SPEAKER_00: And so may I speak in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Good evening, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: It's lovely to see you here with us today.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder, have you ever tried reading a horoscope or taken it seriously?
SPEAKER_00: I was reminded this week as I was rereading this passage about uh maybe uh someone you're familiar with.
SPEAKER_00: This is someone from my childhood.
SPEAKER_00: Does anyone remember the the celebrity Mystic Meg?
SPEAKER_00: Mystic Meg from uh she had an article in the in the sun and uh she was a bit of a celebrity around the lottery.
SPEAKER_00: And I discovered that I did a bit of research on her this week, she was actually born in Accrington in 1942.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of popular, isn't it, today to look at the stars and try and work out if they've got something to tell us about our lives.
SPEAKER_00: The horoscope is all about trying to look at where the stars are and do they have something to say to us.
SPEAKER_00: Now I imagine for most of us we think, well, that's got almost nothing to do with Christianity, and I, for the record, think you're probably right.
SPEAKER_00: But it's an interesting to consider the fact that when we talk about this story of wise men from the east, they were essentially astrologers, stargazers.
SPEAKER_00: They made no distinction in the ancient world between the work of natural sciences and what we would now separate out as astrology.
SPEAKER_00: It was all part of the same discipline.
SPEAKER_00: And so these academics and scholars who came from the east were not like we might imagine them today, you know, seven-year-old children dressed in purple robes with paper hacks.
SPEAKER_00: And it might be helpful as we re-enter into this story to scrub from our mind the kind of sterilized imagination of what was going on so that we can look afresh at this text.
SPEAKER_00: Another element of the story that we might need to think about again.
SPEAKER_00: From the east, where did these wise men come from?
SPEAKER_00: Well, from the east is almost certainly a euphemism for from Babylon, which was a place of great learning and astrology where they considered what the stars meant.
SPEAKER_00: It's in modern day Iraq, and so as we were reflect on who these men were, those are the two things that I'd like us to think about.
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, that these were people from Babylon, from modern-day Iraq, and then secondly, what it means that they were able to follow a star all the way to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So, firstly, men from the east.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing I think this story is about is about non-Jewish nations coming to meet the baby Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning that God in Christ, the word-made flesh, is not just for the Jews alone, but is for the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: That the Messiah of Israel is born, and it's not the and it's the non-Jewish nations that are represented by them coming, by these wise men coming to meet with Jesus and present him with gifts and pay him homage.
SPEAKER_00: This was always part of Israel's responsibility and its vocation, its calling as God's nation was to be both a blessing and an example to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, a blessing, that the nations would benefit from the presence of Israel, that the wealth and the riches that Israel had at its that time in history wouldn't be hoarded but would be shared.
SPEAKER_00: We saw it again, didn't we, in our reading from Isaiah today?
SPEAKER_00: The nations will come to your light, the nations will come to the brightness that you're able to show to the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: And then, secondly, that they would be an example, that as Israel lived with God's laws as God's people, that they as they became a community of justice and peace, where the rich no longer exploit the poor and the powerful no longer take command over the weak, that they would demonstrate to the rest of the world what a righteous society looked like.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's almost certainly the case that the historical record shows Israel almost never lived up to that mandate to be a blessing and an example to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: And so this story shows us that Jesus, even as a toddler, is able to be the fulfillment of Israel's mandate, the true Israelite who shines as a light in the darkness, and people from Babylon are drawn to him, drawn to the things that he does and that he says, that he's able to be the blessing to the nations that Israel could never quite manage to be, and that his life will become an example to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: There's another element, though, to this fact that from the east means almost certainly these men came from Babylon, because Babylon was the place that Israel was taken to in exile just a few hundred years earlier.
SPEAKER_00: And so these wise men not only represent the nations in a kind of neutral abstract sense, but they represent the very people who God, um the very people who had relatively recently been the source of incredible violence, pain, and civil upheaval.
SPEAKER_00: And they're the people that notice that Jesus has been born in a manger.
SPEAKER_00: Not the Jewish elite.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the Jewish elite are scared that he's there.
SPEAKER_00: It would be, and this analogy doesn't quite fit, but go with me and take it as far as you can, but please don't press me on it.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be a bit little bit like William and Kate having another baby, the British press completely ignoring the fact, and a German ambassador coming to pay his respects.
