Pay Attention; Connect the Dots
Matthew 2: 1-23
Pay Attention; Connect the Dots
Do you remember the “connect the dots” pictures that we used to draw as children? I can still remember the excitement when starting out with a new one, wondering what picture it will reveal. I remember the delight when I finished and looked at it. I also remember trying to cut corners sometimes and not following the dots in the correct order. That screws up the whole picture and it is very frustrating when you do that. It takes some paying attention to connect the dots. Occupational therapists say the connect the dot exercises are very beneficial for a child. It helps to develop their fine motor skills but also their intelligence. No wonder I am so smart! 🙂
The magi, or wise men are mysterious characters. Most scholars say they were a priestly class of Persians. Others say they were magicians. They are often depicted as three kings because we read that Herod received them and looked up to them. They brought three gifts. Some say they were scientists. A scholar recently found evidence from a document dating back to the time of the gospel of Matthew that these Magi actually came from China, but he is yet to convince other scholars of his theory. There is a lot of speculation when it comes to the wise men. We cannot even say for sure if they were three!
But there is one thing we can say for certain about them. They had the ability to connect dots. Being wise has to do, not with how much you know, but in your ability to connect the dots between what you know. If you can connect the dots in such a way that it can lead you to a true picture of reality and of God, you are wise. In some mysterious way these guys took what the prophets of old said and what nature ever so subtly proclaims in its cycles and connected it all in a way that lead them to Jesus. These men also acted on what they have discovered. Academics often forget to do that. These guys went out based on the picture their dots showed them and can you imagine their delight when it lead them right up to Jesus? It must have been like the ultimate Pokémon adventure!
Do you know that what happened to them, the excitement and delight of encountering Jesus, can still happen to us today? You might think you are not as intelligent as the wise men. Not all of us are blessed with a 160 IQ. We are kind of stuck with the IQ we are born with but all of us can grow in wisdom. We grow in wisdom, when we pay attention, when we look for God in the things we see, the stories we hear and the people we encounter. When we do this, we see that there are dots in our lives that connect and show us a picture of Jesus. When we act on that we make discoveries about God in our world that brings delight. Because ultimately everything we see, every story we hear and every person we encounter, is somehow connected to Jesus, who is called in Colossians, The First Born of all creation.
Julia Camron said the following: “The quality of life is proportionate, always, to our capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”
I don’t want to sound like someone who sketches the world outside as evil. The world is beautiful and its filled with God’s wonders, but the world we live in is also a contested one. There is a small war going on for your attention. It is easy to miss the things you should be paying attention to this Christmas. I want to help you (and myself) to focus on a few important dots that can help us to gain a clearer understanding of who Jesus is this advent.
Pay less attention to popular opinion and more to Scripture, Tradition and Nature
Did you know there is something Jesus is not good at? He is not good at popularity contexts. He often doesn’t have the popular opinion cheering for the things that matter to Him.
To be fair, the wise men probably had way less access to popular opinion because there was no internet and social media. It might be much more difficult for us than for them to ignore popular opinion or to put it aside for a while but for that very reason it is important that we do so. These men were men that investigated and saw for themselves. Their believes and moves was based on firsthand encounters not on second-hand opinions. It was born out of personal engagement with nature, tradition and contemporary events.
If you hear something about Trudeau or food prices, you don’t have the time to go and investigate for yourself in depth if it is true. But when it comes to God and your deepest held believes, you should make time. Yes, there are people that can help you, people that know more than you, but Jesus does not only want to meet you through someone else. He wants to meet you through your own personal and dedicated engagement with Him.
Let me make it practical. It could be valuable to listen what activists and scientists has to say about climate change. But it is just as valuable to work in your own garden and through dirty hands and sweat develop your own personal love for creation and nature. It is valuable to listen to a good sermon. But it is even more valuable to take the truth you heard in that sermon and translate it into physical steps you are going to take in your own life. Paul said that God is not far from anyone of us. He also asked people to listen to what he is going to teach them. Each one of us have people around us and traditions behind us that can teach us valuable things for our journey but each one of us also has ad direct channel to and a unique path with God. The magi show us we should utilize both.
