Honest Advent Digital Series - Week 4

8:38 instead of just being observant of this story. Yeah, so there's this great passage in Scripture around the Christmas story where we see the Magi brought into play and this idea of paying attention. And it's this small detail, and they ask this question. They say, where is the newborn King of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him. And so Scott Erickson talks about the Magi in this way. He says, the Bible actually tells us very little about the Magi. They are described as mysterious visitors from the east who have come to Jerusalem looking for the child whose star they observed at its rising. They have this awkward run-in with King Herod who knows nothing about this but is all the more secretly plotting to destroy this child. They follow the start of Bethlehem where upon seeing baby Jesus they kneel down and worship him presenting him with these three famous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They return home never to be heard of again.

9:36 and their identity has remained a mystery to this day. Christians have been trying to figure out who they were for a very long time, as early as 200 AD. The running theory is that these magi, more than three, were a sort of upper-class, wealthy, star-watching celebrity priesthood, mostly based in Persia. So the magi would have been familiar with the prophecies of a coming God-as-man savior from the captivity of Israelite slaves several hundred years earlier in Babylon. So when they see, because they're paying attention, they see this unusual star in the West, maybe a supernova or conjunction of planets or just a good old-fashioned supernatural manifestation, they made the long journey to find the king. Their identity will most likely always be shrouded in mystery. So much will be unknown of them, but at least we get a couple things, a catchy song, We Three Kings, even if numerically inaccurate and a fantastic model of what it means to pay attention yeah and so even in paying attention to this each week we have been looking at the artwork that corresponds with these reflections that we're pulling from and the image for today is this image of a baby but inside of the baby or captivated on print of the baby is literally the universe so we get all these glimpses of the universe and of stars and of galaxies all over the image of just a small baby just just in that vulnerability that we've talked about but also thinking of that as Christ and yet within Christ is all of the universe and all of oh I love this image it is one of my favorites not only that but I have I have a love of stars and a love of space and all of that I've been known to chase you know lots of things in the night sky and get to dark spaces to be able to see them and so this imagery again how does that happen by paying attention and and how does it also happen especially when we're thinking about magi with stars it doesn't happen in the beautiful

11:42 brightness of the day it happens in like the darkness of night and that can be like an even deeper metaphor for what we might carry in our lives or ways that we might see god even greater in times of darkness versus when everything is just like lovely, which Christmas is one of those times where we think it's all lovely and it's all beautiful, but actually it can also be very dark and very painful. And so the question that I'd love to throw out is just, have you had an experience or know of somebody who had an experience of like paying attention in that same way that we kind of see in the Magi of maybe God like pulling you in a new direction, just as the magi like not only they did not just pay attention they were then moved to action by paying attention so i just wonder if any of that calls things to mind for you guys