Well Happy New Year 2013 to you all. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to write more and to blog more. So here is my Sunday sermon for Tomorrow Epiphany.

Is Christmas over and done with for another year?

Well the tinsel and cards and trees are supposed to be down today. The presents will all be put away, the thank you letters on the way to be written and Christmas is over again for another year.

It feels that way as we come to this Sunday –we are all into the next year and already the things of Christmas have been forgotten.

But this Sunday when we celebrate the Epiphany forces us back to the new born King and to see him again.

And as we look at the wise men it makes us realise that Christ – the baby isn’t just for Christmas but for life, as the experience of the magi and the lessons they teach us make us think of our Christian journeys and our response to the new born King not only for a season but for each day of the year.

So here we are again looking at the coming of the kings- magi – wise men what ever you want to call them. Coming from the East following the star and arriving at some point after the birth in Bethlehem to see Mary and Joseph and the baby.

So what do they teach us as we start this new year together. Firstly - God makes every effort to teach those who are far away from him

First, we have to remember these wise men were likely Gentiles, and not Jews who had come seeking the king of the Jews.

The Jews thought the promised Messiah was for the Jews, not the Gentiles. In fact, all the first followers of Christ were almost exclusively Jewish.

The Christ was supposed to deliver them from their sins. He was supposed to deliver them from their oppressors, and yet the signal to the wise men was that God was calling them as Gentiles to the Christ. Second, they didn’t even share the religion of the Jews, they were Magi, which was a combination of a learned scientist with cultic astrologer.

They knew science as well as magic. They were the academians of their time,
What this tells us is that God never abandons anyone – no one is too far away from him.

If God can reach pagan Gentile astrologers, he is still working on people who we may think are too far gone. God never gives up on anyone and he uses whatever means he can to help lead them to Christ.

In this case God sent them a message using an astronomical event, a star, to signal to them that they needed to search for the child born as king of the Jews.

God used a language they understood – the language of astrology to bring them to see Christ – so God uses a star.

Sometimes we look around at society and at others around us in our communities and loose hope that individuals will ever think of God let alone come to a relationship with him – they seem so far away- there seems so little hope.

And yet we need to be people of hope as we think of the magi- God reveals himself in different ways to people, and often it is through us that he does so too.

We may be the person whose lives point to him in how we act or react to different situations- are we open this year to be used by God to be a star- pointing to Jesus?  Because God never gives us on anyone.

Secondly-God wants us to diligently seek him  By that I mean we must seek out a relationship with Christ, or God through Christ.

The danger we fall into is thinking that by knowing about Jesus is enough. The truth is we can have all the knowledge of the Bible, we can follow God’s commandments, and still miss what the Christian faith is all about, seeking Christ until we find him.

These Gentile, pagan astrologers, with only partial information about a Jewish Messiah set off on a journey of faith to find the Christ, the king of the Jews, a journey which is estimated at 500-1000 miles.

It may have taken them 3 months perhaps even longer to get to Bethlehem. That journey cost them time, money, and it cost them their precious gifts.

We know these Magi only had partial knowledge about the Bible and the Jewish Messiah because otherwise they would have known to look for the infant in Bethlehem, but they had faith, and made an effort to seek out the Christ child.

On the other hand we see the religious community in Jerusalem. The people with a firm grasp on the Bible, people who lived out the letter of the law as written in Scripture.

They did all of the ritual and followed all of the commandments. They knew about God from their Holy Scriptures. Yet, when the Wise Men show up, Herod and these religious leaders, were stunned to find out the Messiah had been born, in fact it says they were “disturbed,” or “troubled” upon hearing the news.

They had either not seen the star in the sky, or were unable to interpret its meaning. They had no clue their king had been born, and it had to take some pagan, Gentile, astrologers to tell them about the Messiah.

Did the religious community seek the Messiah earnestly – or did they just have some vague hope.

We are told to seek God – to take opportunity to find him in our lives.

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (Hebrews 11:6).”

And when we find him, when we have a relationship with God through Christ, everything else falls into place. The magi were rewarded for their journey of faith to meet Christ.

When we come to church, when we live good lives is it because our primary focus is on seeking Christ, to search for him to try draw nearer to him? Or are we like the religious leaders in Jesus day who think that doing our religious duty is enough, following God’s commandments, being at church, maybe even knowing the Bible really well?

Then thirdly we need to offer of ourselves/worship Christ

Worship is not an option with Christ. We need to worship him. Once the wise men reached Jesus it says the first thing they did was worship, just like the shepherds who had already visited Jesus and worshipped by singing praises to God. It says of the Magi:

NIV Matthew 2:11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh

They bowed down and worshipped. One way to worship was to bow low before another. It signaled ones submission to the other as having authority over them.

How do we in our worship show that Jesus is our Lord- how do we in our daily lives show this too.

Then they worshipped in another way. They presented an offering, three gifts were presented to Jesus as a sign of worship

We worship when we give our offering of ourselves, our offering of our time our offering of our finanaces.

 We worship by offering that which is valuable to us. The gifts which the Magi brought were very valuable, they were given at great cost to themselves. The Christ deserved a gift worthy of his kingship.- Gifts of gold, frankinsence and myrhh.

Each of these gifts came at a significant cost to the bearers. Worship should cost us something.  – What are we going to give as our offering to God to Christ- this Epiphany, this year?

And then finally the Magi remind us that we need to continue to be open to God’s Spirit – The wise men obeyed God’s direction by not returning to Herod.

The journey to the Christ and their reward of faith had taught them to remain open to God’s leading.

There is never a point in our lives when we can say that we’ve arrived in the sense that we’ve got the Christian life all figured out. We need to seek him, we need to worship him, but these aren’t a one time event. We must continue to remain open to God’s leading. Scripture concludes by telling us about the Magi:

NIV Matthew 2:12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

Even though the wise men had found the Christ child and had worshipped him, they weren’t done. It wasn’t, “okay I did my duty, I’m glad that is over let’s get back to regular life.”

Their seeking God didn’t end with meeting Christ. They continued to remain open to God. God gave them a message in a dream. Remember these are men whose job it was to interpret dreams, and so God spoke to them again in a way they would understand, in a dream.

They recognized this dream as a message from God and they obeyed. They didn’t go back to tell Herod, because little did they know Herod was making plans to try to kill this king of the Jews.

The point is clear for us. Just because we have sought Christ, and found him, doesn’t mean we are at the end of our journey. It is only the beginning. God wants us to be open to the leadings of his Holy Spirit. It may not be a dream, but God still speaks to us in other ways such as through Scripture, through prayer, to lead us away from danger and to stay focused on his plan.

So has your encounter with the new born King ended with the New year and the putting away of the Christmas decorations – or will it continue to challenge you through this year too.

God calls us to seek him just like the Magi – he reminds us through them that no one is too far away from him and that he speaks to us all in ways we can understand. He reminds us to offer ourselves to him in the fullest sense and to be continually open to the journey of faith and where he will lead us to this year.