Where Is the Child?

 A sermon by Rebecca Segers

 Isaiah 60:1-6

Matthew 2:1-12 

Where is the child?  This question is first asked in our scripture reading today by the wise men who put it to Herod.  Herod then goes to his chief priests and scribes and asks them: Where is the child?  And it is a question that is still asked by us today.  If you were here on Christmas Day, you heard Carol Keil sing an anthem titled “Wise Men Still Seek Him”.  We like the sound of this; it is a sentiment that we share, a statement we relate to, a phrase that resonates with us.  It implies that we are the wise men still seeking him, the ones who are still asking, “Where is the child?”  But I wonder, if we are still asking this, what do we mean by it?  How does this quest for the child relate to our lives today?

First of all, if you take the Bible as a whole, you find that Jesus and this quest for him is for all people.  In the book of Luke, we heard the story of Mary, the young Jewish girl and her obedience to God’s will.  She would have personified the most insignificant in her time.  A young girl who has not yet borne any children, so had not proved her worth in that arena.  Someone without property or any real value monetarily.  A female who by nature of her gender will never be allowed beyond the Court of Women on the temple grounds, a place equal at best to the crippled men in her society.

We also heard the story of the shepherds, the first who heard of the magical birth of a “Savior, who is Christ the Lord”.  These shepherds were the lowest of the low in Israel, if possible even less important than the young Mary.  Because of their profession – one that did not require a lot of intellect but mostly just presence, for sheep are relatively simple and do not need much guidance – the shepherds were most often not the healthy men in the prime of life as we see them depicted in crèche scenes, but the young boys who were not yet able to do harder manual labor or the elderly men or women who had outlived their usefulness in the home or trades.

If you remember, in the story of the prophet Samuel’s search for King David, he went to Bethlehem to see Jesse because God told him that one of Jesse’s sons was the Messiah, the Anointed One of Israel.  Well, Samuel goes to Bethlehem and meets Jesse and asks to see his sons.  Jesse presents son after son after son before Samuel and each one the Lord rejects.  Seven sons come before him and finally Samuel has to ask, “Do you have any more sons?”

“There is the youngest,” Samuel is told.  “But he is tending the sheep.”

David wasn’t even important enough to be considered as far as his father was concerned; he was out minding the flock.

Shepherds were the lowly, the unimportant, the ones who were unable to perform any truly important duties within the household, but were still capable of basically hanging out and watching a bunch of sheep doing nothing all day long and keeping them together.

So in the examples in Luke’s gospel where the angel comes to Mary and the shepherds are the first to hear about him, we see the Christ coming to the poor and lowly, those who have no voice or value.  Even before he is born, Jesus’ mission is to those who are the “have-nots” in society, according to Luke.

But Matthew’s gospel does not tell the story of the shepherds, but instead of the wise men or the magi.  It does not live in the realm of the poor and the underclass, but instead that of kings and royalty, including its naming of Jesus.  In Luke, Jesus is a “Savior, Christ the Lord”.  In Matthew, he is “King of the Jews”.  In this way, Matthew opens Jesus’ message to beyond the poor and the needy about whom Luke is concerned, to the other end of the spectrum, the rich and mighty, educated and aware, the ones who have.  This is important, too, because without those who are affluent, who is going to carry out the ministry to those in need?

Another thing I’d like for us to be mindful of is that even though all are asking the same question, “Where is the child?”, not all are being obedient to God’s will in discovering the answer.  Herod asks the question of his chief priests and scribes and they do find out for him through prophecies where the child is to be born, so he has a practical geographical answer, but his response is not one that you would expect or hope that a good Jew might have, that of love and adoration and praise, but instead Herod is filled with murderous intent.

You see, Herod is concerned about his power and how long it will last.  Now Herod was a complex and difficult human being, not unlike some we know in this very room, perhaps even if we look honestly, not unlike ourselves.  A Jew chosen by the authorities in Rome to lead this portion of the empire in hopes that the Jews would accept him as one of their own, Herod accomplished amazing things, especially within the realm of architecture.  He spent tons of money and time and effort building palaces and fortresses and a sophisticated system of aqueducts that provided water to nourish gorgeous gardens.  He was also known for building the awesome temple that stood in Jesus’ day and hailed as the most beautiful temple of its day.  However, Herod also got in trouble because he was very much a “secularized” Jew.  He built this beautiful temple and then wanted to put a golden eagle over the entrance.  Actually, he did have a gorgeous statue of an eagle cast and placed above the temple main entrance and it was promptly pulled down by zealous Jews who were horrified that an image would adorn their sacred place.  So he was a Jew, but one who did not fully understand or abide by the tenets of his own supposed faith.

