Matthew 2:1-12
Questions!
Good questions … good faith!
The wise men ask a very good question.
Where can we find him?
I’d like to spend some time with you this morning on that very question … where can we find Jesus?
Let’s get right to it:
We begin with the Bible.
We read it every Sunday, we preach from it, and preach about it …
We read and study it during the week … enough books have been written about the Bible to fill ten thousand shelves, and then some.
Seminaries train preachers to proclaim it … whole publishing houses are devoted to it …
A strange book full of odd people and mind-teasing ideas … a book that has been loved and attacked … torn apart a thousand different ways … an object of study for scholars and pastors … an object of disdain for the cynical … a book of comfort for millions.
Where can we find Jesus?
The Bible is a good place to begin …
The primary source …
The gospel stories …
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John …
Each with their own story, their own unique take on things; their own point of view …
Think of the gospels as long sermons written for specific congregations at a specific point in time …
No one sermon says it all, and no one gospel says it all.
As time evolved in the first 100 years of the church’s life, there were many writings …
The Gospel of Thomas …
The Gospel of Peter …
The Gospel of Judas …
And a host of smaller documents …
But as the churches worshipped and studied, four gospels emerged and claimed priority … folks read them, heard them, preached and taught them … these four gospels worked well … in spite of differences, there’s an essential coherence – after awhile, the four gospels were added to the Bible … along with Paul’s letters and other writings, including a very strange book we call Revelation.
It didn’t take long for this to happen … the four gospels and most of the New Testament as we have it today was settled by the mid-part of the second century … tried and tested by the early church in the worst of times … the earliest Christians found these materials to be reliable and worthy of our reading … above all else, these documents give us Jesus.
I’m glad that four gospels emerged … one wouldn’t have been enough; ten or twelve would have been too much.
Like good cooking – not just one spice; nor too many – in good cooking, spices work together to make the food the best it can be … these four gospels, like fine spices, work together, to give us a tantalizing portrait of Jesus … never quite settled, always just beyond our reach … as it should be.
We cannot put Jesus into a box … though many have tried.
He cannot be held by one single idea, or one single book … though some have written so.
The gospel picture of Jesus is fluid, moving …
Like a great painting … stand 10 feet away, and you can see the whole picture – the people, the buildings, ships sailing on the seas, storm clouds and lightening … but move closer, to get a more detail, and what happens?
The picture disappears into a swirl of color and brush strokes …
Up close, we can see the work of the artist … but step back, and we can see the picture.
Up close, we can see the handiwork of Luke and Matthew … but step back, we will see Jesus.
We find Jesus in the Bible … a good place to begin, and no matter where or how we do it, sooner or later, we have to deal with the Bible.
Folks can say, “Aw, that Bible makes no sense to me,” and they’re right about some of it … it’s a strange book.
Others can say, “It gives me comfort,” and they’re right, too.
We find Jesus in the Bible … it’s the Bible that leads us to Bethlehem … the stable, the town, the shepherds and the angels …
But that’s only the beginning …
Jesus is more than a memory …
More than just a famous person …
Jesus is Spirit … Jesus is love … the love of God up close and personal … here and now!
Jesus is risen from the dead … ascended into heaven … and there, by the Father’s side, Jesus continues to reconcile the world and bring peace to creation.
It’s an on-going work, the work of Jesus.
There is yet no reconciliation in any final sense.
