Light is Returning

Light is Returning
Isaiah 60:1-6 Matthew 2:1-12
Rev Alan Claassen
January 4, 2009


Children’s Moment: Shared Betsy’s Christmas present. A GPS. Said the magi had a GPS too: God Positioning Star.

I have been thinking about these three wise men all week. Leaving home, following a prediction, traveling through unknown lands, asking questions along the way. And as they got close to their destination they even sought the counsel of a King. King Herod.
As it turns out, King Herod is a little threatened by this announcement from foreigners that a new and great leader is about to be born in his territory. So he asks that three magi to come back to him once they have found this Messiah so that he can pay homage to him.
Once the magi have visited Jesus themselves and experience an epiphany, a manifestation of God in the form of the Christ child they see life very differently and being warned in a dream they do not go back to King Herod, but instead went home another way.
That is such a wonderfully rich phrase, going home by another way.
Approximately 50 years later the Apostle Paul will write to the community of followers of The Way in Corinth the beautiful letter that includes the well known verses,
“If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
Love is patient and kind…
Love does not insist on its own way…
It does not rejoice in the wrong, but rejoices in the right…
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Faith, hope and love abide; but the greatest of these is love.
In the verse that immediately proceeds these verses Paul wrote, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.”
Another way back home. Another way to live. A journey of a lifetime.
Each Sunday morning our worship begins with the words, Whoever and wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.
Thinking about the three magi this past week, I have been thinking where this journey is actually taking us. Where are we going? What is our guiding star? What keeps us focused and together, respecting our differences, both in needs and viewpoints, and moving forward as a progressive Christian church for Calaveras and Tuolumne counties?
And then I took a journey myself.
On New Year’s Day I flew to Portland, Oregon with our son, Cody. He was on route back to the Seattle area for his next semester of college. I decided to go with him to pick up our daughter, Lauryn’s car that had been left behind in Vancouver Washington in the snow storms that hit the northwest the week before Christmas.
So on Friday I began the journey from Vancouver, Washington to Murphys. A drive that I have only done once and that was on Labor Day of 2007 when Betsy and I drove it together.
The drive went better than I expected, given the rainstorms that passed through Portland the evening that I arrived, and the snow that was on the ground when I woke up, and the forecast of snow on the Siskiyou Pass. I made good time. Such good time that I decided to take an alternate path once I reached Red Bluff. I has stopped at a rest area, looked at a map and saw a route that would take me through Chico, Oroville, and eventually to HiWay 49. I decided to go another way.
And it was wonderful. The radio was playing a favorite guitar concerto by Rodriguez, the sun was setting through the clouds and the orchards north of Chico. It was very beautiful.
Then my daughter, Lauryn called me and asked if I could pick her up at the Dublin Bart Station and bring her to Murphys so she could get her car back.
Always ready to jump on an offer for a visit from one of our children I said yes.
I imagined a route. Keep going south on HiWay 99 until I reached I-80, get over to the 5 south to Manteca and west on 580 to Dublin.
And that was when I remembered I had Betsy’s new GPS in the car with my. Cody had taught me how to use it. So I turned it on. It figured out my current location. I entered the Dublin Bart as my destination and it gave me a route.
Not one I expected. It wanted me to take 113. I didn’t know 113. What kind of road was it? Where did it go? What was it like to travel at night? But it said that it was the quickest way to go and so I followed.
And it is a dark and lonely road at night. And it seemed to take forever before I finally reached HiWay 505. And it had been so long since I had driven 80 from Sacramento or Davis to the Bay Area that I couldn’t figure out where it was taking me.
But still I followed. At this point in time it had to be a quicker route than getting on the 5 all the way to 580.
And so there I was on I-80 heading for the Bay Area wondering how I was going to get to Dublin.
And then I remembered 680 drops down at Fairfield. I was going to make it after all.
I eventually arrived at the Dublin Bart station just 8 minutes after Lauryn arrived herself.
Thanks to the GPS.
And thinking about the three magi, trusting a prediction and a star, I thought about the trust that is necessary to begin a journey that takes us home by another way.

However and whenever it is that God speaks to us, we have a question to answer. Are we willing to go where God is leading us? Are we willing to believe that through the events of our lives God is leading us? Which star are we following?



This morning we celebrate communion together. And there is guidance for us in this sacred meal. For this bread is broken to be shared that compassion might increase among us. And the grapes are pressed down so that the juice of life is released and poured into a cup so that love might increase among us.

The gift that we have been have been given shows a way of moving away from fear, guilt, and shame and into a way that of giving and receiving with compassion.

This gift of God’s nature is for the salvation and healing of the world. Not just for some of us but for all of us. Through this sacred feast of Holy Communion we are made into the body of Christ, the beloved community.
This table is symbolic of the vision, the north star, the gives us our bearings, through the tears and joys, confusion and clarity, hopes and disappointments of being alive. In sharing the bread and the cup this morning we see one another as fellow travelers on the journey of another way; the way that feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and sets free the captive. The way of peace that Jesus taught and that someday we will learn and trust and put into practice on our lives.

This sacred table is an epiphany, a manifestation of God’s love for all creation.
It was given to us by Jesus to remind us of what brings light into this world.
Light is returning. Light, returns us, directs us, guides us back home.
The Sermon title was taken from a song written for the winter solstice, the time when the light of the day begins to increase and the darkness decreases, a perfect time to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Light is returning even though this is the darkest hour.
No one can hold back the dawn.
Let’s keep it burning, let’s keep the light of hope alive
Make safe our journey through the storm.

And from the first hymn that we sang this morning,
Star of wonder, star of light…still proceeding…guide us with the perfect light.
May we take time each day to turn on our God Positioning Star that connects earth with heaven, so we always know how to get back home, so that we will not feel lost even when we are going home by another way, so that we will make our choices, and choose our words, based upon gratitude, humility, and compassion.
Whoever we are and wherever we are on lives journey let us choose the way that takes us to our joy of giving and receiving compassionately.
And let the people say:
Amen