In many ways, then, Herod is not so different from us, is he?  Are we not Christians who live in an incredibly wealthy environment that allows us to have and to own riches beyond compare to ¾ of the world’s population?  The Bible tells us that we are to tithe or dedicate 10% of all we earn to God, yet how many of us actually give away 10% of what we have to the Lord here at the church or through other charitable programs?  We are also told by Jesus that the two most important commandments are “to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength” and “to love your neighbor as yourself”, but how many of us truly fulfill these commandments, loving God and others in active, tangible ways?  Even when we try, we often don’t succeed, simply by virtue of our humanity and the mistakes we make without even thinking.

There are ways in which we are not like Herod, I hope.  Herod was known as a horrifically bloody king, power-hungry and jealous of his domain, who killed one of his wives and two of his own sons for fear of their usurping his throne before Jesus’ birth and another son just four days before he died for the same reason.  I cannot imagine that with all the court intrigue and attendant gossip surrounding such matters, the wise men were totally ignorant of Herod’s activities.  Certainly his subjects all around the region were aware of how crazy he was and smart enough to avoid any dealings with him if possible.  So clearly, coming to him to announce the birth of the King of the Jews was not the wisest move these “wise” men could have made.  I lift this up to you because often we believe that characters in the Bible have a better handle on how to live a faithful life than we do.  Especially when they’re given honorific sounding names like the “magi” or the “wise men”.

The wise men, however, are obedient.  They see the star rising in the east and they follow it.  Who knows, maybe they are so blinded by its eminence that they don’t pay attention to where they’re going and who rules there.  Upon arriving in the land where the star according to prophecy should lead, they, being affluent, cultured and powerful citizens of their own countries, go to the affluent, cultured and powerful leadership of Israel looking for aid.  As we know, this turns out not to be a great plan.

It’s actually rather comforting to me to know that the wise men make a mistake – and a rather egregious one.  For as we know from the scripture, Herod tells them that once they’ve found the boy they are to return to him and tell him of the child’s whereabouts.  They don’t do this because they’ve been warned in a dream not to do so.  In the next section after the one we heard read today, Joseph is also warned in a dream to pick up Jesus and Mary and take them to Egypt, so he does.  Meanwhile, Herod realizing he has been tricked, goes into Bethlehem and all the surrounding area and kills all the boy children under the age of two.  All the boy children under the age of two.  Can you imagine the horror, the weeping, the wailing, the pain?  All because the “wise men” talk to the wrong guy.

On the other hand, they do pay attention when warned not to return to Herod and they go home another way.  They could not know that their action would cause wholesale murder of babies, but by the same token, Jesus’ life is saved.  The fact is: we all sometimes make mistakes.  Even big ones.  Mistakes that we might even kick ourselves over for years, wishing that we hadn’t done something one way but another.

Perhaps we had a choice between two jobs and we feel we selected the wrong one, and now we’re spending an awful lot of time doing something we really don’t care for.  Or we did the right thing, but waited so long to make the decision that we feel we wasted so much time beforehand.  That was the case at first for my friend, Moira, who is an alcoholic.  She was 70 years old before she decided that she really didn’t want to live that way anymore and went to Alcoholics Anonymous.  I met Moira at 74 and she said that she had just lived the best four years of her life.  Her one regret was that it took her so long to stop drinking.  Maybe your mistake is health related.  Perhaps you waited too long to take care of an issue or didn’t get to the right doctor in time or the right hospital.  Perhaps the wait caused an illness to worsen or lead to multiple surgeries.  Or perhaps you blame yourself for a loved one’s death.

About eleven years ago, I met a woman named Annette.  She had a son, Andrew.  Her relationship with his father hadn’t worked out and Andy was the light of her life.  His father, meanwhile, lived in the Caribbean and only saw Andy maybe once a year, but was faithful in child support and in keeping in touch.  Each year, he begged for Annette to send Andy to spend the summer with him.  Each year, she said “no”.  But when Andy was seven, his father asked again and this time Annette agreed – but just for a month.  She packed up his belongings and took him to JFK airport.  Because it was a non-stop flight, she was able to leave him at the gate with a flight attendant where he would be traveling alone.  Annette kissed her son good-bye and began to miss him as soon as he disappeared down the ramp to the plane.

The weeks seemed to last forever, but they did pass.  Then one afternoon, shortly before Andy was to return home, she got a phone call.  Andy had been playing in the front yard of his father’s house when a drunk driver ran up over the curb and right into the seven-year-old boy.  He was killed instantly.

