And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. I think that I have preached more on this one verse than any other single verse in scripture.

Part of it is that Matthew’s story of the Magi is the only story of the Magi, the only pure Epiphany story, so it comes each year this week.

But part of it is this particular verse that I just can’t resist. Every year I try to go find something new and different in the story of the Magi, and I often do, but then it comes to time to actually write the sermon and I come back to this verse, because we shouldn’t ever try to enter a new year, as Karl Malden – for those of you old enough to remember – as Karl Malden would put it, we shouldn’t leave Bethlehem without it.

And it isn’t just the end of Christmas and the start of the New Year, it is also the perfect verse as God creates a New Consistory here at Clover Hill today, it is the perfect verse for the end and start of every great chapter in our lives. It is this verse that presents the greatest challenge to our faith, and the strongest clues to the way to lead lives of meaning, lives that are a blessing to those around.

We can return, to our own country – our homes and families, our jobs and finances, our visions and fears –we can return to all of the things that we sort of put on hold back in late November by another road, a different way, just as they did, and that God will, in our dreams, give us the guidance that we need.

having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

In the wonderful and wonder-filled story of The Hobbit, which was the prequel to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, we find the memoirs of Bilbo Baggins as he recounts his great adventure and entitles it “There and Back Again”.

And among the things we learn about Bilbo is that no matter how he tried, he could never be the same Hobbit, living in the Shire, as he was.

He was changed by the dangers and triumphs that he had known, as we all are.

Our experiences, our travels, our studies, our joys, our sorrows, all of these things change us, shape us, and we can’t explain ourselves, we can’t understand ourselves without telling our stories of life, as we look back and see those events in a context. Among my historical fantasies has been my wish that we could find a copy of the journal that I am sure those educated Magi must have written.

What a story they would have recorded about going There and Back, just as Bilbo Baggins did!

They would have told of the details of their journey, years spent on the road with nothing but a star to lead them and an unknown destination ahead of them.

And if we had such a book we would know, finally, just how many of them there were. Scripture tells us that there were three gifts, gold and myrrh and frankincense, but it says nothing about the number of givers. Early Church tradition had a dozen of the Magi making the journey, echoing the tribes of Israel and the foreshadowing the apostles in number. And they would have told us what happened on that day when they realized that the star was leading them to Palestine. My speculation has always been that at that moment, as they neared the end of their trip, they were sure that the only place they could possibly have been heading was Jerusalem.

They trusted what they all knew and agreed upon, rather than the star that God had given them.

We know that story, don’t we?

We get so excited about what is coming up and we know, as sure as they knew that a King of the Jews would be in Jerusalem, we know where God is leading us, and so continue on, oblivious to the hurt and pain that we leave behind us. We continue, in the songwriter’s words, to choose “… every wrong direction in (our) lonely way back home”

The Magi spent years following God’s leading and then, right at the end, right at the crucial moment, they figured they knew what came next and stopped looking for the star. They trusted themselves and their wisdom and the result was devastation and pain in Bethlehem as the crazy King Herod tried to stop this heavenly invasion of earth before it had a chance to start.

Just a side note here, Herod was crazy but not stupid, I think he understood Christmas better than anyone else in scripture, better than most people I know today.

Herod knew that this child would ruin his life and the lives of all people like him, he knew that this child would destroy people like him by changing him and the world into something far better than had ever been before. It’s what Christ does he makes us better people, living in a better world.

And so Herod decided to end it before it could start.

And it was the blundering of the Magi that set the stage for Herod.

And isn’t that our experience as well? When we trust what every one knows to be true, rather than trusting God; when we decide what is important and what is not in our lives and our families and our Church and our nation, rather than following the stars of scripture and faith; isn’t that when the bad things begin to happen? Isn’t that when we open the door for people like Herod? Or, worse yet, isn’t that when we become people like Herod?

That was the blunder of the Magi. But to their credit, they learned, they were clearly of the “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” school of wisdom.

they left for their own country by another road.

That’s where we are today. The decorations are being packed, in the poet’s words, the music is being put to sleep and our homes and our lives and our Church are getting back to routines, tasks which are important and potentially sacred and clearly need doing. But just as the Magi didn’t go back to Herod, simply because they were expected to, or just because they were told to, so we don’t have to go back to what we thought was true in November.

And just as Bilbo Baggins was forever changed when he returned home, so we can be changed by what we have heard and seen over these last weeks.

You see, I have always believed that Matthew was trying to tell us more than just what direction the Magi took, he was trying to tell us that their fundamental understanding of the world was different.

That’s what we need to do, we need to understand the world differently then we did in November, we need to realize that real power is not in Jerusalem, or Washington or Trenton, but in common places like Bethlehem and Clover Hill.

We need to understand that if we don’t find and nurture God’s presence in our families, in our relationships then we are never going to discover it in our jobs and our politics.

Now this is probably the point where you expect me to say that we have failed to do this in the past, but we should give it a shot now.

But that wouldn’t be true. I have seen us, in years past, leave Bethlehem fully determined to do life differently. I have watched and participated as we turn our Christmas Eve promises into New Year’s Resolutions, I have watched and participated in more than three decades of Consistory reconstruction projects filled with energy and hope and vision and, for a while, we do succeed, but then sooner or later it all starts to fade, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t fade because our resolutions are too hard for us or our dreams together here are too difficult, no I think it all fades because when you take the ideals of our resolutions and dreams and live with them in the day-to-day realities, they just aren’t as interesting or as much fun as we want them to be.

Yet I have always found that it is in the uninteresting and un-fun stuff where we are most tested. Can we stand the lengthy journey through the wilderness? Can we stand waiting on God’s timing in our lives? Or do we want to rush to the easy obvious answers to our problems whether they are God’s answers or not?

You see, it is not in the crisis but in the routine things where we lose our faith, isn’t it?

I have seen so many of you, and us together as a community of faith, respond with amazing courage and stamina and fidelity and integrity when the crisis comes calling into our lives, but when the weary days come and the routine tasks, the boring things of life envelop us, we surrender our enthusiasm, we stop looking for stars, we figure it’s all the same old, same old and that we know the direction to travel.

But isn’t one of the key lessons of this season that our God is the God of the sacredly ordinary?

A mother, a father and a child – a family, troubled and confused, not much different that mine or yours.

A place, Bethlehem, overlooked by many with nothing special to recommend it except for God’s presence, a place not much different than Clover Hill.

Individual lives to be lived and transformed by love given without measure and without precondition, not much different that our lives. It is in the common place and among the common people that God is found.

We have been to Bethlehem, again, and we heading back to our regular lives, again. But we have this chance, this moment to go differently, to think of all that we have heard and seen and felt these past weeks and to realize that in those regular lives lies the potential for sacred and meaningful living, not in heaven someday, but here today.

Isaiah reminds us that our light has already come, we aren’t waiting for it any longer. The world may still be covered by a deep darkness but we’re not so we need to stop acting like we are!

We have the opportunity to go differently into this new year, this year which will bring changes – anticipated and unknown – into our lives, or to just repeat the same old sins, mistakes and heartaches.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.