When You Follow a Star and Find a Stable
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When You Follow a Star and Find a Stable
Matthew 2: 1-12
There is the story about two brothers who were placed in two separate rooms.
One was a pessimist and one was an optimist. The pessimist was placed in a room full of treats and toys. The optimist was placed in a room full of . . . well, manure.
After an hour, the pessimist in the room full of toys was deflated and forlorn.
“What’s the matter,” his parents asked him. “Well, half these toys are broken already, and I’m sure you’re going to ask me to clean up this mess I’ve made and I don’t want to.
Plus I’ve eaten all the candy and I think I’m getting a stomach ache.”
With that, the parents went to check on their optimistic son, who was cheerfully playing with a big smile on his face. “What are you so happy about?” they asked him. “You can’t fool me,” he said, “where there’s manure, there’s got to be a pony.”
In Matthew chapter 2, we read the story of the Magi or wise men following a star.
Many of us have heard it each Christmas since we were young children.
We heard it read again today. The question I have for you this morning is this:
“What happens when you’ve been following a star and it leads you to a stable?”
What happens when all of a sudden, after thinking that something grand
and glorious would be at the other end, you end up in the backyard barn?
And there, instead of a palace and a king on a throne, you find a little baby
held by his mother. It’s nothing like what you had anticipated.
How do you react when you follow a star and find a stable?
Every one of us can remember times in our life when we’ve followed a star.
Everything looked so promising. The future was ripe with potential and possibilities.
Go back to your high school graduation yearbook and take a look at the pictures.
Some people will have performed far better than you ever imagined,
while others who you thought might be the stars of life,
well, their lives didn’t unfold as originally expected.
College students graduate with their diploma tucked under their arm, ready to go
out and win the world, but they find out the job they wanted is not the one the got.
For some, the boss calls you into the office, and as you sit their expectantly,
you are told, in so many words, that you’ve been passed over for the promotion.
For others, the news is even bleaker,cutbacks, downsizing, outsourcing,
the bottom line, these are just the latest ways to say you’re out of work.
You walk out of the office in a daze, realizing that even though
you’ve been following a star, you ended up in a stable.
Many Saturday afternoons throughout the year, right here on the altar,
the bride and groom make their wedding vows before God and their guests.
The romance is real, love is in the air, so promising, so beautiful.
But what happens when the honeymoon ends and reality sets in:
bills to pay, household chores to share, emotional needs to meet?
The star which once flickered in each other’s eyes often becomes a stable
filled with dirty laundry andbroken promises,resentment and bitter disappointments.
In the cartoon strip Peanuts, Lucy sometimes likes playing the role of psychiatrist.
She puts up her little sign: Psychiatric Help - 5cents. The price is too good to be true.
As usual, her first customer is Charlie Brown, and this is what she says to him,
“You, Charlie Brown, are afoul ball in the line drive of life. You’re a miscue.
You’re three putts on the 18th green. You’re a seven-ten split in the tenth frame.
You’re lost in the shadow of your own goalpost. You’re a called third strike.
You’re a missed basket at the buzzer.You’re a bug on the windshield of life.
Do you understand? Do I make myself clear, Charlie Brown?”
The beautiful part of the Christmas story of the wise men,
is in what they do when they come to the stable in Bethlehem.
Through their actions, they teach us a couple of very important lessons about life.
And I believe that all wise men and women throughout the ages have done
these very same things when they come upon a stable, when they come to a place
or situationthat isn’t exactly what they planned for or were expecting.
First, when the wise find a stable, they still look for God.
The wise of every age, when handed a difficult situation,
don’t panic about the problem, but hold steady and say,
“God is somewhere in this stable. There’s something I can learn.
I’ll hold steady because I believe God is somewhere in this mess.”
One of the things I like about the Bible is that the writers never try to make
the Biblical characters better than they really are. They just tell it like it is.
Look at Joseph in the Old Testament. He understood how to find the good in the bad.
Remember all the things that he went through?He was sold into slavery by his brothers.
Potiphar’s wife accused him of a crime he did not commit.
He was thrown into jail in a foreign land and his life was seemingly over.
He experienced one devastating setback after another.
But as the story goes, God was to eventually raise him up to be the prime ministerof Egypt. When he and his brothers were finally reunited, do you recall what Josephsaid to them?
He said, “What you meant for evil, God worked for good.”
Joseph had the ability to see God in the stable.
Look at Job who found himself sitting in the ash heap.