I met Annette on the one-year anniversary of her child’s death.  I could not imagine how she survived such loss, yet we all have survived loss and will survive more.  It is part of the nature of being human.  There is no doubt in my mind that each and every person in this room has endured pain and loss beyond description and perhaps even blames him or herself in some way for the loss.  And perhaps the wise men did for what happened in Bethlehem.  As Annette sometimes still does over her son’s death.

This, you see, is exactly why we still seek him.  This is the reason that we look the child today.  Because in the search for Jesus, we find forgiveness.  Forgiveness for all the mistakes we make – the large and the small, the grievous and the petty, the accidental and the “accidentally-on-purpose”.  Jesus came to offer us wholesale forgiveness for our sins, for all the things that we do wrong, for all the things that separate us from the love of God.  He says this over and over and over again in the Bible.  And over and over and over again, he is questioned about his right to do so.  Believe it or not, we are still questioning Jesus over whether or not he has the right to forgive us – each and every time that we refuse to accept it.

We seek the child because we want forgiveness, we long for reconnection with the One who loves us more than life itself, but one we’ve been told that we can have it, we resist.  We say, “Oh, no, Lord, you don’t realize how bad what I did is.  I don’t deserve it.”  And you know what, maybe we don’t.  But that’s not the issue.  That’s grace.

There’s a story I love about a little girl named Susie who showed up at her minister’s office one day and told the secretary that she’d been speaking with God and God had a message for the pastor that she had come to give him.  Well, this was in a big tall steeple church in a large metropolitan area.  The minister was very busy and even had associate pastors that were supposed to take care of Children’s Ministry and Pastoral Care and Administration and other things, and the secretary knew he had a big meeting coming up with the Board of Trustees that afternoon and really didn’t want to bother him with the little girl, so she told Susie to come back tomorrow, thinking that she would forget all about it.

The next day, who should show up right after school was out, but little Susie.  The secretary had told the pastor about Susie’s visit the previous day and they had laughed over the little girl supposedly “talking with God” and “having a message for him”.  They had decided it was sweet and they wanted to encourage her piety, but not her interruption of the business of the church, so the minister had told the secretary that what she done in response was just fine.  Well, here was Susie again and the secretary was a little nonplussed, but once again, she told the little girl that the minister had a very busy day and if she heard from God again, to come back later.

The next day, there was Susie, insisting that God had been talking to her and had a message for the minister.  In the face of such persistence, the secretary didn’t know what to do, so she buzzed in to the minister and told him of Susie’s return the third day.  The minister told her he had figured out a way to find out if Susie was really talking to God, and then told her how to handle it.

The secretary turned to Susie and said to her, “Pastor told me that when he was fourteen he committed a sin.  A sin that he was terribly ashamed of.  He repented of it, asked God’s forgiveness and that repentance led him to becoming a minister today.  When you talk to God this afternoon, ask him what that sin was and when you come back tomorrow with the information, Pastor will see you.”

The minister was terribly proud of himself, thinking that he had solved the problem of Susie’s interruptions without discouraging her from praying.  But, wouldn’t you know it, the next day, there was Susie right after school in the pastor’s office, waiting to speak with him.  The secretary buzzed him right away and said, “Pastor, Susie’s here for you again.”

The minister hung up the phone, walked out of his office into the secretary’s, looked down on little Susie in a very imposing way and said, “Well?  Did you talk to God again?”

“Yes,” replied Susie.

“Did you ask him about the sin I performed when I was fourteen?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Susie.

“Aaaannnndddd….” The pastor went on.

“And he said He forgave you and forgot about it and you should to.”

Where is the child?  Right here.  Right now.  Offering complete and perfect forgiveness to each and every one of us.  Oh, we have to understand what we’ve done wrong.  We have to repent.  To change our behavior.  To turn around 180 degrees and do better.  We have to take seriously the meaning of repentance and the sincere desire to make of our lives ones that are righteous and forgiving as well as forgiven.  But once we do, we can let it go.  We don’t have to hang onto our ills for the rest of our lives, regretting our missteps and mistakes.  Not even the really, really, really, really bad ones.

The child has come in the form of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God who came so that we might know wholeness of life.  Lives that are no longer bound to the things we do wrong, but instead are bound to the Holy One who helps us to get it right.  And forgives us again when we mess up again.  That is what we remember in Communion each month when we eat the bread and drink the cup.  We remember that all we really need are repentant hearts and willing spirits and God will make of us incredible, wondrous, inspired human beings who can do great things toward the coming of the kingdom.  Together and separately, we are God’s people.  Together and separately.  We are forgiven.  Amen.