SPEAKER_00: That's the sort of strangeness that the author of the gospel is trying to get us to think about.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus is born in a manger, and it's these men from Babylon who come to pay homage to him.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus is the blessing to the nations, and he will become their example of how to live.
SPEAKER_00: And to do that sometimes means being a blessing not just to your neighbor, but to your enemy.
SPEAKER_00: So that's I think the first thing to reflect on this evening as we remember again the story of the Magi coming to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But there's this second thing.
SPEAKER_00: Not just that they come from the east, but that they follow a start.
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that the natural world somehow points towards Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: These men were astrologers.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have to ask the question that in technical language is questioned as natural theology.
SPEAKER_00: Is there such a thing as natural theology that the world itself, nature itself, somehow points to God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the thing that strikes me about these wise men is that they seek out Jesus by doing their research, by diligently observing the natural world and looking for evidence of a king born in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: It's their research and their investigation that leads them to the truth.
SPEAKER_00: It is, I think, the wise men in our nativity scene that become the inspiration or the uh the impetus for doing something like an alpha course.
SPEAKER_00: We're currently running in checks and grays.
SPEAKER_00: You're very welcome to join us.
SPEAKER_00: We've still got five more weeks to go, and there are flyers at the back.
SPEAKER_00: But an alpha course or any of these introduction to Christianity courses are very simply places where people are invited to consider the evidence for Jesus Christ, to think deeply and carefully about who he is and what he said he's done, and is that possible?
SPEAKER_00: So another reason why I'm very pleased to have recently become the chaplain at Blackburn College, because I want to engage with young academic minds and say, think carefully about the claims of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: That is why I hope this cathedral will continue to engage thoughtful people in Blackburn and across Lancashire and invite them to investigate the claims of Christianity for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: You could say it like this it's the wise men who were the first people to ask and it will be given to them.
SPEAKER_00: Seek and they will find.
SPEAKER_00: If any of those pique your interest and you'd like to think about them further, come and borrow this book from me afterwards, or come and talk to me as we're enjoying some sausage rolls after the service, some refreshments.
SPEAKER_00: Each of these broken signposts, each of these stars in this darkening sky, help us walk our own path towards the baby in the manger.
SPEAKER_00: So, are there any examples for us this evening of people who have followed in the Magi's footsteps, who have tried to do that deep work of investigation and found themselves uncovering something strange and wonderful in the life of Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been struck by the testimony of an American woman called Kat Von D, who uh is uh a very fascinating woman worth uh Googling after this service.
SPEAKER_00: She's not the sort of person who you would naturally think would find end up in church life.
SPEAKER_00: Um, she has 10 million followers on Instagram, she's a a bit of a celebrity, she's also a tattoo artist and a TV personality, and she has spent a lot of her life dabbling in the occult, in witchcraft, and in tarot reading.
SPEAKER_00: And in the last two or three years, she has found herself coming away from those things and very publicly professing faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: She moved from her life in uh Los Angeles and moved to a small town in Indiana, and she said in an interview after she had uh got baptized that she said, I felt like God spit me out on the doorsteps of the most perfect church for me.
SPEAKER_00: She and her family arrived early and accidentally and disrupted an early morning prayer service.
SPEAKER_00: And she says this these people just stood up and embraced us.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't really care about who um, excuse me, they didn't really care about who people think we are.
SPEAKER_00: They just thought, oh, you're the lady who's walked in down the walked in off the street and you bought a house down the road.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, we've been praying for you.
SPEAKER_00: And so she joined this small church in Indiana, and her baptism service is incredible.
SPEAKER_00: You can watch it online because half the congregation are her friends who are all kind of wearing black from head to toe and covered in tattoos and uh look like fish out of water, and the other half is this kind of small suburban church in North America.
SPEAKER_00: But these worlds collided because Kat Von D followed the star, investigated the truth claims of Christianity for herself, and found herself kneeling with the Magi at the foot of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is what happens when someone investigates like Jesus did, like the wise men did, they're drawn to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When they find the star blinking in the darkness of night and follow it.
SPEAKER_00: And if academics from Babylon can find themselves worshiping Jesus next to poor Jewish shepherd boys, then I hope we can expect our congregation to also be an eclectic mix of people who don't all look like us and have each found their way to the manger on their own path.