He was good man, a person of substance with solid values,
and the will and fortitude to live by his God-given convictions.
Yet, there he was, going through persecution, loss of family and fortune,
and so-called friends standing around telling him to curse God and die.
But Job didn’t listen to their advice. Instead he said,
“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Job was able to see God in the stable of life.
Look at King David, writing the 23rd Psalm in a cavewhile fleeing
from his own son who wanted to take his life and take over his throne.
David certainly possessed the ability to follow the stars of life,
yet when he found himself in the stable, he saw God there too.
You see, the spiritually wise of every generation see God,
not only in palaces,but also in the caves and prisons and stables of life.
You may be walking into a “stable” in your life.
You’ve been following a star and it looked so good,
then all of a sudden you wonder, “Is this really it?”
But remember, wise men and women of every generation
possess the ability to see God in the stables of life.
When the wise are confronted by a stable, they continue to look for God.
And point number two, when the wise find a stable, they still offer their very best to God.The wise give their best when they come to a stable. That isn’t our natural inclination, is it? You see, instead of offering gold, frankincense and myrrh, our temptation is to hold back. In fact, when we find ourselves in a stable instead of a palace,
we’re often tempted to not give anything, much less our very best.
When the wise men came to the stable, they didn’t withhold anything.
They didn’t look at one another and say, “Hey, who’s going to know if we just leave our gold and gifts on the camel caravan. This is just a kid in a backyard barn.
Let’s keep our stuff to ourselves, maybe have a party or two before we head
back East, and no one will be the wiser.” Exactly, no one would be the wiser.
The difference between the average and above average person
lies injust three words: and then some.Great persons of God
and great persons of society, always give their very best and then some.
They not only do what’s expected of them, they are willing to walk
the extra mile and then some. Jesus was that kind of Saviour.
In the Garden of Gethsemene, what did Jesus say?
Not ‘Oh well, it’s been a pretty good while it lasted,
but I’m giving up on these fickle and obtuse human beings.”
No, Jesus said, “Not my will, but your will be done.”
And when he hungupon the cross, he didn’t say,
“Look at those so-called friends who turned their back on me,
who betrayed and abandoned me when I needed them most.”
No, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Jesus laid down his life,so we might have life in him.
Do you really want to experience life in Jesus? Abundant life?
Don’t wait for eternity. You see, whether it’s in your giving to God and to others,
working at your job, building your relationships, investingin your family,
the mark of an above average person is that he or she is never satisfied
with just meeting the minimal requirements to make it through life.
No, when Jesus lives in your heart and his life inspires your daily living,
then you will walk the second mile, give the extra effort, and then some,
because your life is patterned after the ultimate giver of life, Jesus Christ.
When the wise come to the stables of life, they offer their very best.
In closing, let me share with you something that I think is very important.
Listen carefully. Two hundred years ago, people were following with bated breath
the march of Napoleon and they waited feverishly for news of war.
And all the while in their homes, babies were being born.
But who cold think about babies? Everybody was thinking about battles.
In one year alone1809, there came into the world a host of heroes.
Gladstone was born in Liverpool, England and Tennyson at Somersby.
Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Massachusetts. Abraham Lincoln drew his first breath
in Kentucky, and music was enriched by the birth of Felix Mendelssohn in Hamburg. But nobody thought about babies. Everybody was thinking about battles.
Yet, which of the battles of 1809 mattered more than the babies born in 1809?
What’s been on your mind in 2017? Snowstorms, the Maple Leafs, Donald Trump?
We imagine that God can only manage the world through the powerful and mighty, when all the while, God makes his appearance into human history as a helpless
and dependant child.When a wrong needs righting, or a truth needs proclaiming,
or a people need liberating, God first sends a baby into the world to do it.
When the Magi eventually found the stable, they also found a baby.
I’m going to be looking for God in the baptisms in 2018.
Do you realize that you may just be tucking into their bed
at nightthe next Martin Luther or Mother Teresa?
Our children are watching us. They see our Christian example,
our commitment to the Lord, our patterns of giving, our acts of service.
They are storing all that away in their hearts, and someday,
they will become what they have learned over the years.
If this most recent Christmas season is about anything, it’s about a baby,
God’s baby, born in a stable, who changed the world forever.
So when we come to the stables in our lives, let us be wise and remember
to look for God there and bring him the very best we have to offer.
And if we bow on humble knee and worship the Christ Child,
as the wise did on that very first Christmas, then we too,
will discover anew the God, not only of the stars, but the stable.
That’s the reality of the nativity.