Matthew 2:1-12

January 2, 2005

1. Who knows the first word spoken by a human in Matthew’s gospel? I’ll give you some clues. It starts with ‘W’, has five letters, and is an adverb. "Where." "Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews?" "Where?" is a question that we ask everyday. I ask, "Where are my glasses?" I’m forever taking them off to look closely at something, then walking away and leaving them "where?" Richard will tell me where he saw them last. Someone looking for food will ask "Where is the nearest grocery store?" "On the corner of 41^st and Yale" is one answer. Another person doing research might ask "Where does a person find a list of all the kings who ever ruled?" And the answer? "Google it! (That’s a new word which hasn’t made it into the dictionaries yet. To "google" something is to go to google.com on the internet, type in what you want to know, and push the button. Walla! Ten thousand answers appear before your very eyes!) Where? It’s a good question.

2. The Magi asked a "where" question. These men were pagan astrologers from Persia or Babylon. It’s a bit difficult to know what to call them. The only other time we find ‘magi’ in the Bible is in the 8^th chapter of the Book of Acts. There it is translated magician. We do know they were not "kings" as our Christmas carol suggests. And, whatever they were, we don’t know exactly how many there were. So in a few minutes when we sing "We Three Kings of Orient Are" we might want to substitute "We Magi from Orient Are". Whatever they were, and however many they were, we know they interpreted stars and dreams, and when they saw a new star in the skies, they determined that an event of great political importance had happened. It must be a new king! So they traveled toward the direction of the star. "Where is the child?" After a few "where" question, they found the new king, and the rest is history.

3. When we ask "where" questions, we usually ask them because we are preparing for some sort of action. I don’t ask where my glasses are unless I’m ready to see something; we don’t ask where grocery stores are unless we want to go buy food; nobody asks about a list of all the kings who ever rules unless that information is needed for some kind of project. The Magi were no exception. They didn’t ask "Where is the child?" because they were hoping to buy new camels from his parents. They asked "where" he was so they could focus their attention on him, give honor to him. "Where is the star leading us? Where is the child who has been born King?"