The Wise Men come from the East into Jerusalem and, being out-of-towners, they stop to ask for directions. Of course, they don’t pull their caravan into the first convenience store they find, instead they go straight to the palace in the center of town--the reigning monarch should know something about the place, right?

From that point onward, everything in the story of Christ’s Epiphany stops making sense. People who should know what is happening don’t; people who should be joyous aren’t; and unbelievers end up being the paragons of orthodox faithfulness. It isn’t long before it isn’t just the Wise Men who need a little roadside help.

First, Herod calls together the scribes and the Pharisees to find out what the Wise Men are talking about--a hint that much of the scriptures had gone unread and unexamined by most everyone except a very slim minority. They find reference in Zechariah to a coming Savior who will be born in Bethlehem, a progeny of David, the eternal house of God’s hand-picked leaders for Israel. Rather than being ecstatic that God has acted after centuries of despair and directionless meandering, the Jerusalem hierarchy go into a panic--they fear they will be revealed as the pretenders they are. But in the ultimate ironic twist, the Wise Men, worldly wise and surely pagan, get what they need--a place to go--so with a shrug, they keep on their way, alive with hope that comes only through faith that God is and that God moves in saving ways. The whole story is a total inversion of how things should be and how things should pan out. We are so familiar with this story that we miss that inversion, but we should be utterly confused as we reach its climax. Nothing makes sense.

The faith is not easy or simple, no matter how hard we try to make it so. It resists all efforts to reduce it to a code or a list of rights and wrongs. It will not tolerate our human tendency to stereotype or label each other. The faith is a mystery and who will be faithful remains surprising.

Of course, that should come as no surprise at all. The God at the center of our faith is also a mystery, a God who defies human attempts to pigeonhole God or confine God into a set of expectations or assumptions. They soon fall to pieces in the presence of the Living God. God is. And God is free from all human categorizing and compartmentalization. For instance, God chose to reveal himself in an infant, an infant who would grow to become an itinerate rabbi who would die abandoned by all his followers and rejected by the very faith community he was to be the savior within. God, however, recreated all that is through that abject failure. That is a mystery.

John offers us a way into the incomprehensible nature of God and God’s interaction with the world--simply believe.

The Third Epistle of John is a slight piece of scripture that more than a few scholars have questioned as legitimately being called scripture. It is nothing more than a memo to the Church to keep at whatever it was doing, and in particular to keep the doors open to traveling Christians passing through town. In other words, keep the “Visitors Welcome” sign along the street.

Yet within that simple, utterly obvious, thought comes something profound, something that flashes right back into the story of the Wise Men coming into Jerusalem.

John praises the Church for its willingness to aid and support “friends, even though they are strangers.” All the church needed to know was that the strangers were fellow travelers in the way of Jesus Christ. With that, the doors were flung wide and the Church did what they could to keep the wanderers on their way. Perhaps they gave them a hot meal or took up a collection of money or clothes or goods for the journey. Perhaps they housed them for a few days. Perhaps it was as simple as providing a map of the region to keep them on the right roads and away from danger.

That is precisely what the Wise Men need as they enter Jerusalem. They are strangers, so alien that all Matthew can say firmly about them is that they are from the East. He is not sure where they come from, nor really what it is they are--they seem like powerful emissaries from some distant kingdom, perhaps philosophers or astrologers in the employ of their own potentates, or maybe they are simply curious theologians from another spirituality coming to see a wonder in another faith community. All of that is unimportant, for what is solely essential to grasp is that they search for the Christ. Knowing that about them should be enough.

We are confronted by all sorts of seekers and wanderers within the church now. Our world is confusing. Our lives within the world are often a maelstrom of conflicting ideas and impulses that leave us hungry and vacant. Most human beings will come to a moment of recognition of that wandering state of being and will seek help, comfort, and hope. The birth of a child will often lead folks to return to or seek out a church. What none of these people need is someone throwing up obstacles or barricades along the way. They need support.

Herod and Jerusalem fail mightily in their response. Oh, they give the Wise Men directions to Mary and Joseph and the child, but with a hidden agenda, one aimed at self-preservation rather than glory, laud, and honor. They look to use the Wise Men, to manipulate their curiosity into a means of eliminating a threat to the status quo.

Sadly, way too many of us can tell stories of mean churches. There are the oft repeated tales of entering a strange sanctuary and being completely ignored by the regulars. Or there is the variation--of being noticed, but only because a stranger sat where Grandma Moses always sat or, worse, dared to use the hymnal Grandma Moses gave to the church. Or even more painful--they were noticed, but only to see how deep their pockets were, hit up for a contribution before even being asked their names. Such sins would be laughable if they were not so damaging and painful.

John challenges us to do a little self-examination. “You will do well to send them on in a manner worthy of God.” The wanderers come seeking Christ, even though they may have no real comprehension of what Christ actually means or even who Christ really is. They know only that Christ equals a revelation of God’s salvation. That is enough. We are to live up to their quest, for it is holy. Therefore, we are to meet their inquisitiveness with equal care, love, and grace because those responses are holy. They are acts of love.

Think of how the story of Herod and Jerusalem might have been far less tragic and grim had they met the Wise Men as John’s church met the strangers in their midst. There would have been no slaughter of children had they opened their eyes to see the light of love shining in the eyes of the infant Christ, a light reflected in any child’s eyes, even the old eyes of the Wise Men. There would have been reason enough to offset any and all fear. God was at hand.

Think of how our own story is continuing to be written and told as we encounter the seekers here and now. Do we meet others in love? Do we communicate God’s love through our own simple actions? Do we equip travelers for their journey?

John offers one final bit of counsel as we reflect--”Therefore we ought to support such people, so that we may become co-workers with the truth.”

Let us listen and follow.