There is a story told about two men sitting together on an airplane. As some are wont to do, when strapped together 30,000 feet above where they ought to be, they begin to get acquainted. One man was an astronomer, the other a theologian. After a while, each began to share his understanding of the other’s discipline. The astronomer said, “I believe that all religion can be summed up in the phrase, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” The theologian, somewhat miffed at this simplistic understanding of his scholarly discipline, said, “And all astronomy can be summed up with the phrase, “Twinkle, twinkle, Little Star How I wonder what you are.” Today we look not at astronomy, but at some astronomers who wondered about a star.

The truth is that the astronomer and the theologian should have learned something from the other. There is a mystery in science – or there should be. There is no place for arrogance in science. There is a need to realize to that there are other ways of seeing things, and the truth is to be found in other than scientific categories. And too, the last thing theologians need to do is to be defensive, to think they have to complicate simple truth to make it acceptable, or to explain mystery, or to diminish wonder.

This day is the Day of Wonders – The day when we celebrate ultimate truth – God coming to us in a person, Jesus. Remember how we began this series of sermons five Sundays ago: When God got ready to communicate His greatest idea He wrapped that idea in a person. That’s the meaning of the Incarnation. And how other people respond to this big idea of God wrapped in the person of Jesus teaches us. So today, in this final sermon of the series, we look at the Wise Men. They may not have been astronomers, in the sense of that discipline today - but they were students of the stars. It is generally believed that these men were skilled in philosophy, medicine, and natural science. They were also soothsayers and interpreters of dreams.

“In those ancient days all men believed in astrology. They believed that they could foretell the future from the stars and they believed that a man’s destiny was settled by the star under which he was born. It is not difficult to see how that belief arose. The stars pursue their unvarying courses; they represent the order of the universe. If then there suddenly appeared some brilliant star, if the unvarying order of the heavens was broken by some special phenomenon, it did look as if God was breaking into His own order, and announcing some special thing (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1, The Daily Bible Study)

So, we could spend our time tonight talking about the extra ordinary sense of expectation that pervaded the day in which the Wise Men saw the Star and followed it, the fact that men were waiting for God,” or that there was an anguishing longing for deliverance and hope. We could talk about the fact that, in the Wise Men, was symbolizing the coming of the ends of the earth to the Stable in Bethlehem, foretelling the truth that one day the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of Christ and He will reign forever and ever. We could talk about the meaning of the gifts these Wise Men brought:

Gold, the gift for a King—for that is who Jesus is—King of Kings and Lord of Lords

Frankincense, the gift for a priest—for that is who Jesus is—our Great High Priest who liveth, at the right hand of the Father to make intercession for us.

Myrrh, the gift for one who is to die, and that was Jesus’ ministry—to die for our sins and the sins of the whole world.

We could talk about all that, and more—but I want to focus at another point—a point that is illumined in brilliant light by that one sentence about the Wise Men—Verse 12: “And being warned in a dream not to return to the Herod, they departed into their own country by another way.”

That is a clear statement of the message of Christmas. Once we experience Christ, we go from that experience “by another way.”

Let me use an image from the social scientist. Every discipline has its own jargon. Only a government economist in working would con the phrase “negative saves” to describe a person who spends more than he makes.” Someone has said that f a modern educational theorist had written Bud Schulberg’s famous book, What Makes Sammie Run he would have called it “Motivational Research Into Sammie’s Potential.” I remember when someone, finally breaking away from Dr. Spock, referred to spanking a child as “positive negative reinforcement.”

Well, the social scientists are talking about “Paradigm Shifts”. I like that even though it may need explanation. A paradigm is a model that a scientist uses in order to make sense out of things. Einstein’s theory of relativity is a paradigm. You hold it up to the cosmos and it makes sense out of things. It enables you to see things that you weren’t able to see before.

Well, someone asked some social scientists called Futurists, those who gather facts and data and put it into computers to figure out what the future is going to be like, why they were not as gloomy as they had been before. Why were they mote optimistic than they used to be? The answer was that they had experienced a “paradigm shift”. That is to say, they are using a different model of the world and that enables them to see things that have been there all along, but that the old paradigm would not let them see.

Now that’s what happened to the Wise Men. They had a paradigm shift. And that’s what Christmas does for us. From the cradle of Christmas, from an experience and a relationship with Jesus, we go a different way. We can’t remain the same if we see Him, if we take Him seriously, and accept Him for what He came to do and be.

So we press the question: What does going home from the Manger of Christmas by another way mean to us? If we are going to experience the paradigm shift which Christmas always affords, what will that mean? At least two things. One a new way of being, and two a new way of seeing.

Let’s underscore those truths.

I. A NEW WAY OF BEING

First, a new way of being. Once we have experienced the Christ of Christmas, we are new persons. Paul put it this way: “If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold, the new is come.”

As new creations, we have experienced a paradigm shift and we have a new way of being in the world. Dr. Karl Meninger illustrated this truth. He noticed that when a new doctor or nurse came onto the ward of his hospital In Topeka, Kansas, patients who had been making no progress to

speak of, suddenly began to make progress, and often recovered. He said the reason was not because of the introduction of any new medicine or new therapy, but because of the introduction of a new human being who was hopeful and cheerful, and radiant in their personality, and who brought some new hope into the despair of that ward. Meninger concludes with these words,

“Hope fires hope.”

Our new way of being in the world as Christians is primarily a way of hope. That way was foreseen by the prophet Isaiah. If you don’t remember it from reading the 40th chapter of his book, certainly you can hear it in your soul as you recall that haunting music from Handel’s Messiah – it’s one of my favorite pieces from The Messiah:

“Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God,
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the
Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.

