The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
January 7, 2001

Come Let Us Adore Him
Matthew 2:1-12

I just read the story of the Three Wise Men coming to meet the baby Jesus. The story itself can get so mixed up with Christmas plays and nativity scenes we have seen that it is best to start by separating the story itself from the way the story is usually told. You will notice that the story did not take place on the night Jesus was born. We don’t know exactly when the Wise Men came, we are only told that it was after Jesus was born. When the Wise Men do find Jesus, he is no longer in a cave used as a stable and he has apparently given up lying in a manger for good. They entered and saw the child with Mary his mother.

You’ll notice that our nativity scene has changed this week. The shepherds have gone. It’s only the Three Wise Men who are visiting Jesus. Sometimes the story is told with three kings coming to visit Jesus, but the Bible never calls them kings. In fact, the Bible never says there are three of them. They are described as Magi. That’s the Greek word that can mean an astronomer, or someone who has supernatural knowledge, or even a magician, which comes from this word Magi. Paintings of this scene are traditionally called the Adoration of the Magi, because these Wise Men from the East come with one goal in mind—to worship the newborn King of the Jews.

Let’s leave the Magi adoring Jesus for a moment to fast forward to our own time. Epiphany 2001. Two weeks ago I received the new Beatle’s CD in my stocking for Christmas. It’s a compilation of the rock groups 27 number one hit songs. It reminds me of the Beatlemania that swept the US in the 1960s. The Beatle’s had thousands, millions really, of adoring fans. Everywhere they went when they first arrived in America, the Beatles were swarmed with mobs of adoring fans. Other groups attract that sort of adulation today. The Back Street Boys and N’Sync fill stadiums full of adoring fans. That’s the problem I have with this story of the Wise Men. What does the Adoration of the Magi mean. I just can’t quite reconcile the images of Beatlemania and the adoring N’Sync fans with Wise Men crossing the desert with Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh loaded on their camels.

I see the Magi coming in and finding Jesus in Mary’s arms just fine. Then the scene morphs, or just changes all at once like a dream careening out of control as one thought leaps to another. One of the Magi starts balling his eyes out, crying hysterically, “It’s the newborn King. It’s really him!”

The other two go wild, “Woooo Jesus! Yeah!” Then they start chanting, “God! God! God! God! God! God! God! God!” The Wise Guys are going nuts, “Who let the dogs out? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who?”

Then the whole scene vanishes like a dream that becomes so unbelievable you have to wake up. Your subconscious won’t accept the dream any more. We know all about adoring fans and the Magi sure sound like adoring fans of Jesus, so what’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong is that Wise Men from the East just don’t seem like the type to go crazy like that. Especially not when all they see is a mother holding her baby.

The Greek word used in this story for adore is proskuneo. It means literally to bow down and kiss the ground. It is used to describe worshipping someone. That’s the Adoration of the Magi. They come in carrying their fancy gifts, but on seeing the boy who will become the King of Kings, they drop all of that and bow low to the ground. It is an Epiphany. An “aha” moment where you go, “I get it! I finally, really, get it.” It’s a moment of understanding. And in that moment of understanding, all the Wise Men can do is bow low and adore the one true God.

What makes these Magi so unique is that they saw it coming. The Magi saw this scene coming from miles and miles away. The only speaking part the Wise Men have in the story for today is to ask where the newborn King of the Jews is as they have come to adore him. They have come to proskuneo, to bow down and kiss the ground before him. As astronomers, they had spent their lives studying the night sky. The Magi had been taught what to look for and they knew that a great star rising in the west meant a new king for all the world. This expectation was mentioned by the ancient historians Seutonius (Seutonius, Vesp. 4), Tacitus (Ann. 5.13) and Josephus (Bell. 3.399-408; 6.310-15). And comets were, in general, associated with a change of Emperor. So the Magi watched for these signs in the sky and when they saw the star that we symbolize with our banner (on the wall at King of Peace) they packed up and set out on the road. The Magi knew just what they would do when they found the newborn king. The Magi would bow down and worship him. The Magi would adore the new king. And that’s just what they did. Of all the people in the world, the Magi saw the signs in the creation and went to worship Jesus, that’s probably why we always translate Magi as Wise Men.

