A Light From Beyond the Boundaries

January 4, 2026

Matthew 2:1-12

            Our second reading is no surprise today as we celebrate Epiphany and the story of the Magi as told in Matthew’s gospel.  Listen as God continues to speak to you.

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            The Magi are always the last to arrive during the Christmas season… always showing up on the sixth day of January… the twelfth day of Christmas… the day of Epiphany… which… to be exact… is Tuesday. Our decorations and our Christmas carols want to place them at the stable on the night of Jesus’ birth… fusing together the two Christmas stories.  Truly, we like Luke’s Christmas story the best.  I don’t think there’s any denying that.  Combining the two, Matthew’s story gets overshadowed… and so do these Wise Men.  We have just made up things about them over the years in order to give them something.  For example, Matthew doesn’t give us their number… doesn’t give us their names… doesn’t even tell us exactly where they came from. Tradition fills in those gaps, of course, but Matthew is sparse. He gives us only enough to know that they come late… and that they come seeking.

Tradition has made them symbols of the light of Christ reaching beyond Israel… the first sign that this child is not only for one people, but for all people. Often in art the Magi are painted as three different races, representing the whole world kneeling before the Christ. And while that’s a beautiful image, what captures my attention more and more is not the gifts they bring or the symbolism of tradition we’ve layered onto them… but the way the light of Christ is found only when they stop following the script they know.

And maybe that begins with Joseph. Joseph had a script. A quiet, righteous script. When he learns Mary is pregnant, he plans to dismiss her quietly… to avoid scandal… to protect her dignity… and then to move on with his life as it was supposed to be. A carpenter like his father before him… and his father before him. A man who would eventually marry another, raise children, and live the life he expected to live. That was Joseph’s script. But a dream interrupts that script. A dream that doesn’t make Joseph a different man… but makes him more the man he is called to be. He risks enough to follow the dream. He veers off the path he assumed was his. And in doing so, he becomes part of a story he never imagined.  The script gets rewritten.

The Magi have their own script. They are astrologers—wise in a way we no longer consider to be wise. Today astrology is entertainment at best, but in their world it was a respected science.  I guess we could use that word… a respected way of knowing how the world around them worked. They read the stars the way we read maps or calendars. Their charts told them a king had been born, and so they followed the script their wisdom provided. They went where kings belong. They went to Jerusalem. It was the right place according to their training… their wisdom… and the wrong place according to God’s revelation. Their wisdom… the script they followed… could only take them so far. They arrive in Jerusalem with no epiphany… only a question.

Herod, of course, has a script too… the script of power. And Herod never veers from his script. Not when he hears of a rival… not when fear grips him… not even when violence becomes his only response. Power scripts are airtight. They leave no room for dreams. They leave no room for light… especially a light that might question their power… its legitimacy or place in the world. And as much as I wish Herod in this story shocked me, he doesn’t anymore. His script is acted out in our world every day… where power protects itself at the expense of the innocent… where fear blinds… where self‑interest becomes the only moral compass. Herod’s script is tragically familiar.

But the chief priests and scribes… they do surprise me more.  I think I want them to surprise me.  I’m looking for that surprise with the little bit Matthew gives. They know the prophecy. They can quote it. They can point the Magi toward Bethlehem without hesitation. They know exactly where the Messiah is to be born.  This year I’ve thought a lot about the passage from the prophet Micah that is given… and I’ve wondered if this is the priests and scribes making a swipe against Herod and his power script… a script that dominates them.  But, even if it is… even with everything they know… they don’t seek anything different from their own script.  They do not go.  They do not leave Jerusalem. They do not ask to join the Magi. They do not show curiosity or wonder or courage. They do not risk stepping off their well‑worn path. Every year I find myself wishing Matthew had written one more sentence… just one… telling us that a few of them decided to go and see for themselves. That a few of the priests and scribes returned home by a different road. That a few of them allowed the light to stir something in them. But Matthew gives us no such sentence. They know of the light… but they do not seek it.

And I can’t help but see the church in them. The church who knows the story… knows the prophecy… knows the language of faith… but sometimes becomes so comfortable in its own script… or so afraid to say what needs to be said… that it no longer expects God to surprise it. No longer expects dreams. No longer expects to veer off the familiar road. Sometimes the church becomes convinced that the dim light it carries is all the light there is… or all the light it needs. Sometimes the church forgets that Epiphany is not about guarding the light… keeping it safe under its well-made bushel… but about following it.

And maybe that’s why this story is important for us to read year after year…because so much of our lives are shaped by scripts we didn’t write… by scripts we inherited… scripts we have absorbed without even realizing it.  We all have them.  Some of our scripts come from our families… the expectations spoken and unspoken… the roles we learned to play… the ways we were taught to keep the peace or stay small or stay strong.  Some scripts come from the culture around us… what success looks like… what failure looks like… what we’re supposed to want… what we’re supposed to fear.  Some scripts come from the church itself… the church at its best and the church at its most anxious.  Scripts about what faith should look like… what a “good Christian” should sound like… what questions are allowed… what doubts must be hidden… what dreams are too risky to follow.

And the thing about scripts is…they feel safe.  They feel familiar.  They may even feel like the only road to get us safely home.  But Epiphany whispers to us that there is always another road.  Always another possibility. Always another way God might be trying to break in.  Sometimes the script we cling to is simply the script of “how things have always been.”  Sometimes it’s the script of “I can’t change.”  Sometimes it’s the script of “this is just who I am now.”  Sometimes it’s the script of “nothing new can happen here.”

But the Magi remind us that even the wisest people can follow the wrong script…and that God is not limited by the roads we think we have to take.

And I wonder… how many times in our own lives has God tried to nudge us off the familiar path… through a conversation we didn’t expect… through a restlessness we couldn’t explain… through a moment of clarity that came out of nowhere… through a dream we didn’t quite know what to do with.  How many times has God tried to lead us toward Bethlehem…and we kept heading back toward Jerusalem because that’s what our script told us to do.  Epiphany is God’s gentle insistence that the light is still out ahead of us… still drawing us…still asking us to trust that there is more to see… more to learn… more to become.

The Magi, meanwhile, continue on. They finally reach Bethlehem. And while tradition focuses on their gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—I find myself less interested in the gifts and more interested in the men who bring them. Because the gifts they carry are gifts for a conventional king… and Jesus is anything but conventional. What matters is not what they bring… but what happens to them when they arrive. Something happens in Bethlehem. Something that breaks their script.

Matthew gives us only one poetic sentence: “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”

A dream. Another dream. Another interruption. Another invitation to veer off the expected path. The Magi do not return to Herod. They do not follow the road their wisdom would have chosen. They do not cling to the script that brought them this far. Something in Bethlehem—something about this child—opens a new way. A way they didn’t see before. A way they couldn’t have charted. A way that requires trust.

And I wonder if that is the real epiphany. Not the star. Not the gifts. Not even the journey. But the moment when the old script loses its authority… when it loses its grip upon us… when the road we assumed was ours to take no longer feels inevitable… when God’s dream opens a path we never expected… when the light reveals a way home that is different from the way we came.

Because Epiphany is not just about the Magi. It is about us. It is about the scripts we follow… the ones we cling to… the ones we inherit… the ones we fear leaving behind. It is about the dreams we ignore… the invitations we resist… the roads we never imagine taking. Epiphany asks us whether we are willing to go to Bethlehem… and whether we are willing to go home by another road.  Amen.