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Scriptures :  Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12  Matthew 2:1-12

When I was in my teens, I had a paper route – delivering the Reading Eagle, which was the afternoon edition of the main newspaper for the city of Reading, in Berks County, was my very first job, from which I used the earnings to save up for college.  And so I had my list of addresses, and I was fairly conscientious about walking the paper up to the porch of each house, rather than just tossing it in the yard or wherever it happened to land – and especially in bad weather, I was very careful about putting the paper someplace where it wouldn’t get hit by rain or snow.   And as I’d walk up onto each porch and put the newspaper in door or mail slot or wherever, I’d wonder about the families lived behind each door that was on my paper route.  What were they like – rich or poor, happy or unhappy? Some of the houses were large and tidy and well-kept, with large new cars parked outside; others were run-down looking, their porches strewn with cigarette butts and empty bottles and children’s toys and all manner of odds and ends for me to trip over.  Sometimes as I went to the door I’d hear music or the TV playing, or sometimes the voices of people fighting.  Some homes gave off noticeable odors when I was near the door – some were pleasant odors from cooking or baking such; others not so pleasant; odors of mildew or stale cigarette smoke or overflowing garbage pails or occasionally even a faint whiff of backed up sewage.  I remember one house on my route in particular that, to me, looked abandoned – it was a big old place, with a large front lawn that was always overgrown with weeds, with various broken-down household items scattered about in the grass and weeds; there was no front walk, just a path worn in the lawn from the sidewalk to the front door; the wooden front porch had loose boards and sagged; the screen door was broken, and the outside woodwork clearly hadn’t been painted in decades.  I never saw any lights on inside, and I often wondered if anyone actually lived there – and yet every afternoon I delivered a newspaper and by the next afternoon, someone had picked it up.  So I figured maybe Dracula lived there and only came out for his newspaper after midnight.  

Now, once a year, around Christmas, the Reading Eagle printed a calendar for the next year, and it was understood that this was a time for the paperboy to knock on each door on his route, hand whoever came to the door a calendar, and hope for a little tip or Christmas present.  My one chance a year to meet everyone, or nearly everyone, on my route.  And boy, were there surprises!  Some of the families with the affluent looking, tidy, well-kept homes would take the calendar from my hand and hand me a quarter or 50 cents as a tip – which even 40 years ago didn’t go very far.  And some of the families with the run-down homes gave me the biggest tips – including the abandoned-looking Dracula’s castle house.  I never actually did get to meet the owner, but Dracula or whoever lived there left an envelope taped to the door with a Christmas card and a ten dollar bill inside, which was a huge amount of money for me back then.  And of course, there were families with nice homes who gave me nice five-dollar tips and bags of cookies and families with run down homes who had little money to spare, and I realized that from them, even a dollar at the end of the year was a stretch and a sacrifice.  All of which is to say, judging by appearances was misleading – both stinginess and generosity came at times from the most unlikely places.

Our Gospel reading today hits us over and over again with contrasts between appearance and reality, contrasts between what the people in the story expect to happen and what actually happens to them.  First of all, we have a bunch of strangers, wise men from the East, reading the stars and going in search of a baby born as the king of the Jews.  So, following their expectations, they go to Jerusalem, to the royal palace, because of course that’s where you’d expect to find a crown prince, a baby destined to be king.  Except that’s not where they found the baby destined to be king, and Herod, the puppet king propped up by Rome, not only didn’t know about the birth of any baby, but wasn’t any too happy to hear that he had competition.  And in any case, Herod likely wasn’t sure what to make of these strange, oddly dressed, foreign accented men from the East who had landed on his doorstep.  Just as, if strangers dressed in traditional middle-eastern garb – or even strangers dressed as I am today – landed on our doorstep, after we’d gotten done peering at them through the window and gawking, we’d probably had second and third thoughts about opening the door to them.  Especially in this case – these wise men would have come from the very same countries that had conquered and exiled the Jews centuries before, and so Herod and his folks had plenty of reason to be suspicious of their intentions.

So Herod and his counselors consulted the Scriptures and told the wise men that, no, the baby wasn’t at the palace, but rather in Bethlehem, a small town a few miles down the road.  It was there, in that small place, in the most modest humble of circumstances,  that they found the Babe they’d been looking for.   Doubtless Mary and Joseph, like Herod, were startled by the arrival of the Wise Men, and may even have been a bit slow to accept their gifts – just as, if someone in middle eastern robes came to our front door and handed me a box, I might be tempted to ask impolite questions such as “Who are you and why are you here and what am I supposed to do with this?”   But the presents were accepted, and Wise Men, having completed their mission, departed for their own country by a road different from the route by which they’d arrived. 

The story of the Wise Men is closely related to our reading from Isaiah, which was written shortly after the Jews had returned from exile to rebuild in Jerusalem.  Remember that those in Jerusalem at the time lived with memories – their own, or those handed down from their parents – of the Babylonians having come decades earlier to destroy Jerusalem, carry off its wealth, and march them off to exile in Babylon.  It’s understandable that, because of these memories, as well as because of their own distinctive laws and customs, that the Jews would not have welcomed outsiders easily.  But Isaiah paints a different picture, of foreigners coming to Jerusalem, not to take, but to give; not to curse, but to bless – “Your sons shall come from far away and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms; then your heart will thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the seas shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you; they shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”    Again, this passage from Isaiah turns our expectations upside-down – and the coming of the wise men, with their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, in a small way shows us this Scripture coming to life.

We worship a God who continually delights in turning our expectations upside down.  He sends his Son to be born, not in a palace in Jerusalem, but in a stable in a small, nothing village of, at that time, maybe a thousand people, located a few miles down the road – a town that today is in Palestinian territory, by the way.  The religious and political leaders among his own people, who might have been expected to welcome him, turned against him.  Instead, Jesus’ birth is welcomed by shepherds, who lived on the fringes of their society, and foreigners who traveled far to follow a star. 

And, for us here at Emanuel, this means we’re in the right place for God’s work to happen.  We’re not in a prominent place – Bridesburg isn’t Center City Philadelphia, let alone Wall Street or Washington DC, and you’ll find no movers and shakers of society here at Emanuel.  Instead, we’re in an out of the way place, a humble place, which is the right place to be if we wish to encounter God. 

And, although we’re unlikely to see any Wise Men from the east coming our way, Emanuel has gotten more visitors and even members, some from far distant places, such as Isaac and Stella, who come from Liberia.  We have more people traveling distances – in some cases just a block or two, in other cases a half hour drive or more across state lines, or an hour-long bus ride or more – in hopes of finding Jesus in this place – or in hopes of sharing their experience of Jesus with us and others.  And those who come this way bring gifts – not gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but gifts nonetheless – sometimes financial, sometimes gifts of time and talent, and sometimes just the gift of a life experience different from our own.  And though I know Bridesburg doesn’t always go out of its way to welcome to outsiders, we at Emanuel have found and will continue to find that, at times, the people who are most different from us, the ones who just don’t fit in at all and whom we may resent or avoid or even fear, may wind up being the very people God has sent to teach us and to bless us.  And, in the same way, humble as our church is, I’m convinced that God is using us and will use us in even greater ways to be a blessing to our neighbors, those who attend, and those who don’t, but whose lives are better for our being here.

“Then, opening their treasure-chests, [the Wise Men] offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”  May we be open to receiving the gifts others bring us, and may our treasure chests be open to bless our neighborhood in Christ’s name.  May it be so among us. Amen.