Not a little more. All.

Matthew 2:1-12

One of the big emotions of this holiday season, and one of the ones we associate most with the season of Christmas, is joy. The wise men had it right there in chapter 2 of Matthew: "When they saw the star had stopped they were overwhelmed with joy." Not just kind of happy but overwhelmed with joy.

Joy isn't necessarily the emotion we associate with wise people, or with kings, or with people who have a lot of education. We tend to think that they're the pensive ones who are just kind of always level. So to have wise people be joyous sticks out. Joy is something we tend to associate much more freely with children. Now, if we think about what it is that wise men we might say that they study, and in those days what they were studying was, among other things, the stars. That happens to be why they noticed this new thing in the first place. It's guys who are looking at the stars who found Jesus, because you can't notice a new star in the sky unless you're looking in the first place. If a new star showed up in the sky tonight I wouldn't have a clue because I wouldn't be looking, and even if I did happen to look up I wouldn't notice that there was anything different about it because I don't know the sky that well in the first place. It's just not something I know intimately. So it was the wise men who studied, who had that background to observe this, who experience this overwhelming joy. It's worth starting there.
Joy is something that gets picked up and used by many people and things in this season, including such quintessentially American institutions as Walmart. Maybe you have seen some of these commercials--they always do commercial jingles like this--but this year's commercial is very soothing and catchy and it starts out "A little more tree, a little more snow, a couple more reindeer, a couple more bows, [etc, etc]. A little more joy for Christmas." Have you seen this? Maybe you haven't even realized how often you've seen it this Christmas season. Then, there's even this line about the wise men: "Why stop at three wise men when the mantle fits nine?" Which is a very consumerism-driven verse. Why stop at three wise men? Who cares if there were three? Buy a dozen! Why not?

Now, I'm not only going to pick on Walmart. That's kind of low-hanging fruit for pastors around Christmas. It's really easy for us to get on these anti-consumerist rants, and pretty much everybody understands already that there's this tension between what we buy around Christmas and this gift of a Savior, but one of the reasons why there is such a harsh distinction between this consumer Christmas and this idea of "keeping Christ in Christmas" is because of the distinction between "a little more" and what the Christ child represents, which is everything. There's this tension between giving and getting, between waiting and opening, between watching the skies and watching the presents under the tree. There's this tension in this season and a lot of it has to do with this concept of "more, more, more." And that's really what those Walmart commercials get at: A little more, just a little more.

But what the wise men are telling us with their overwhelming joy is that it's not about more; it's about all... it's about everything. The reason they are overwhelmed is because they experience everything with this child; that wrapped up in this baby is the salvation of humanity. It's not a little more. There's nothing that can be added to that. It's everything.

So they bring in these gifts. They bring in gold and frankincense and myrrh--you know the story even if you have no idea what these things are. Well, we know what gold is. It is a sign of wealth and a thing that lasts. But you might not know what frankincense and myrrh are. They are both incenses, but frankincense is incense used often in worship and myrrh is often used in burial. So the gifts the wise men bring symbolize eternity in different ways. Gold is something that lasts, frankincense brings with it this sense of worship that we talk about in Revelation as happening forever around the throne of God, and myrrh brings to mind the forever-ness of burial and death. All of this is wrapped up in the gifts that the wise men bring. The gifts encompass the wise men's joy, suggesting again that there is no part way, there is no "little more joy;" that joy is utterly complete in Jesus.

This might sound like splitting hairs, but it makes a world of a difference between a world where we try to do a little more and a little more all the time and a world where God demands everything. In that second world--the world of the Christ-child--it's not about us, and that turns out to be a strange gift. Those of us who are adults know that Christmas is not about us, but we sometimes also forget that it's not about our kids either. This is not just about putting another gift under the tree and bringing a little more joy or happiness; it's about everything.

The wise men understand this. They go to Herod first. They follow the star as far as Jerusalem and then they have to ask the temporal king where to go from there, which seems like a kind of naive move on their part if we stop to think about it. King Herod isn't exactly going to be thrilled that another king is being born in his land. And if you know this story well it pretty much goes downhill from here. Following the wise men, Herod comes rampaging through the countryside, killing all the children, in order to get to this child-king the wise men were searching for. So, the wise men going to Herod is a political move at first. They use their observation and reason and it takes them to the temporal king, but from there it is turned over to the scribes and the religious experts to get them further.

Where do they go from Jerusalem? Well, the scribes open up the book of Micah and see that the king is supposed to be born in Bethlehem, the city of David. So, then, it becomes possible to follow the star the rest of the way and there it lies over the manger--that's our familiar story. But they do it following, silently observing; they do it first going to the political leader of the day and they do it in response to joy. The contrast between Herod and Jesus is obvious, but it is the crucial distinction between the two that is the difference between the Walmart commercial and the Savior. The king the wise men approach at first embodies that world of "more." He is about power and wealth and achievement, and what they find is a man fearful of a baby, and for good reason. The wise men discover that that king promises more, but the baby offers everything.

They're wise in part because they're not joyful at meeting Herod; they're joyful at meeting Jesus.

So, in a way, the Walmart theme is heading in the right direction. In a way all of our holiday busy-ness points us in the right direction. But, finally, it doesn’t get us there. We’ll have moments of Christmas joy, moments where we are thankful and happy. But those moments fade. Our things fade. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh point us toward forever, toward everything. That God came into the world not for a momentary joyful interlude but so that we need not go looking for a “little more joy” in our lives. Instead we are invited to sit, observing the heavens, because we don’t need a little more. In the Christ-child we have it all.