I am willing to buy almost anything second hand. Some of the most precious things I own is second-hand stuff. But I am not buying any underwear second-hand. Likewise, in faith there are aspects where we learn form others. Some of the most precious things I know about God, I know through others. But there are aspects of our walk with God that are deeply personal like underwear, where we should not settle for second hand and indirect.
Pay attention to strangers and less to “your own”
Matthew writes his gospel to a Jewish audience, people with a rising nationalistic feeling rising up in them because they felt undermined and oppressed by Rome. He sketches Jesus as a new Moses. As Moses spent time in exile in Egypt as a child, Jesus is taken to Egypt. As Moses crossed the red sea, Jesus crosses the waters of baptism and as Moses received the ten commandments from God and gave them to the people at a foot of the mountain, Jesus gives his teachings from God to people at the foot of a mountain.
But Matthew also warns Jewish people not to think they are God’s people just because they are descendants of Abraham. Even in this birth narrative of Jesus, he introduces fringe figures, non-Jewish people positive about and supportive of Jesus reminding us that Jesus is for “others” as well. The wise men come from the East. Jesus is a refugee in another country. He is born far from his parents’ home and he is also raised in a town Nazareth which was considered the arm pit of Galilee. In his nationalistic fever, Herod wants to kill Jesus. It is like Matthew both encourages the Jewish people, saying Jesus came for them even though the Romans don’t like them whilst simultaneously warning them to not think they are the only people included in God’s grace.
It is said that if your God hates the same people you hate, you are not serving the God of the Bible. God loves you but he also loves people way different from you. That is why that shirt I sometimes wear that depicts Jesus as a refugee and as a beggar is one of my favourites. It reminds me to make room in my thinking that God can send me to people that He loves that have very different stories and looks than I have. If you live in Canada, I do hope that you love Canada and cherish your citizenship but never more than you cherish the fact that you are a child of God and a citizen of heaven. You my even love, cherish and celebrate your own cultural heritage but never in such a way that it estranges you from brothers and sisters in Christ from other cultures. There are wise men (and women) from the east and the west that bows before the child and that makes them brothers and sisters. God wouldn’t have created such diversity into humankind if He didn’t love it. God loves colour-also the one you come in.
Pay less attention to big people and things and more attention to little ones
It strikes me that these wise men did not follow the biggest and most well-known stars or prophesies, but the smaller ones tucked away. They did not travel along the common roads everybody knew but the unknown ones fewer used. They did not spend their time and energy on the big King Herod but on the baby King Jesus. They paid attention to the small things and people others overlooked. That lead them to Jesus and into a deep and intimate form of worship. They knew an important thing about God: That He loves to work behind the scenes and through small things.
Sometimes big things happen in church and in kingdom work. Huge breakthroughs. But those huge things are the cumulative effect f a thousand small things over many years just like the fruit on a tree is the result of season and seasons of pruning, watering and tending. Wise followers of Jesus pay attention, rejoice and participate in the small things and people.
We can look at how many people in Surrey do not ever attend church, but we can also rejoice in the fact that many does. We can sigh at the many wars and conflicts in the world, but we can also rejoice in the many loving encounters between human beings.
It makes me think of the African tale about how the hummingbird and the vulture used to look just like each other. One day they flew over a field. The vulture only saw skeletons and fed of it while the hummingbird saw the small flowers between the big skeletons and fed of it. It made the hummingbird a beautiful bird and the vulture an ugly one. If you want to be a hummingbird, not a vulture, see and rejoice in the many small but beautiful things, do not dwell on the skeletons. Don’t ignore or deny them, but don’t dwell and feed of them.
Close
There are the wise men and the shepherds. Both found Jesus. The wise men remind us to pay attention and to connect the dots in such a way that it draws us closer to Jesus. The shepherds remind us that God is also interested in the local and the ordinary, that one cannot be “too ordinary” for God.. Actually, both the wise men and the shepherds did not so much find Jesus as God finding them and meeting them where they are and leading them to Jesus.
May God help us to connect the dots of our life in such a way that we see Jesus at work in our lives. May we grow in wisdom. Because wise men and women still follow Him and are surprised by the hope and joy they discover when they do.
Amen
Copyrighted
Gabriel J Snyman
December 8th 2019