As I began studying for this sermon and praying about it some weeks ago, this was the part that always stopped me. You see I’m not the bow down and adore kind of guy. I just don’t picture myself dropping to my face and kissing the ground. It’s not that I don’t love God, it’s just that I’m probably more of the “Jesus, woooo!” sort of adorer rather than the bowing down to the ground kind. And adoration always sounds boring anyway. Sometimes people describe heaven as a place where we millions of God lovers gather around and worship God, singing praises for all eternity. Frankly, that sounds boring to me and it seems like it would bore the daylights out of a God imaginative enough to create this universe we live in. After all, a God who created the duck-billed platypus and the giraffe has a healthy sense of humor.

I put the sermon away for a while. The next time I read this text again, I started thinking about the Magi and how they saw the signs in the stars. They saw the new great star and instead of being drawn to worship the star, they were drawn to adore the creator of the star. Then I got it! The light bulb went off. It all clicked. I had that “aha” moment, whatever you want to call it. I had an Epiphany.

I’ve been adoring God my whole life and I never quite saw that adoration for what it was. There were hundreds of images flashing in my mind. A foggy walk through the redwoods in California leaped to mind. Then there was an amazing Technicolor sunset on the beach in Brazil. Next I remembered a trip to Cloudland Canyon in Northwest Georgia, There an icy waterfall broke apart in the sunshine of a January day, sending enormous hunks of ice crashing down into the water below, the sound booming on the canyon walls. With that sound still ringing in my memory I remembered the vast stillness of the desert. Nothing but sand and rocks. Then the breathtaking vastness of the Grand Canyon leapt to mind. Again and again I could see, hear, feel the thousands of times I had come in to contact with God’s creation in such a powerful way that it was beyond words. There were in fact no words to describe the experience; there was only an attitude, a deep inward feeling of “yes.” I felt not just the creation, but the creator behind it all, in it all and beyond it all. While I never actually dropped to my knees, bowed low and kissed the ground, in my heart the adoration was there. Like the Magi I could see the divine fingerprints of the one true God all over the creation and it led me to adoration. Adoration isn’t so much an action as it is an inward attitude, a disposition. Adoration is a way of looking at things and just saying “yes.” Yes, I see it God and I know it is you.

Like the Magi, I too have sometimes seen it coming. When my daughter Griffin was born, the miracle of her birth or the rush of feelings that came with it did not surprise me, but seeing my own newborn baby girl still practically dropped me to the ground with the enormity of emotion. All I could do was adore God for the gift. I just didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time.

In these moments of adoration, we want nothing. We have already received what we want. Adoration does not flow out of desire. Adoration flows out of gratitude. The secret that I missed for years was to see these Epiphanies for what they are—an encounter with God—and to see my own response for what it is—adoration.

Once we learn to see these moments for what they are, we can respond. I ran across this idea in a little booklet on prayer written by a missionary to China (The Rev. Charles F. Whiston). He suggested a way to cultivate adoration by responding with some set phrase each time. I have tried to put his advice into practice and I find that it really works. What you do is to adopt some way of acknowledging God in moments when you feel God’s presence. He suggested some pretty churchy sounding phrases like “Glory be to thee, O Lord most high” or “Glory be to thee, O Father, And to thee O son, And to thee O Holy Spirit.” That didn’t work for me. The best I can do is to think, or even say, “Yes Lord, I see.” And once you have a ready phrase to acknowledge God in the sunset, in the breeze or in someone else’s smile, then little opportunities for adoration present themselves. I find myself thinking “Yes, Lord, I see” more than I would have expected. You can even try a “Jesus, wooooo!” if you want. The words and actions are not the main thing. The inward feeling in your heart is the main thing.

God is all around us, working in us, through us and beyond us. Come let us adore him.

Amen.