Scripture reading for today: Matthew 2:1-12 RSV
“And being warned in a dream not return to Herod,
they departed to their own country by another way. Matthew 2:12
As a preacher’s kid, I heard this story many many times as a child sitting in Church during Advent. What I was hearing then was the Revised Standard version of the Bible, and some of the phrases still sound in my mind whenever I hear the last line of the story of the Wise Men. “they departed …by another way.”
For some reason these words never struck me as a geographical statement as much as they did a theological one. The Gospels are filled with encounters between people and Jesus, and in every instance they certainly went home “by another way”. Sometimes it was the way they thought about something as with the rich man who is asked to give everything away to follow Jesus. Sometimes it was the way they saw themselves as when Jesus confronted the Gerasene Demoniac. Or the way they understood their behavior as with the paralytic at the pool at Bethsaide. Indeed, the message is clear that whenever we encounter the Spirit of Christ, we will go home different from when we arrived. For the story of the Wise men it may have appeared only to be a change in highways, but surely they also went home with a different mindset from when they arrived, for they had seen the Messiah, and they knew all history was changed accordingly. So let us today consider the many different ways our lives are reshaped by our faith in Jesus as the Christ.
Reflections 