A voice tries:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way
of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway
for our God
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be
made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be
revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 40 1-5 RSV)

So, Handel set the prophets word to music that hope may sing in our souls. Likewise, Paul’s word to the Philippians Isaiah looked forward in anticipation to Jesus’ coming, Paul looked back in reflection upon the meaning of his coming, and we sing Paul’s words too, in on of the moving anthems of the church: “Rejoice in the Lord always, again, I will say, rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance, your hope. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything.” (Phi 4:4—6 RSV)

Now this is no naive notion, no Pollyanna approach to life, no surface optimism that looks through rose colored glasses and disregards the sharp edges of loneliness and suffering, the dark nights of disappointment and defeat, the anxiety of inadequate financial resources, physical illness, or perhaps worst of all, the pervasive anxiety of the whole human race which comes from the ominous threat of the total devastation, of nuclear war. Gripping groan - Look at what the world is coming to. Daring declaration – Look who is coming to the world!

This is the greatest experience that we can know - the experience of Christ which provides us a new way of being. Here it is dramatically in a person: the Cuban poet Valladares. Valladares was in Castro’s prison for 23 years. He is an ardent Christian. For nine years of that prison sentence, he was in solitary confinement - naked most of the time. Once a day at least, the guards would come and throw excrement all over him. But he was sustained by the presence of Christ. He had a new way of being.

He was such an outstanding poet that finally the French Prime Minister, Matterland, interceded and had him released. He went first to France and then came to this country and was recently honored in Washington, D.C. by the Institute of Religion and Democracy. Jean Kirkpatrick, U.N. Ambassador, had tears in her eyes as she introduced him on the day that he received this special award.

In his response to receiving the award, he quoted one of his poems written in prison. The poem said:

“You have taken away my pencil
you have taken away my paper
and you said I could not write my poetry.

But I will write.
I will write in my blood with my fingernail
On the walls of this prison.

Valladares had experienced Christmas and he had a new way o being. He was sustained by hope. From Bethlehem, we can always go home by another way.

II. A NEW WAY OF SEEING

This new way of being gives us a new way of seeing Hans was a German pastor. He was a prisoner of the Gestapo in Berlin on Christmas Eve in 1944. The Commandant of that particular

Prison reluctantly permitted the prisoners a brief worship service. A bit of music, remembered scripture and shared prayers reminded those men, who were under the threat of death, that Eternal Light had shone on the world through Jesus Christ, and the darkness of the would never put that light out. One pastor wrote “The promises remain true! The peace of God enfolded us; it was real and present like a hand laid gently upon us.. .the people who walk in darkness may be the ones who best see the true Light of Christmas.” (ALIVE NOW, quoted by Don Shelby, Holy Persuasion: New Hope, Nov. 28, 1982).

Isn’t it true? Unfortunately, it sometimes takes the dark to teach us about the light. I like Christmas cards. We receive a lot of them. The high point of my day, usually during Christmas, is going through the mail to gather all the greetings from friends, far and near. Most meaningful are the personal notes added to the cards.

That is how it happened - you remember to Peter, James, and John: He came to them while they were fishing and to Matthew as he collected taxes. John Woolman, a tailor, was sewing buttons on a suit when God spoke to him. He came to a journalist, well-known for his disdain of religion as he held his firstborn son in his arms and was overwhelmed with awe at how God sculpts the contours of the human ear.

A Swiss writer tells when it happened to him:

We were hiking and in good shape. I felt neither fatigue, hunger or thirst, and my state of mind was equally, healthy, and there was not a shadow of uncertainty about the road that we should follow.

All at once I experienced a feeling of being raised above myself. I felt the presence of God – I tell of it just as I was conscious of it – as if His goodness and His power were penetrating me altogether. The throb of emotion was so violent that I could hardly tell my friends to pass on and not wait for me. I sat down on a stone, unable to stand up any longer, and my eyes filled with tears. I thanked God that in the course of my life he had taught me to know Him. I begged Him that my life be consecrated to the doing of His will. (As quoted by Louis Savary in Finding God).

It is so. God comes to us along the road we travel. He knows where we are. He comes with surprise and summons: We never know when He will come or how. He to comes us as He chooses, as He did to shepherds on a Judean hillside keeping watch over their flocks by night.

No one has stated this more powerfully than Paul in II Corinthians 4, and no translation more pungently flavors his word than Phillips. Listen to that word:

“We are hard pressed on all sides, but we are never frustrated; we are puzzled, but never in despair. We are persecuted, but are never deserted; we may be knocked down, but we are never knocked out! Every day we experience something of the death of Jesus, so that we may also show the power of life of Jesus in these bodies of ours.”

“This is the reason why we never lose heart.

The outward man does indeed suffer wear and tear,

But everyday the inward man receives fresh strength.

These little troubles (which are really so transitory) are winning for us a permanent, glorious and solid reward out of all proportion to our pain. For we are looking all the time not at the visible things but at the invisible. The visible things are transitory: it is the invisible things that are really permanent.

That’s the new way of seeing. Since Christmas, “An eternal light to glory beyond all comparison,” as the Revised Standard Version puts it, has entered our experience, and we can always go home from Bethlehem by another way.

There is a family in this church, the father of which had surgery for malignant brain tumors last week. In the dark, they are learning about the light.

A woman’s husband walked out on her a month ago – unannounced until the day he left. In the dark she is learning about the light.

A man lost his mother and father in the course of two weeks. In his darkness, the greatest light he has known has illuminated a deep personal problem.

We could go on – you know what I’m talking about. Sometimes it takes the dark to teach us about the light. But it doesn’t have to be. Be sure of this – the darkness will come – sooner or later – it will come. But please – please, don’t wait for the dark to learn about the light. Come to the Manger today. Come to Christ and from your Bethlehem experience, go home another way. Go home with the light.