“Here’s Your Sign!” Matthew 2:1-12
Intro: First a word about sermon titles. I had a preaching prof who once said “when you name a sermon, make it so compelling that somebody riding past on a bus seeing a sign with the title will get off the bus and come in.” Then he challenged us to think of titles that would do that. A friend, who was quicker than I am, came up with “hey you – the bus is on fire!” Our reading this morning is about signs, the star that the wise men saw. Let us listen for God’s word to us. ///
Sometimes you can be in the middle of a miracle and miss it. A friend e-mailed a cute story a little while ago. It is about a man who was late for an important meeting downtown but could not find a parking place. He circled his building several times: nothing. He drove up and down all the streets in the surrounding area but every spot was taken. All the parking garages had signs out front that said full. The more he drove around, the later he got; and the later he got, the more frantic he became, because he had to get to this meeting; his whole career depended on parking his car but he could not find a space.
Finally, though he wasn’t a religious man, he decided to ask God for help. Lifting his voice to heaven he said, “Lord, I know I haven’t really paid much attention to you in my life but I… I really need a parking space. Lord, if you show me a parking place I will stop sinning and start going to church. If you find me a place to park my car I will volunteer at the shelter and give to the poor — Lord, if you give me a parking spot right now I promise to become a new man!”
As soon as he finished praying a parking spot miraculously opened up right in front of the building he was going to — right in front of the main entrance… this was Rock Star parking, and there was an hour and a half of time still left on the meter. The man swerved into the spot, turned off the ignition and with a great sigh of relief lifted his voice again in prayer and said, “Never mind Lord, I found one.”
He had certainly received a sign that God has heard his prayer – but he missed it.
In my journey of faith, and I would guess in everyone’s, there have been times when I have really wanted some sign from God to give clarity and reassurance. Sometimes we may be focused on things of minor importance, sometimes we might be seeking guidance about major decision in life, wondering which way to go. Sometimes we may long for a sign that God is really out there, and does care for us. In all of these times we ask and then look for some kind of response. Years ago when I was considering leaving healthcare and entering the ministry I asked God repeatedly for a sign, not just any sign, make mine a billboard, I would pray. I never got a billboard, we rarely do. I think what happens is a subtle change of perception, our way of seeing the world changes, and in time answers that make sense to us appear.
In a novel called The Final Beast, Frederick Buechner describes a young clergyman’s attempt to find some proof of God’s existence. On a visit to his father’s home just before Pentecost Sunday, he stretches out in the grass near the barn, closes his eyes and listens for some word from God, some assurance of his presence. “Please,” he whispers, “please come,” then swallowing and raising his head to look, expecting the sky to part like a curtain and a splendor to come pouring through. For a long time there in the bright spring sunshine there was nothing, and then, writes Buechner, there was this:
Two apple branches struck against each other with the limber clack of wood on wood. That was all—a tick-tock rattle of branches—but then a fierce lurch of excitement at what was only daybreak, only the smell of summer coming, only starting back again for home, but oh, he thought, with a great lump in his throat and a crazy grin, it was an agony of gladness and beauty falling wild and soft like rain.
It’s not much to go on, but for the clergyman in the story, and for Buechner himself, it was enough, because this was his own experience. On just such a day, in just such a place, he lay down in the grass with just such wild expectations. He says that he had a very strong feeling that the time was ripe for a miracle—that something was going to happen—something extraordinary that he could perhaps even see and hear. What happened was that two branches knocked together, and as I said it’s not much, but it was enough to divide time forever for Buechner into what came before that experience and what came after it.
Just clack-clack, but praise God, he thought. Praise God. Maybe all his journeying, he thought, had been only to bring him here to hear two branches hit each other twice like that, he had come in search of the Holy, and in his mind at least he had found it. God had revealed God’s self in the clack-clack of those two branches.
Isn’t this how it always is with God? That God is never fully revealed to us, it is always in part? What we see of God is a reflection on a piece of broken mirror, a glimpse through a dark glass. To see God face-to-face would be too much for us and so God comes to us in another way. God speaks to us in whispers. God appears to us in shadows. But by God’s grace for us, it can be enough.
Matthew says that the Magi noticed a new star in the sky, one among the billions and billions that are there, a star that wouldn’t have been noticed at all unless you were looking for it. It wasn’t much to go on—one star—but still they went, and it isn’t easy to follow a star, but they tried, correcting their course again and again by its fickle light. The wonder of it all is that they found what they were looking for, and that even then they weren’t disappointed. It was just a baby, a little boy. Not much to go on, really. If you hadn’t been following stars and searching him out you might have missed him altogether. But they found him, and for two reasons: 1) they were looking, and 2) there was someone to be found.
In our search for God, for what is Holy in the world, it is always like this. Yes, we have to look and listen, but also there is someone to be found. We are not just overworking our imaginations to find God in the knocking together of two branches, or in the dim light of a star, or in a baby’s wet smile—God is there. When we really look, when we really listen, we have to decide that either we are finding God in everything or God is, in fact, everywhere to be found. So we come to church, not to be seen by others, not to do our religious duty, but to seek and find—to be reminded again that God is with us in every moment and in all things. In silence, in the flickering light of a candle, the swell of organ music, the feel of another hand in ours, the smell of green plants, the right word at the right time, the joy of human laughter—nothing much to go on, really. No splendor crashing through the ceiling. No billboards suddenly appearing, only a glimpse, a whisper, but also a breathless kind of certainty that God is with us, that we are not alone.
I think it happened for the Magi. They followed a star. They worshipped a baby. In the end, says Matthew, “they went home by another way.” Surely he means that they took a different route than the one they had taken to get to Bethlehem. They didn’t go through Jerusalem again. But surely it wasn’t only the route that had changed. They, too, were different. They had felt that fierce lurch of excitement that Buechner speaks of, that feeling that this was only daybreak, only the smell of summer coming, only starting back again for home. But with lumps in their throats and crazy grins on their faces, and beauty falling wild and soft like rain, they worshipped. “Just a boy,” they must have thought. “Just a baby! But praise God. Give thanks.”
And they did, and we do, and with any luck our search for what is holy today will not be in vain. In the singing of hymns, the praying of prayers, the listening for a word from God, we too may feel that fierce lurch of excitement and know that we are in the whispering Presence. With lumps in our throats and crazy grins on our faces, we too may praise him, give thanks, and go home by another way. Amen.
