A sermon preached at St. Mary’s by Clare Hayns on 5th January 2025
Matthew 2. 1-12
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter”
This is the first verse of the wonderful poem by T.S Elliot called ‘The Journey of the Magi’ that you may be familiar with. In it, Elliot imagines the story we’ve just heard in our gospel reading from the perspective of the magi, these authentic spiritual seekers.
There is some elements of creative imagination within the poem of course, but he reflects on what they must have left behind in order to follow the star to encounter the child in the manger in Bethlehem.
“The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces… the silken girls bringing sherbet”.
When they eventually encounter the Christ child everything is changed. The final verse of the poem puts it:
“All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our palaces, these kingdoms,
But no longer at ease there, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death”
The Maji seek God, encounter the Christ child, and are transformed.
It’s the beginning of another new year, the Christmas meals have all been cooked and eaten; the guests, if we’ve had them, have gone, the presents have all been given and received and the decorations are coming down today or tomorrow.
It’s a time for endings and beginnings – birth of new things, the death of some old things we might be pleased to leave behind in 2024. The new year gives us the opportunity to think about our lives and to think about any changes that need to be made. Normally people want to live more healthily, go on a diet or exercise more. I’m never very good with new year’s resolutions as I never seem able to keep them for long. And so often these changes, good and healthy though they may well be, don’t necessarily make a lasting difference to our lives. We may be a bit thinner for a while or be a bit fitter which is all good. But is it enough?
Do we long for something more; a deeper transformation to take place as we head into this new year. For ourselves, and also for our church community, and for the whole community of faith.
I’d like to offer three ideas for us from this story of the Magi’s journey to Bethlehem which might be of help as we think about this.
Acronym SET from the poem:
..but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
SET
1. Seek
2. Encounter
3. Transform
SEEK
On this first Sunday of the season of Epiphany we focus on those spiritual seekers who follow a star to seek the Christ child in a manger.
When we think of the Magi we imagine our Christmas card image with camels, three kings with crowns, royal robes.
Question – how many kings in the nativity story?
Answer – two, Herod and Jesus
Matthew tells of wise men, not kings, and he doesn’t say how many there were. We assume three because of the number of gifts they brought. The Magi are generally thought to have been priest-astrologers, probably from Babylon or Persia.
There was likely to have been a Hebrew population in Persia at the time and they would have been familiar with the Jewish prophecies concerning the Messiah. So perhaps, when they sight a new star, they link it with what they have read and set out to find this new king. Incredibly it is likely that this journey would have taken them over a thousand miles of inhospitable terrain.
In order to seek Jesus, the Magi will have had to leave something of themselves behind. The journey must have been tough in places. Did they lose their way at points? They certainly got waylaid by Herod.
How might we seek God as we move into this new year?
Are we willing to leave something of ourselves behind?
I’d like us to think about this as a church community. How might we seek God’s will for St Mary’s this year? This may be that we decide to meet to pray for the life of the church each week? Or commit ourselves to a prayer walk around the parish.
Encounter
The second point is that once they had sought Christ the Magi encountered Him. They were moved by this encounter.
Verse 10 ‘when they saw that the star had stopped they were overwhelmed with joy’ and on entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage’.
They were overwhelmed with joy and they knelt down and worshipped.
The Christian faith is about an encounter, a relationship with a loving God who first seeks us out – our faith is a relationship not just a belief system. It’s an encounter with God who loves each and everyone one of us. And this isn’t just a one off ‘epiphany moment’, but is a continuous process of encounter.
A few years ago, in early 2022, I had the privilege of going to Bethlehem on pilgrimage and visiting the spot where Jesus was believed to have been born. The Church of the Holy Nativity is in Manger Square and inside the church is the grotto, the oldest church in the world. It was just after Covid lock down and we were one of the very first tour groups allowed into the region. This meant it was quiet and amazingly there were no queues at all for all the sites.
I’d had a tough few years for various reasons, and had been praying I would encounter God during the trip.
We walked down into the grotto and there, to the side on the floor, was a star believed to be the very place Jesus had been born.
And then the rest of the tour group left and suddenly I found myself alone in the grotto. I was there for about 10 minutes and the only other person was a priest praying in Italian. I had the most profound sense of the presence of God, a ‘peace that surpasses all understanding’. All I could do was kneel down, with my head on the star, and worship.
Let us make space to encounter God as we move into 2025. Clearly this doesn’t mean travelling to Bethlehem, as God meets us where we are.
And often, in my experience, we encounter God through other people. I’ve started spending Tuesday lunchtimes in Rose Hill Community Centre and every time I’ve gone, I’ve met someone interesting, who has made me think or lifted my heart in some way.
Seek.
Encounter.
And my final point is ‘Transform’.
Once the Magi had encountered Christ everything changed. We read in Matthew: ‘And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road’.
They couldn’t go back the same way. There is a sense of threat but also a sense that this encounter had changed them.
The final stanza of TS Eliot’s poem puts it so beautifully:
“We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.”
Similarly, we cannot seek and encounter Christ and remain the same. Our Church cannot seriously seek and encounter Christ and remain the same. As we encounter Christ we realise how far from perfect we are – this should lead to a growth in humility. As a church we have much to be humble about and my prayer is that this will lead to transformation and change.
Everything in our world is changing all the time and so surely, we have to be willing to be transformed as well. That might mean changing our habits to free us up to live healthy lives, or it might mean changing our minds when we’ve become stuck, or changing our practices to be more inclusive to others.
So…
“set down
This set down
This”
As we go into this new year, let us be Seekers, let us Encounter Christ, and let us be transformed.
AMEN
The Journey Of The Magi by T S Eliot – Famous poems, famous poets. – All Poetry