead of standing at the countertop to eat. Now that I’m older, I enjoy unhurried meals and plan them out days in advance, inviting friends and family to join me. When I eat lunch with Charlie Richardson, he brings an agenda, a list of talking points. At one time I would have hated that, but now I love it—the delicious food, the casual banter, the solving of national and global problems. All of it followed by the best invention ever—the nap.
This past Thursday I had lunch with my friend Dave. We met when our sons were friends in elementary school and we clicked. Dave is generous and fun and over the years has become a good friend. We were at lunch on Thursday and didn’t recognize our waitress, so we asked her name, just to be polite, not creepy, and she told us her name and told us she lived in Danville at the work release center next to the county jail. This was more information than we had asked for, and we were surprised by her frankness. I was so caught off guard by her admission that the only thing I could think to say was, “Well, I hope you enjoy your time in Danville.” What I wanted to say was, “What did you do to end up at the work release center?” But Joan has trained me not to ask the first thing that comes to mind, though this waitress must have sensed my curiosity, because she said, “I’ve made some bad decisions.”
Dave started laughing, and said, in typical Dave fashion, “Hell, I make bad decisions every day. I hope I don’t end up at the work release center.”
Ever since then I’ve been thinking about bad decisions and how some folks can make all sorts of bad decisions and it never comes back to haunt them, and other folks can make one bad decision and end up in work release or jail or bankrupt or homeless. One way of gauging privilege is how many mistakes someone can make without ruining their life.
On this Sunday before Christmas I want to talk about the decisions we make. I don’t want to focus so much on the birth of Jesus, but on something that happened in the days following, when King Herod had learned of Jesus’s birth and summoned the wise men to meet with him, claiming to be an admirer of Jesus, asking them to travel to Bethlehem to worship Jesus, then return to him and share his whereabouts so he too could go and worship Jesus. Now there are some people who will do anything, who will abandon every principle, betray every trust, and violate every standard to win the King’s favor, but these wise men were not those people. No king, no emperor, no president has absolute power so long as people of character are willing to defy them.
The wise men met Jesus. Some folks meet Jesus in person, others of us meet him in spirit. But if we allow ourselves to be, we are changed by the experience of meeting him, and that’s what happened to the wise men.
They met him, and the Bible says, “they fell down and worshipped him.” So there is what I’ll call sacred receptivity in their lives. When they met Jesus, they became spiritually receptive, because they were able to notice things they had not noticed before, they noticed the treachery of Herod, for instance, and instead of reporting to Herod as he had ordered them to do, they avoided him altogether. Matthew says, “they went to their own country by a different way.”
I’m just going to come right and say it because it needs to be said. I pray every day not to become the kind of pastor too afraid to speak the truth. I might stretch it a bit in a story or two, but I’m not going to stretch it about the things that matter, and this matters. So I’m just going to say it right out, and you can do with it what you will. There are some folks today who say they’ve met Jesus, but the first chance they get, they run straight to Herod. Today’s Herod tells them he wants to worship Jesus the same as they do, and they believe him and run to him, stand with him, even fall down and worship him.
That is the decision they have made, and they have every right to make that decision. And we have every right to say that’s a bad decision, especially in light of who they claim to be, who they claim to love, and who they claim to follow. There are folks who should have gone home by a different way, but have decided instead to go straight to Herod instead. I know what I’m talking about because I’ve done it myself.
I’ve done it myself. At times, I have been so beguiled by power, prestige, status, and wealth that I’ve gone straight to Herod. I told lies when I should have told the truth. I sided with cruelty when I should have stood for compassion. I stood with Herod when I should have stood with Jesus. I’ve done that. Maybe you have too. I don’t know if you have, but you know if you have
I have to hand it to the wise men; they allowed themselves to be changed by their encounter with the Holy. A lot of people don’t. A lot of people claim the relationship, boast of their experience, but show no evidence of the relationship. But these wise men, they went home by another way.
One more thing, Matthew said these wise men were “from the East.” Now in that day, “from the East” was code language for the stranger, for the uncivilized, for the dangerous. They were the ones you put up a wall to keep out. That’s what it meant to be from the East in the time of Jesus. But let me just say it was the people from the East who proved to be wise, who proved to be incorruptible, who proved to be faithful. The ones least expected to act with nobility were the only ones to possess nobility. While everyone else was fawning over Herod, they went home by another way. Their encounter with the Holy changed them. I pray the same for you and me.
First, they knew better, then they did better. And so can I, and so can you.