Peace remains elusive …
So the work goes on …
By the power of the Holy Spirit …
A gentle power … a subtle influence … a steady pressure …
In and through the church …
And that’s the next part of our journey … The church …
Tall steeples in crowded cities …
A storefront in a tough part of town …
A thatched roof in Haiti …
Someone’s living room …
A mega-complex in Orange County …
Organ music and rock ‘n roll hymns …
Clergy decked out in all the robes …
Or wearing slacks and a sport shirt …
The church …
Presbyterian and Reformed …
Roman Catholic and Orthodox …
Holy Rollers and Episcopalians …
Southern Baptists and Unitarian Universalists …
The quietness of a Quaker meeting …
The shouting of a Pentecostal prayer gathering …
The staid singing of ancient hymns …
The clap-your-hands energy of praise songs …
The church in all of its splendor and confusion …
The church wherein the name of Jesus is lifted up and singled out …
Jesus the teacher …
Jesus the prophet …
Jesus the example …
Jesus the Savior … who died for our sins …
And gives us the Father …
Opens wide the doors of heaven …
Teaches us compassion and mercy …
Reveals the dark contours of our soul …
Loves us and leads us …
Stills the storm and heals the soul …
Talks to the lonely woman at the well …
Calls Zacchaeus down from the tree …
Heals the blind man …
Welcomes the children …
Sends the angry mob away after writing in the dust …
We sing about Jesus …
We surrender our lives to him …
We pray to him, through him and with him …
We wonder what he meant …
We study his words …
We like most of them … we’re confused by some of them, and not too sure about a few of them …
We’re the church, or at least one part of it … we’re part of the story, but we’re not the whole story …
A man died and went to heaven … St. Peter met him at the gate, welcomed him, and then took him on a tour, along the golden streets … to a very large home … into the hallway and along the corridors … On various doors, signs … Methodists in this room … Catholics across the hallway … Quakers upstairs … Presbyterians over there … As they were walking through the mansion, Peter suddenly put his finger to his lips and hushed the man … and started to tip toe past one of the rooms … Peter turned and said, “Quiet now – we’re walking by the Baptists; they think they’re the only ones here.”
We’re the church, or at least just one part of it … but our part is real … and it’s reliable!
Here is where we can find Jesus … because Jesus promised to be with us … wherever two or three are gathered in his name … the church in Corinth … the church in Philippi … a church in the Cameroon, or Covenant on the Corner … Jesus is with us … never to leave us or forsake us … at our side, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The church is a place where we find Jesus.
But there’s still more to the story …
Jesus is the Word of God, and by the power of the Word, God created the heavens and the earth …
John’s gospel says it well:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
We find Jesus in the world …
In the brilliant red and yellows of a rose garden …
In the buzz of a hummingbird’s wing …
In the crash of a wave and the cry of a gull …
The marvelous flight of a pelican …
The march of ants across our kitchen floor on their endless quest for food …
In the love of a dog …
And the smell of fresh baked bread …
We see Jesus in our friends and family …
The laughter of children …
A box Crayolas …
And a bag of fresh popcorn shared with a lover …
We find Jesus in the passion of political commitment and the quest for justice …
The sacrifice of an Albert Schweitzer who gives up multiple careers to build a hospital in Africa …
Mother Teresa in the streets of Calcutta …
Dag Hammerskjold leading the United Nations …
Martin Luther King, Jr, marching in Selma …
We see Jesus in a scientist deep into cancer research …
A teacher with a passion for inner-city children …
A surgeon removing a tumor …
An artist with a brush …
A singer with a song …
An athlete on a diving board …
We see Jesus in a man who gets up every morning to go to work …
A woman who pursues an acting career …
A child who dreams of big things …
A wife who cares for her ailing husband …
A family who cares for a special-needs child …
And on and on it goes …
We find Jesus all over the world …
In every prayer and every kindly deed …
In every moment of grace …
In every act of forgiveness …
In every deed of courage …
We find Jesus in the human struggle to love and be loved …
We find Jesus hidden in the human heart …
In poetry and music …
In pottery and dance …
We find Jesus all around us …
And in a very special way, Jesus himself reminds us – we find him in the face of the poor … in the tears of the sorrowing … in the least of the least …
Elie Weisel, a survivor of Buchenwald, tells the story of a gruesome hanging … forced to watch … as the hanged men writhed in their agony, and one in particular, a boy – not heavy enough to strangle himself … struggling at the end of a rope …
A man cries out, “Where’s God?”
And someone says, “There, on that gallows, that’s God.”
Where do we find Jesus?
In the light and in the dark …
In the sweet and in the bitter …
In the garden and on the gallows …
I am with you always, says Jesus.
So, where do we find Jesus?
Like the wise men, we find him in Bethlehem …
We find him in the gospel stories …
We find Jesus in the church …
We find Jesus in the world all around us …
We find Jesus in the hard places …
Jesus is everywhere …
All the time …
And forever faithful …
Struggling with us to make a good world …
Healing and helping …
Dying on a thousand crosses every day … on a thousand Calvaries around the world …
Moving stones away and defeating death …
Where do we find Jesus?
Everywhere …
And finally, in our heart …
The heart Jesus made …
The heart Jesus fills and floods with love …
The heart of faith …
The heart of kindness …
The heart that loves …
Your heart and mine.
That’s where we find Jesus!
Amen and Amen!
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