The Checklist

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on January 5, 2025 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Reading for address: Matthew 2: 1-12

If you’re anything like me, you find it hard to remember, once you reached the supermarket, what you actually came looking for. I used to recognise I couldn’t keep more than three things in my head (though now I accept it’s actually no more than two). But I made a breakthrough when I realised a supermarket trip broadly covered three things: fresh foods, for the fridge; dry goods, for the cupboard; and other life supplies, for the cupboard under the sink or under the stairs. Simple. Doughnuts don’t strictly come into any of those categories, but as it happens, I’ve never had a problem remembering doughnuts.

Christianity’s a vast and sprawling subject, and the Bible’s an enormous and complex book, and you could have the same reaction entering the world of faith as I have walking into a huge supermarket. ‘There’s just so many things all around me – how can I get a sense of what I need or what to do with myself here?’ I want to suggest that we can make a breakthrough rather like the penny-drop moment when I realised a weekly shop came down to fresh foods, dry goods and other supplies. If we create a simple checklist for ourselves, we can focus our thoughts on just three questions – three questions we can remember and three questions to which we can find answers. These are the three questions: Who is God? What does God do in Jesus? How are we to respond? And the passage in the Bible that most succinctly answers these three questions is our gospel reading for today – the mysterious, marvellous and magnificent story of the coming of the magi.

I’m going to take each of our three checklist questions in turn, and see what this story tells us about each of them. Let’s start with perhaps the biggest question: Who is God? God is both distant and awesome, as we discover in the star, which lights up the heavens, and at the same time intimate and present, as we see in the baby, born to Mary and Joseph. God wants to be in relationship with us, as we see in the way the star captures the magi’s imagination and in the way the magi make their way into Jesus’ presence. God is made known in creation, as the role of the star in this story shows. God is also made known through the scriptures, as demonstrated by the transformative effect of the words from the prophet Micah in redirecting the magi from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. God is made known through those who interpret the scriptures, as we discover in the intervention of the chief priests and scribes who tell Herod how to understand what the prophet is saying. God is also made known through dreams. The magi are warned in a dream not to return to Herod. It’s as if God is trying every which way to communicate to us – through creation, scripture, authority and the unconscious. God really really wants to be in relationship with us.

But that’s not all. God patiently waits for us: we have no idea how long the star shone in the heavens before the magi spotted it, but we’re told the star remained in the sky while the magi went to the wrong destination, and we see that the star lingers over the manger when the magi finally get to Bethlehem. And perhaps most importantly in this story, God has a place for everyone. The magi represent those who don’t belong to the Jewish people, who’d traditionally been assumed to dwell outside God’s mercy, whom Israel tended to see as irrelevant or hostile. But in this story God works through the previously irrelevant magi, the subsequently antagonised chief priests and scribes, and even the openly hostile Herod. So that’s how this precious story answers our first question, Who is God? God is beyond yet within, God seeks to be with us, God reaches us through multiple means, and God seeks to be with every single one of us. It’s all in this story.

Let’s now move to our second question: What does God do in Jesus? The short answer is, quite a lot. Jesus turns the world upside down: magi come from afar and literally enter the story from way out east. Everything is changing. Jesus moves heaven and earth: the milky way is rearranged. And he’s only a baby. Jesus unsettles the powerful. Not only do the three kings make an arduous journey, Herod the Great gets decidedly twitchy. It says he was frightened. The Chinese say, ‘One mountain can’t contain two tigers.’ Herod’s thinking, ‘If there’s a new king born today – where does that put me?’ Meanwhile, Jesus raises up the overlooked and obscure. Bethlehem, we’re told, has been least among the towns of Judah. It emerged from the shadows when David became king, and slipped back into the wings, well off stage. Now in Jesus, God brings Bethlehem back to centre stage. The genealogy, with which Matthew’s gospel starts, is mostly a list of men, ending in Joseph of Nazareth. In Jesus, Mary the young girl becomes the focus of the story. Gentiles had no place in Israel. In this story, they see what no one else has yet seen. And the climax of what God does in Jesus comes when the magi reach the house where Jesus is born and, we’re told, they ‘were overwhelmed with joy.’ So here’s a mini gospel of what God does in Jesus. Jesus turns the world upside down. Jesus unsettles the powerful. Jesus raises up the neglected and forgotten. And Jesus overwhelms us with joy. It’s all in this story.

