T.S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”

Is it okay to be a Christian if you don't have all of the answers? Is it okay to profess faith in Jesus if you can't always slot the developments of life into nice and neat compartments? Is it acceptable to actually be unhappy with God even as you come to worship? I hope it is. I find myself there this morning.

These deaths, these hundreds of thousands of people dead from earthquake and tsunami make no sense to me. As horrible as things like wars and destructive terrorism are, I understand their source. Pain and death that come from the actions of sinful, evil people is somehow familiar to us. But an earthquake that shifts the earth, that displaces huge walls of water that travel thousands of miles to wreak devastation. That is hard to get your mind around. It makes life seem so uncertain.

I take great comfort in the Psalmist who very often cries out in a loud voice that says:

"I don’t get it God, where are you? Where were you?"

and yet in the next moment says:

"I give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love endures forever."

I've preached on these wisemen, these magi several times in past years, and have always been intrigued by the story. But as I read our text this week, I read it with different eyes.

This week I wasn't so struck by exactly where these mysterious guys came from (probably ancient Persia — modern day Iran or ironically, Iraq). I wasn't so struck by the symbolism of the gifts they brought to Jesus (gold for a king, frankincense for a priest, myrrh for a burial). I wasn't sidetracked by how we have come to think there were three of them (scripture doesn't actually say that). Instead I found myself thinking of them as people like you or me.

T.S. Eliot's poem was very helpful for me in that regard. And I thought more about how they acted in faith in a time that must surely have been fraught with great uncertainty. Just what does it mean to live by faith? What does the Apostle Paul mean when he says "we live by faith, not by sight?" Here are three clues.

1. Living by faith means leaving some things behind.

Even some good things.

I just finished reading a book on the New York Times bestseller list called Father Joe. It's the story of a writer from England, who met a priest named Father Joe, when he was a teenager. Father Joe lived in a monastery on an Island just off England.

The young man, Tony, had a very profound experience with God and decided rather haphazardly that surely God wanted him to join the monastic life. Father Joe and others talked him out of it.

Tony was incredulous for a long time that God might want him to go and live a life of faith in the world, that he might be called to leave a good thing like the monastery behind him to follow God.

C'mon! What could be more pleasing to God than becoming a priest?

If the scholars have it right, these magi were well-respected in their own land, learned wisemen most likely trained as both astronomers (who studied the laws of movements of planets, patterns, rhythms — still a very respected science today) and also as astrologers, interpreting those movements for their meaning to human life (not at all respected today, and relegated to the back page of the newspaper as ridiculous horoscope predictions).

But whatever else they were, they were people who felt they heard God's call (in this case, visually in the stars) and were compelled to act. To follow. And that meant leaving behind respected careers, reputations, bank accounts, perhaps families — good things — to step out into this great unknown.

This is a very foreign idea for most of us. We don't want to leave good things behind us. I think if we are honest, we think deep down that as we grow closer to God, He will lead us to better and better places. We will gain more wisdom. We will experience less and less pain, and more and more comfort: in careers, relationally, financially. Not true. Often we are taken to places we are stretched. Hard places. We are, after all, called to pick up our cross and follow after Jesus.

The most common "spirituality" that I run into today is the one which says "every religion, every philosophy has good things and I'm just going to pick what I like out of each one." A good friend of mine had a conversation with someone this week who was describing this "it's all good" unitarianism, and eventually my friend said:

"I'm glad you are exploring your faith. I need to tell you, though, that Christianity isn't that way. Sooner or later, you are going to have to deal with the person of Jesus. And frankly, he's pretty demanding."

Living by faith means leaving some things behind. Even some things that seem good.

2. Living by faith means acting in the face of an uncertain future.

It's not only leaving things behind, but stepping into the unknown. There is such a thing as a leap of faith. We never figure it all out. We rarely see what one step of faith will lead to. God most often gives the dream, the vision that says,

"Go and follow the star."

Rarely is it

"Go and follow the star and by the way, and here's a ten-page report on how your next five years will lay out."

If it was, it wouldn't be living by faith. And so at every step, the question comes:

Will you trust me?

The wisemen head out. In Eliot's poem, they are soon besieged by what they have given up:

• warm weather,
• summer palaces,
• good food.

And almost simultaneously they are haunted by the uncertainty of what they walk into: the voices singing in our ears, saying that all this was folly. What did they think they were doing? Following an unusual astronomical pattern?

They didn't know where they were going. They didn't know how long they'd be gone. They didn't know if they'd actually survive. They didn't know what they'd do when they arrived.

All they knew is they were supposed to go. Load up the camels, grab a gift, leave.

Are you comfortable with that? I'm usually not. Most of the time before I take any leap of faith, I want to know exactly where my feet will land. I want that ten-page report! Living by faith means acting in the face of an uncertain future.

3. Living by faith means trusting when things seem to change along the way.

Even if the wisemen accepted that they had heard God, and followed, what did they think when their journey stretched into years? Had they expected to be confronted by a king about their quest? And the dream that told them to go home a different way? At every step, surely they had to wonder again:

• Is God really in this?
• Am I really hearing correctly?

This wasn't in the agreement.

Many of us have places in our lives where we have stopped abruptly and looked around and said,

"I never thought I'd find myself in this place."

Or,

"My life is so different than I had planned."

Sometimes that happens because of bad choices we make.

Sometimes it happens because we hadn't heard God in the first place. But sometimes it just happens. And always the question is again put to us by God: Will you trust me?

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be standing up here doing this. We were very settled in: family, house, career in business. Who would have ever thought things would change so much?

I've talked with some of you who have given years to the care of a loved one and you've said to me,

"I'm just so surprised this is the direction my life has taken. Who would have thought?"

Indeed. Who would have thought? And who gave God the right to apparently change the program along the way? It's just the right question. Who does give God the right to do that? Do we? Can we trust that much?

This same question keeps coming back,

"God, can I trust you? When it makes sense and when it doesn't, when I see the plan and when I don't? Can I trust you?"

But underneath it I think there is another question.

"God, do I matter to you? Does my life matter?"

It seems to me that if we knew the answer to that question, then we could trust God for a lot of things, we could live by faith. Even die by it.

In Jesus Christ, God answers a resounding "Yes." The One who came because "God so loved the world," came not haphazardly but for a purpose, came and lived, cared for people, encountered evil and hatred, triumphed over death. Jesus Christ is God's way of saying,

"You matter so much to me."

And in times of great uncertainty, we cling to that. And though we don't understand it all, though we long for more answers, it will be enough.

What would God say to us, if we were to take these three clues from the story of the magi and say to God:

"Lord, I'm willing to leave things behind me, even good things to follow you. Lord, I will trust you for a future I can't see. Lord, I'm open to you doing whatever you will, and changing things however you will."

What would God say back to us? I suspect he might say:

"Finally. Now that you are living by faith, you can help build my Kingdom. and by the way& you matter so very, very much to me."

Let us pray.