Star of Wonder

Sermon

What keeps you going and having faith?

That is the question I’ve always had about those Magi, astrologer/magician types from the East—probably East as in Persia and not “the Orient,” a somewhat problematic term for Asians, but I digress.

No matter, the East was still VERY FAR from where they came from! It would have taken them at least a few months. They weren’t even Israelites! What kept them going just to see some child born “king of the Jews”?

And even if they justified that, once they were on the journey, how did they even know they were going in the right direction? Really? They read the stars, held on to one that looked just a little shinier than the others, and were just like, Let’s gooo… there! I imagine one of the Magi was, like, super into it, “Duuuude, that star will totally get us there. We. Got. This.” And the other Magi were annoyed, saying, “Are you suuuure you read the sky right? We passed this mountain, like, twice already!”

What kept them going and having faith, faith that they were going the right way, faith that this journey into the unknown was going to be worth it?

What keeps you going and having faith? You have to have some faith to be here. You’re spending New Year’s Day in worship. How nerdy is that? Either you didn’t party, and you made sure you had enough sleep… for worship! Or you did stay up, and yet waking up and going to worship is still worth nursing the hangover. You’re thinking, “Preacher, not so loud, okay?”

And the only thing more churchy than getting up and going to church is logging on your laptop to watch church. It’s NFL Sunday, two weeks before the playoffs! And you are watching… church!

I’m just saying, this must mean something for you. It’s not like other parts of the country. Most of the folks around us don’t care whether you’re Christian or not. I feel like Powell’s has as big of an occult section as they do a Christian section. And confession, I’d probably find more books in the occult section interesting than some of the problematic nonsense on the Christian shelves.

And that’s part of it, if we are honest; many of us here are kinda embarrassed of elements of Christianity, right? Many of us here would wince at the simplistic answers and formulas we see. Some of us wince at that intense Christian talk—“How’s your relationship with Jesus?” “Let Jesus into your heart.” Many of us certainly reject the anti-intellectualism, the Christian nationalism. Some of us still have hurt and trauma from churches we have come from. Some of us have dealt with pastors who made women feel like second-class citizens or who told beloved vulnerable human beings that their love for their partner would send them to hell because they were gay.

I as a pastor have to wrestle with the fact that Christianity kept my ancestors in centuries of colonialism and whose white supremacy literally decimated the land where my family comes from. The Catholic Spanish colonizers erased indigenous Filipino culture and extracted natural resources, crippling the economy. Protestant American colonizers, just like with Native Americans, went back on promises honoring Filipino sovereignty, initiated a brutal war that killed a million Filipinos, then went on a racist quest to “civilize the savages” through military bases and schools. My parents’ Filipino education had an American curriculum that taught American history and culture to serve American interests. You realize how messed up that is?

All in the name of Jesus.

There are incentives for many of us not to keep the faith. And yet, we are still here. In worship.

Despite all the problems, there is something compelling that keeps us wanting to believe. We still find compelling connecting with this Divine… something bigger and beyond ourselves—yes, while rejecting simplistic answers; yes, while rejecting all the baggage of how this religion has played out—but not rejecting the truth and beauty of this centuries-old story that’s been passed down to us.

We still find something compelling about gathering as a community, perhaps even continuing some semblance of this thing called Church to our descendants, that this tradition communally has something to contribute to the human experience—where our community’s common thread is not race or class or political belief or even mission or service, but that we all want to love and be loved and can’t do it alone.

We still find something compelling that God is not simply there, but that: God. Is. Love. And that the real plot twist of the journey of the Magi is that as much as we are searching for God, how much more is God searching and seeking us, to love and hold us as precious, beloved children of infinite value, to shower us with grace and liberate us from oppression.

What keeps you going and having faith? My invitation to you today is to be intentional about identifying what keeps you going and make it concrete. Use the story of the Magi as a grounding metaphor.

What is the Star of Wonder in your life that points you to God? In other words, is there something or someone tangible that anchors you in your faith?

Maybe it is a person, that one Magi in your group that nudges you to keep going, whose presence in your life helps you have faith and hope. Maybe it’s an idea, a theology, maybe even a Bible story or verse, that resonates deeply, like with me, the fact that in this Bible story, the Magi think they’re headed to the central place of kings, but they end up in the margins of Bethlehem with the poor—that stuff keeps me here. Maybe, just like stars are memories of light years past, your Star of Wonder is a God-moment memory: a retreat; a time when people surrounded you with love; heck, a worship service. Or maybe it’s literally looking up at the stars in the sky, in all their beauty and glory and awe.

Whatever that Star of Wonder is for you, be intentional about your relationship with that star. Maybe even make it a new year’s resolution to seek that star out a little more, whether it means hanging out more with that person, or going to worship more, or putting a photo of that core memory somewhere, or looking up at the stars or at the trees a little differently.

Then through the star’s shine, try to keep going. Because faith is hard, religion is weird, and it’s helpful to identify that star—something you can see—to help you on the journey. You may even end up encountering the face of God along the way.