So to our third question: How are we to respond? You might think this is a definitive story about revelation – that’s to say how God appears to us. It certainly is that – perhaps the most succinct account of revelation in the whole Bible. But it isn’t just that. The story’s also laced with indications of how we should respond to who God is and what God does in Jesus. We are to search diligently. Here’s another irony in this story. One irony is that it’s the chief priests and scribes, who later conspire to engineer Jesus’ execution, who at the beginning of the story make the connection between Jesus and the scriptures. This other irony is that Herod, whose intentions are evidently malign, nonetheless gives divine instruction not just to the magi, but to us. Search diligently, he says. Which makes us look at the whole story again, and realise the whole story’s in these two words. We are to search diligently in the heavens, in science, learning, research, discovery, exploration, imagination. We are to search diligently in scripture, theology, wisdom, philosophy, other faiths, ancient traditions, new insights, fiction, poetry, music – anywhere that can be a source of revelation, through which the Holy Spirit can show us where to find Jesus. We are to search diligently in authority, chief priests and scribes, church, academy, education, further study, archaeology, psychology, our own souls, to see where others have trod before. We are to search diligently in Bethlehem, in outhouses where refugees dwell, in Herod’s palace, in Egypt where people seek asylum, in places of conflict, and in Nazareth the place of nurture and growth.

Then still another irony. Herod says, ‘Bring me word.’ Again, his motives are disingenuous, but his sentiments are apt. We search diligently, but when we find, we bring word. If Christianity’s true, it’s not something we can keep to ourselves. It’s not a personal quirk. It changes everything. We’ve already seen Jesus unseats the powerful, raises up the obscure, and turns the world upside down. These are not personal things. They’re a story that needs telling. Bring me word. And then there’s the star. We’ve seen how it represents God’s patience. But it also points us to our role in the story. We are to be the star. Our role is to point to Jesus. We may feel insignificant. We may feel downtrodden. We may feel disheartened. We may feel foolish. But we can always point to Jesus – from very far away or from right up close, using words or making gestures, subtly or unsubtly. That’s what we’re called to do with our lives: point to Jesus. Point to Jesus. You know it’s Christianity if it looks like Jesus; you know it’s the church if it looks like Jesus, if it’s pointing to what Jesus does in this story. Stop over the place. Be a star. Hover. Abide. Don’t give up.

Then there’s what happens in the stable. The magi pay homage. They worship. Worship is where we recognise the story’s not about us, it’s about God, and Jesus is God among us, and Jesus represents God’s eternal desire and purpose to be with us, which is the most amazing gift imaginable: so worship means celebrating that gift and rejoicing in that relationship in thanks and praise. And the way the magi do this is to present their gifts. Which is what we’re called to do. It’s not about whether we’ve got any frankincense left over or if we brought back some myrrh from the bazaar. It’s about this simple question: Am I presenting my gifts? We worship when we give thanks and praise, and we worship when we present our gifts. Are you presenting your gifts? Don’t say ‘I don’t have any gifts’ or ‘It depends what you mean by gifts’ or ‘Just give me a chance, I’ll get there eventually.’ They’re all wriggles. Are you presenting your gifts? And then finally, in this inventory of how we respond to Jesus, notice the last line in the story: ‘They left by another road.’ None of us get to say, ‘We know how to do this, this is how we’ve always done it, there’s only one way, leave me alone and let me do it by myself.’ The magi are open to another road. We assume they’re old and wise: but they’re not too old to do it differently and they’re not so wise that they’re not open to try something they haven’t done before. Are you open to another road?

Those are the ways we respond to Jesus: we search diligently, we bring word, we point to Jesus like the star, we pay homage, we present our gifts; and we leave by another road. They’re all in the story.

So here’s our supermarket checklist, for any like me who can’t keep more than a couple of things in our head. This story shows us who God is, what God does in Jesus, and how we are to respond. We could give names to these three questions. The first we could call the Father. The second we could call the Son. The third we could call the Holy Spirit. After all, the holy Trinity is the original checklist, to ensure we have everything we need. And everything we need is in this story. Everything except doughnuts.