But They’re Odd! Aren’t They?

Everyone struggles at some level when they are in the presence of people who are very, very different from themselves. We feel a level of discomfort and uneasiness; a feeling that we are out of our depth and we just want to get back to safe ground. It is a feature that is common to every person on the planet.

Often we blame our discomfort on the other person. It is the blaming that leads to racism, avoidance of ‘foreigners’, keeping a distance from the mentally ill, and hostility to people of other religions.

The story of the Wise Men following the star addresses the hostility Jewish people of that time felt to people of other religions.

1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” Matthew 2 (TNIV)

A Magus (Magi is plural) was a person who followed the Zoroastrian religion as a type of clergyman. He would be able to foretell your life depending on his reading of the stars and planets at the exact moment when you were born. They believed that the stars and planets were heavenly beings a bit like the sinful and randomly kind gods of Mount Olympus in Greek mythology. It was their combinations of spiritual influence over the blank slate of the new born baby that could condemn a child to a lifetime of misery or riches and power. A Magus would also use ‘magic’ from the spiritual realm to try and tip fate your way.

In other words, from God’s point of view their religion was a whole lot of hogwash!

So why did they get an invite from God to the birth of the Christ child. Matthew 2 makes it plain that God sent an angel to masquerade as a star just to entice them to make the journey.

The answer is in the story.

“On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.” Mt 2:11

They worshipped him.

Despite being born in a different land and being brought up in a religion that was mistaken and depressingly fatalistic, these Magi yearned in their hearts to worship and connect with the living God. And God heard the yearning of their hearts and invited them to the birth of His son.

The scriptures plainly say that God reads the hearts of people and does not judge by externals.

We often stop at the strangeness of the externals and so fail to see the common yearnings for God that we share with many people all over the globe who are not Christian.

Christians often feel awkward around people of other faiths. Sometimes, it is because our society forbids us from saying aloud that Jesus is right and Buddha and Muhammad are not. It smacks of arrogance and a return to the old days of religious wars. Yet we all know it is impossible for them all to be right because many of their key beliefs are opposites of each other! But Matthew’s story is not about debates whether people’s beliefs are mistaken but what yearning beats in their hearts and how Christ meets that need.

Sometimes it is because it is the strangeness of another race and culture that comes with the different religion that makes it seem all too hard to connect. (Yet I must say that Christians often feel awkward around Anglo women who follow paganism or its cousin ‘witchcraft’.)

But Matthew’s story invites us to look past the differences and believe that a yearning for God our heavenly Father beats in the hearts of people who are very, very different to us.

I thank God that Christians down through the ages have believed this to be true and have acted upon it. Otherwise, you and I would still be following Celtic Druids, or the Germanic gods of Valhalla.

This Christmas may the birth of the Christ child help you to see past the differences of culture, religion, and unfamiliarity, to find what many have in common; a yearning for our heavenly Father.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith … that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19

Graeme H