Making of our destination a journey and of our journey, a destination

Thinking on Matthew 2.1-12 and wandering magi:

Some wise guys came to town, causing a stir, and I’ve got some questions . . .

Why did the star take the wise guys to Herod and Jerusalem in the first place?  They were following the star, they presumed and so do we, to the new king, to Jesus.  But there’s a detour, as they end up at the first not in Bethlehem, but in Jerusalem.  Why Jerusalem?  Why does God lead these seekers there?  Why give Herod a heads up?  Why place Jesus in such danger?  Maybe they just got lost – following a star as your navigational guide isn’t as exact as GPS.  Judea is a pretty small place and Bethlehem is only about 6 miles from the heart of Jerusalem.  So perhaps it wasn’t divine guidance but human inexactitude that led them to Jerusalem.  Maybe the significance of the star’s leading was only understood in hindsight, as Jesus’ followers sought to find meaning and understanding in all these strange events.  Or maybe it happened just as God planned, with God throwing down on the powers and principalities right from the start – here I am, now what are you going to do? 

Why did the wise men’s news so frighten not only Herod, but all of Jerusalem as well?  Various versions of the Bible in English translate Herod’s (and Jerusalem’s) response in verse 3 to the arrival of the new king as . . . troubled . . . agitated . . . disturbed . . . upset . . . frightened . . . terrified . . . 

Some preachers and scholars say they reacted in this way because the people of Jerusalem (by their conduct) simply weren’t ready for the Messiah, so his coming scared the pants off them.  Others that the coming of the Messiah would interfere with their human plans and they weren’t having any of it.  Maybe.   Maybe any news of change inconvenienced or scared them.

Whatever the cause, what is clear is that the arrival of the Messiah was greeted not as the good news it was, but as bad news – very bad news indeed.  Perhaps the question begs to be asked: for whom is Jesus’ arrival bad news?  And why?

What was the other road by which they left for home?  They were to leave by another road (than the one by which they came).  At its simplest, it’s obvious, isn’t it?  The men so wise they would seek a messiah not their own over many miles and through many lands could not possibly return the same way they had come because they themselves were no longer the same.  They had been fundamentally changed by their encounter and in their changing, their journey, their path, had changed as well.  They came one way and left another.  It’s a beautifully simply way to understand the human experience of Jesus – we come to him one way and we depart from him totally other.  In this sense, the journey of the wise men becomes a metaphor for our own journeys of faith – meeting Jesus changes our trajectory, our direction.  It has to – for who can stand in the presence of the divine and not be changed?

What was the wise men’s true destination?  What was the destination of the wise men?  Was it Bethlehem?  Maybe.  They certainly thought so.  But perhaps their true destination was Jerusalem, where they brought the news of the one to be born.  Maybe their destination, their ending, was back at their own homes, where they would certainly tell of all they had seen, all that had happened.  Maybe the wise men were the first evangelists – proclaimers of Messiah’s arrival.

In a very real sense, the wise men’s destination was Jesus himself.  But their arrival is not an ending; rather it is a beginning – for Jesus, for them, for us.  The journey to Jesus had been important and the arrival – oh, bliss.  But it’s the afterward – the what they did with what they learned, the part of the story that we don’t know, that’s most important, I suspect.

Once a mystery is solved, the story ends.  Not so here . . . for once the mystery has been ‘solved’, once Jesus has been arrived at, the journey to him has come to an end, but the journey for and with him has just begun.

So it was for the wise men, so for us . . . we have come once again to Jesus and so we must surely depart by another road . . . I wonder where it will take us?

Road Food: Sometimes Tradition Ain’t All That

From 100 things NOT to do for Christmas, this had to be my favorite . . .

DO NOT make "old family recipes" for christmas dinner
The key word there is "family." As in only family, and no one else. Old family recipes tend to be dishes that the immediate family has been exposed to for generations, and as a result, they have developed a taste for something that no human should enjoy.  I have seen people serve foods anywhere from pickled carrots dipped in raspberry sauce to mashed potatoes mixed with spinach and spam. These foods are not natural! Nobody likes them (although they are likely to pretend to), so just stick to the regular turkey dinner.

When I shared this yesterday at church, one little girl actually said yum about the idea of pickled carrots with raspberry sauce (which I can scarcely say out loud without wincing) – turns out she absolutely loves anything pickled.  And there were a few who thought spam in the potatoes might not be that bad.

But we were all pretty much agreed that fruit cake has to be the worst.*

What are the worst family recipes at your table?

For me, it has to be candied sweet potatoes or yams – that ooey-gooey mess of a concoction that has sweet potatoes covered with brown sugar and butter and marshmellows . . . makes me shiver in disgust just to think about it.  But that’s just me.

When it comes to traditional holiday food, I keep wondering where the traditions come from, especially for Christmas.  There really isn’t any theological significance to candied sweet potatoes.  I could make some up, but what would be the point?

That got me to wondering what Jesus’ family ate for Jesus’ birthday?  Did they base it on what they ate along the way to Bethlehem?  After all, traditions have to start somewhere and they’re often a reenactment of something from a meaningful time in the history of our tribe.

So I wonder what Jesus’ family had to eat during that trek?

They were on the road and had to stay in a barn.  They probably ate their version of McDonald’s (if they stopped along the way to eat) or snacks (what we bring with us – in my case, a candy bar and some cheetohs or bbq potato chips).

I wonder whether Jesus’ family served him their version of road food for his birthday ever after.  I don’t know about Jesus, but I’d hate to be stuck with a cheetohs and Hershey bar birthday just because my mom happened to be eating them when I was born.

Sometimes traditions make sense.  Sometimes they don’t.

Which leaves me wondering which ones in my own life to keep and which to let go of.

In some parts of the
world, this is
considered to be food.

For sure, you can spare me the fruit cake and definitely take the leftover candied yams with you if you don’t want them to go to waste.  Throwing away those left overs is part of my tradition too.


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*I started to say ‘we Americans’, but turns out fruitcake isn’t restricted to Great Britain – Canadians like them some fruitcake too and there’s even one site that offers fifteen different ways to make fruitcake.  Canadian Living  Why anyone would come up with even one way to make this atrocious brick of a thing, we simply cannot understand.  Maybe that’s the difference when you get down to it between breaking free from the motherland by revolution or staying a commonwealth – and here, we thought it was all about the tea.  (To my Scots friends – you know I’m kidding, right?  Well, maybe not totally.  And those candied chewy bits are not fruit!  Admit it – that’s where the idea for gummy bears came, isn’t it?)