The sermon for January 6th was based on Matthew 2:1-12.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I’m fascinated by the Wise Men. I don’t know their names or even how many of them there were. Scripture simply doesn’t tell us. But, whoever, they are, they are compelling characters. I wonder what they talked about along the way. How did they relate to one another? What motivated them? How did they, alone, seem to recognize the Christmas Star?

As always with such questions, though, the answers are lying right around us. Their motivation is the same as ours. What brought us here tonight when, to the vast majority of our countrymen, this is just another Monday? We could be doing anything else and yet here we are.

Or should I say, here some of us are. Even we Christians aren’t always at ease with our own motivations or even always aware of them. We disobey God and we call it sin, and rightly so. We obey God and we call it piety, again rightly so. But a more intimate knowledge of how and why we behave the way we do often eludes us. What we do know, is that we want to be holier. We want to be more pious and more obedient to the will and Word of God. We want to make a better and better and still better confession and we want to be satisfied with our conduct.

We want greater sanctity and perhaps we more than want it. Could it be said of any of us here tonight that we require it, that we need it, that we crave it of ourselves and of others? I’ll confess to such a hunger. I’ll also confess that I am naturally and sinfully inclined to look for satisfaction in the Law. To those who are not with us this evening my old Adam holds forth the 3^rd Commandment. We should fear and love God that we may not despise preaching and His Word but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it. Hard to do that out on the slopes...

or parked in front of the TV or wandering through the Mall when the Church has invited you to gather for Word and Sacrament, isn’t it? And what about all the other Commandments? There’s all the gossiping and grumbling and dissatisfaction. There is rampant neglect of God’s Word, pervasive gross ignorance of Christian Doctrine to say nothing of a ubiquitous spiritual torpor. Something ought to be done for crying out loud! The world and even the synod are falling to pieces and I’m crumbling right along with them. I demand that it stop right now!

Well, something ought to be done. That’s true. God agrees. He is, after all, the one who has condemned all such sins and damned those who commit them. The Law is right on. People who willfully and unreluctantly stay away from Church services have something wrong with them. Yet what do the Magi find when they arrive to worship the Christ? Do they find the Son of God with a clipboard putting little plus signs next to their names and little minus signs next to everyone else’s? Do they find John the Baptist applauding them while running down the pharisees?

No they don’t. Neither do they find a little Moses with little stone tablets. The flaming finger of God by which the Law was written is nowhere to be seen. Very likely, God’s fingers, or at least His thumb, is in His mouth when they find Him. All they see is the young Child with Mary His mother. To the casual observer, this entire encounter has to seem ridiculously underwhelming. This pilgrimage of the Wise Men is the kind of thing that would make the typical Lutheran parish voter shake with frustration. How much did these guys pay to watch Jesus suck His thumb?

We want the Jesus who overturns the moneychangers, who chastises the self-righteous, who calms the storms and curses the disobedient cities. Let’s have some more of that millstone talk. But Jesus doesn’t often oblige. Throughout His time between the creche and the cross, He remains curiously childlike. We see Him silent before Pilate. We see Him at the dinner table and walking through the fields. We see Him spending time with His friends and almost never engaged in any of the things that so universally occupy grown ups in this or any age. Curiously childlike.

The funny thing about children... is that they may be the most powerful people on earth. I have four children of my own and they could make we walk through fire. I have Marines who grudgingly show up for work and find their duties toilsome who nevertheless volunteer to spend their free time collecting and distributing Toys for Tots. We’ll pay more taxes if we’re convinced that it will actually help "the children". We’ll outlaw our grow-up pleasures and abstain from our favorite drinks if we think that it will be good for our kids. The surgeon general has done more, with his labels threatening the health of unborn children, to keep women from drinking and smoking than all the temperance advocates and prohibitionist laws could ever have accomplished.

As a rule, children bring out the best in us, and they do it without law or sword. Christ does something even better. He doesn’t draw out our best, after all, our best isn’t really all that great. He fills us with His best. He puts what’s best into us. From ancient of days, the Epiphany of our Lord has also been an occasion to celebrate His Baptism. We’ve now set aside another day for doing that but the Fathers used to do it today. And you can see why. In Baptism Christ gives us His name and His righteousness and the faith by which we receive them. He makes us children of God, curiously powerful in ways that don’t make sense to those who have not been reborn.

We quite naturally receive Holy Communion as part of our celebration of Jesus’ Epiphany. In the Supper Jesus fills us with the unexpected goodness of His Body and His Blood. Jesus commands us to take the Sacrament but it isn’t His command that brings us here is it? Its something else. We want to be here. We want to eat His Body and Drink His Blood. We want what He wants for us. No one is going to arrest us if we don’t come here. No one is going to excommunicate us if we skip Church tonight. We don’t have to commune. We want to.

Why do we want to? Why do want to come out of our nice warm houses on a night like this and, for many of us, go to someone else’s parish to take the Sacrament? Because Jesus has made Himself known to us. He’s come to us through Word and Sacrament. He’s given us faith in Him and He’s caused us to love Him. We’re here tonight because we love God and we love God because He loved us first. He died on the cross to forgive the sins that keep us from realizing our deep yearning to be as holy and we want to be. He’s made us holier than we know how to be.

We’ve come to Church for the same reason that the Wise Men went to Israel; because the Holy Ghost has called us by the Gospel, enlightened us with His gifts, sanctified and kept us in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.

The Law says I should not despise preaching but it cannot make me love it. Only the Gospel can do that. The Law says that I should try to do what God wants. Only the Gospel can make me desire what God wants for me. Herod screams in our ears: worship the Christ, tell me about this little one, show Him to me. None of that matters to us. We are enlightened, we are, by grace, made wise. We see the star no one else notices. We worship the Savior everyone else despises. We are led home by ways unfamiliar to the rest of the world. This isn’t just another Monday. It is the Epiphany of our Lord and there is nothing more delightful in all the world than He who reveals Himself to us tonight as the one who forgives our sins and makes us, again, God’s own dear children. Amen.

Last Updated: 7/15/2008