Follow the Wise Man

Sermon for Jan. 12, 2025 (Epiphany, transferred)
Matthew 2:1-12

I think this amazing Gospel reading and these beautiful, exotic visitors are God’s way of asking us a question:  As we begin the journey this new year will bring, whose path will we choose to follow?

On the one hand, our story this morning gives us the path of King Herod.  Herod stands for power as the world typically sees it.  He aspires to be the King of the Jews, even names himself by that title.¹  At least ethnically a Jew, Herod knows his people are awaiting their messiah, and he wants the honor due God’s King for himself.  But, in truth, Herod is never more than Caesar’s enforcer lording it over the Jewish people.  Herod buys into the wrong power, power that only knows how to assert itself in worldly strength.  He does that even to the extent of trying to murder Jesus, the true King, by massacring “all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under” (Matthew 2:16), a story that comes soon after the reading we heard today.

So, Herod gives us one possible path to follow.  For a contrast, let’s look to the other major characters in this story, the magi.  These learned astrologers have discerned that there’s a divine king to be found, so they set out to worship him.  They come to Jerusalem, the center of Herod’s power but even more the center of Yahweh’s worship, and they ask where they might find this newborn king of the Jews.  The question leaves Herod shaking in his boots, so he tries to manipulate the wise travelers, sending them to Bethlehem as his spies.

We don’t get to hear what the silent magi think about that, but they keep their eyes on the star, the divine sign that’s been guiding them ever since they left their homeland beyond the boundaries of Roman rule.  Remarkably, they trust this sign from the God they don’t fully know.  In fact, they welcome what Yahweh’s doing, and they bring gifts that the Hebrew scriptures identify as tribute from the nations for the king who will rule with divine justice and peace.²  Following the star’s light, these wise travelers find real power for all people – the power of unquenched hope, the power that propels us to seek God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.  Again, the magi get no lines here, but they’re “overwhelmed with joy” as they offer their gifts (Matthew 2:10) – strangers witnessing to God’s shocking pattern of saving people in the least likely ways.

Finally, the story ends with God intervening to save the Holy Family, and the wise travelers, from Herod’s corrupt power.  God visits the magi in a dream, warning them to steer clear of Herod.  As the songwriter James Taylor put it, “A king who would slaughter the innocents will not cut a deal for you.”³  And the magi tie up the story with a bow, upending Herod’s plot simply by taking a different way.  It’s stunning the difference we can make simply with the road we choose – and how making that choice blesses countless people as it brings us safely home.

Perhaps it’s in keeping with God’s divine sense of timing that, as we remember the true King being revealed to all nations, our nation remembers its 39^th president, Jimmy Carter.  It might be interesting to overlay the one story on the other, looking at our history through the lens of our faith.  What does this ancient Gospel story of politics and power tell us about where we look for power today?

Of course, Jimmy Carter was a politician.  You don’t get elected president without knowing how to work the system and without an outsized sense of your own capacity and significance.  But still, Jimmy Carter came to office because he was the starkest contrast imaginable to the man elected before him, Richard Nixon, with his imperial sense of the presidency.  Where Nixon was about wielding power to advance his own and his country’s interests, Carter was about channeling power to strengthen human rights and bring peace between ancient adversaries.  And where Nixon skulked away from office in disgrace, spending his post-presidential years trying to write his way back into history’s favor, Carter found his true calling in his post-presidency, as we’ve heard from so many voices in the last week.  For more than 40 years, he channeled the power of his past office, along with his gifts of perseverance and hopefulness, to advance the well-being of normal, powerless folks.  And his work touched millions – eradicating illnesses and pressuring uncaring government leaders to support that work, building homes for people, monitoring elections to ensure votes got counted, removing military rulers from Haiti with no shots being fired.

Now, you can make a good case that, in terms of presidential effectiveness, Jimmy Carter wasn’t exactly a success.  Perhaps Sunday-school teachers don’t make the greatest presidents.  But the greatest presidents embody what Sunday-school teachers teach them.

So, if you’re holding up the narrative of Nixon and Carter alongside the narrative we’re celebrating this morning, it’s easy to see Nixon as King Herod.  But what about Carter?  Which character does he mirror?

Well, the temptation here might be to hold up Carter up alongside the original J.C.  I remember a campaign poster in the 1970s that backlit Carter, and decked him out with long hair and a beard, and proclaimed, “JC can save America!”⁴  Now, you could argue Carter had a bit of a messiah complex, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have claimed the title for himself.

No – to me, the characters from our story today that Jimmy Carter mirrored are the exotic visitors we just saw, those wise travelers.  The magi were drawn not to Herod, the conduit of raw imperial power, but to the Christ, the conduit of true power – the divine power that, from the beginning of creation, empties itself for the well-being of nobodies like us.  Similarly, Jimmy Carter was not drawn to the domain of King Herod – the lure of reputation and self-aggrandizement.  Carter could have spent his four decades as a former president raking in cash and jockeying for historical position.  Instead, he lived in his two-bedroom house, taught Sunday school, wrote mostly about faith, and tried to heal the world.  Like the magi, Jimmy Carter was wise enough to bow down before the true King and take that King’s Good News on the road.  Both the magi and the ex-president pointed toward the light of leadership that the world can’t see so well – servant leadership, kingship based in God’s love, power that empties itself of power.

I think it’s interesting in our story this morning that these wise travelers, these beacons of perseverance and hope – they still don’t get any lines when they finally find what they’ve been looking for.  I’d love to hear their reflection on the power they witnessed from “King” Herod versus the power they witnessed when they entered Mary and Joseph’s cave and found the baby King.

After all, the magi had a choice to make.  I mean, we take the ending for granted, but it could have gone the other way.  They could have been taken in and cozied up to Herod. They could have been seduced by God knows what Herod was promising for delivering Jesus to the assassins.  But after they offered their tokens of kingship and worshiped the One who actually deserved it, these wise travelers heeded a voice in a dream telling them to say “no” to Herod’s offer and follow another path.

That’s the choice we bear still:  Follow the path to the palace where Herod’s waiting, or follow God’s own path home.  I’ll leave you today with the words of the wise man Jimmy Carter, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.  Carter said:

[A]n individual is not swept along on a tide of inevitability but can influence even the greatest human events. …  I worship Jesus Christ, whom we Christians consider to be the Prince of Peace.  As a Jew, he taught us to cross religious boundaries, in service and in love.  He repeatedly reached out and embraced Roman conquerors, other Gentiles, and even the more despised Samaritans.…  The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.  God gives us the capacity for choice.  We can choose to alleviate suffering.  We can choose to work together for peace.⁵

Or, you could put it like this:  We can choose to follow Herod’s path or go home by another way.

1.      New International Study Bible, 1749 (note).

2.      New International Study Bible, 1750 (note).

3.      Taylor, James and Timothy Mayer. “Home by Another Way.” Never Die Young. Columbia Records, 1988.

4.      “Poster: ‘J.C. Can Save America!’” National Museum of American History. Available at: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_528342. Accessed Jan. 1, 2025.

5.      “Jimmy Carter: Nobel Lecture.” Dec. 10, 2002. Available at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2002/carter/lecture/. Accessed Jan. 1, 2025.