“They left for their own country by another road.”[1]
How many times, I wonder, does God show us another road, another way?
Think of the scriptural stories you
know. Noah and the ark? Destruction was going to happen for everyone, yet Noah
listened and took God’s less traveled, watery, way. The Israelites, pursued by
the Egyptians, thought their road ended at the Red Sea. Death seemed certain;
yet God’s road led through the waters and lo: opened on the other side. The
Palm Sunday road, the road Jesus trod followed by cheering crowds became a road
of death. That same road led Jesus to the cross and became the road less
traveled to salvation for the thief crucified with him. The road to Emmaus:
where the disciples mourned the death of Jesus and could not quite believe the
resurrection. And Jesus joined them on the road. The disciples saw the Jesus
road opening before them in the breaking of the bread.
The magi, the astrologers, came to
Jesus from the road that led them from Herod. Now despite all our cherished
stories, these men were probably “neither wise, nor three.” [2]
The closest we can come to what and who they really were – despite our biblical
translators calling them “wise men” – is magicians, astrologers, seers into the
future. And Matthew’s gospel never tells us how many there were. Historical
assumptions because of the gifts mentioned in Matthew give us the idea that
three gifts meant three gift-givers. These assumptions were supported by
tradition.
These magi, these astrologers or
magicians, may indeed have been chosen to make Matthew’s continual point in his
gospel. The point that it is not the wise that come to the Jesus road; it is
the foolish, those with no sense, with non-sense, with open hearts and minds,
rather than fully stuffed intellects expecting intellectual revelation that
makes sense.
Why, after all, is this truth from
Matthew so appealing to us? Why do some churches spend hours coaching young
children to carefully bear gifts down a long aisle in procession for Nativity
or Epiphany plays? Because we are seeking another road, a road that is neither
wise nor traveled by only three. We are seeking a road that is another road, a
road not taken by many, but certainly more than three. We are seeking a road
less traveled and less crowded; a road that leads to God. We are seeking, not
the wise road, or the magical road, but the Jesus road. We are seeking the road
whereon the imagination can run free and we can become the church God is
calling us to be as we continue to follow Jesus.
So what would happen if we forgot our
wisdom and our good sense and our numbering of threes or fours, or twenty-fours
or thousands of dollars or paying the bills and simply took the Jesus road?
What would we look like, act like; travel like, on the Jesus road?
There is only one Jesus road, you know.
And once traveled on, we can never go back to the other road. This is why we
take the busier road, the road with all the traffic. It’s an easier road, a
safer road, a road we know. But as Robert Frost said in his well-known poem, The Road not Taken, he kept the first
for another day but knew he would never return. And because he took the road
less traveled by, it has made all the difference. And so it is.
The road of the wise leads to wise
decisions, decisions that are the ways of the world, the ways of the
corporation, the ways of the sensible. The road of the wise leads to pinched
and scarce and small decisions. The road of the wise leads to decisions that
scrimp and save and shrink the power of God in this place.
The Jesus road, the road less traveled,
is the road of foolishness. The Jesus road leads to decisions of the heart that
are the way of the Master. The Jesus
road leads to large decisions. The Jesus road is inviting and exciting. The Jesus
road leads to decisions of generosity and increases God’s power in this place.
Once
we travel the Jesus road we will never come back to the same place. We will
travel on and on and recount with delight how God is working in this place. We
will travel through God’s country by another road, the road less traveled by,
and that will make all the difference.
The Road not Taken[3]
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2016
[1] Matthew 2:12b (NRSV)
[2] Props to The Rev Matthew
Young, St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Newport, KY, USA for his sermon title in
2011.
[3] http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717
Accessed 2 January 2011
