I want to talk about two distinctive religious pilgrimages this morning. One is ancient and the other is modern. The first is the ancient visit of Persian astrologers, the “wise men”, to pay homage to the Christ child. The other is the modern pilgrimage of thousands of American Southern Baptists to the Biblical land of Persia, now known as Iraq, to convert the heathen Muslims. Both are well-meaning, spiritually motivated enterprises. But they represent two radically different  models of faith and two different notions of how to get along with people who have a different faith than one’s own. 

 

The International Mission Board of Southern Baptists regards the current occupation of Iraq as a unique opportunity to win the souls of the Iraqi people for Christ. John  Brady, the head of this organization has sent an urgent appeal to the 16 million members of his church. Jerry Vines, former head of the Southern Baptist Convention has described the prophet Mohammed as a “demon-possessed pedophile”. Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, who delivered the invocation prayer at George Bush’s presidential inauguration, has described Islam as a “very evil and wicked religion”. Jon Hannah, a missionary who has recently returned from Iraq, having distributed 1.3 million Christian tracts, has concluded that “The Muslim religion is an antichrist religion”. They deliver food and clothing to the Iraqi people, but says this evangelist, these people need spiritual nourishment even more. That nourishment just happens to come in the form of Southern Baptist belief system. This is one model of Christian mission and evangelism.

We have the Truth, capital T; their faith is nothing more than a lie, and therefore they must be undernourished. The primary purpose of being a Christian is to convert other people to our faith. The Muslim people quite naturally understands this for what it is, a holy war. 

 

A different model is presented in Matthew’s gospel this morning. The Magi notice “a star at its rising”.  The symbolism is important. Here we have wise people scouring the night skies, not for signs that they have the Truth, but for signs of the truth wherever truth it might choose to show itself. They have the wisdom to realize that the Holy One is not restricted to revealing Herself to only their people. They’ve taken their heads out of their own Bibles long enough to gaze up and out at what is the source of our fundamental unity, rather than what divides us. The wise ones intuited what science has now confirmed, that the basis of the unity of all peoples of faith is biospiritual. We have come from the same place and are made of the same stuff. We are star-dust, reconfigured in human form, in-spired by the Creator. They gaze up at the stars and realize that a very special human being is about to be born, a child who is meant to transcend cultures, transcend religious differences, and point us all in the direction of a compassionate Father, the love which fired it all into being.

 

This star points them in the direction of Israel. They make the journey to Bethlehem in order to pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews. The poignancy of this story in light of the current mutual hatred between Iraq and Israel is not lost on us.  Persia had a long history of kindness towards the Jews. When Cyrus of Persia conquered the Babylonian Empire, he allowed religious freedom to the Jews. Many returned home to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple. The wise men inherited their wisdom from a culture of religious tolerance. Notice they go to Israel for a single purpose, to pay homage. They have no intent, or need apparently, to import their religious beliefs. They open up their treasure chests and offer to the baby gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Not a mention of religious tracts.

 

Every Saturday morning Ann and I go to Granville Market to get our groceries. When we’re finished shopping I end up at the Tea Store. There is a pleasant young man who works there. He told me that he was interested in theology and he was thinking of enrolling in a particular theological college which made it clear that he was heading down a fundamentalist path. I told him that I would like to give him a book to read if he was interested. He became extremely cautious and said he’d have to run it by his pastor. I realized that what I wanted to do for him was to save him from my own experience of fundamentalist Christianity. In the end I decided against giving him the book. I had been given too many books over the years by those who thought I was in the grips of the antichrist, if not the antichrist himself. And how would my gesture be any different from handing out tracts quoting John 3:16? It’s time the religions of the world, including our own, got over having to convert everyone to our belief system. The Magi offer an alternative.

 

What would ecumenical relations with other faiths look like if it was homage-based?  What would it mean for Christians to make the long journey across strange cultural and religious landscapes bearing only gifts of respect for all that is sacred in their tradition? Just after the occupation of Iraq, people of this congregation visited Islamic Temples and worshiped with them. We invited Aziz Khaki, President of the Muslim Federation, to come and address our gathering at Peace in the City. The Rev. Dr. Barry Cooke is organizing an inter-faith event for this spring which will feature persons from all faiths and of no particular faith, including the Dalai Lama of Tibet, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Vaclav Havel. These are modern day versions of the journey of the Magi. We need to be looking for and following the rising star of respect among different faiths.

 

It seems to me that we can learn from the Magi in another respect. Their wisdom extends to intuiting those people and political systems which are contrary to the very principles of life itself. In their encounter with Herod they recognize a person and a political system which is anti-life. Herod embodies a paranoid world-view which is the enemy of all that is sacred; where there is abundance, Herod sees scarcity; where there is security Herod sees immanent threat; where there is love, Herod feels judgment, where there exists the possibility of shared power and wealth, Herod uses his muscle to ensure a disproportionate amount falls his way; where there is diversity, Herod imposes monocultures of his own creation; where there is the threat of real democracy, Herod silences the people, in dictatorships overtly, in so-called democracies by controlling the flow of information.  With the Magi, the faiths of the world can withdraw allegiance from these systems and work together to articulate and enact an alternative vision.

 

As Christians we express that vision in response to the revelation of Jesus Christ. We need to do this passionately and with all the conviction we can muster. We need to honour our sacred traditions, symbols, and narratives are sacramental; they have the power to open us up to the deep mysteries of God. The Magi were steeped deeply enough in their own tradition that they could make a pilgrimage into another culture and religion. They enjoyed the security of their own faith system sufficiently that they could pay homage to another. This too should be our model. I believe that the deeper one goes into one’s own faith system, the closer we get to God, and the closer we get to God, the closer we get to God, the more we are informed by values of diversity, inclusivity, and respect for the inherent dignity of other people and faiths.

 

Notice that after their encounter with the Christ child the Magi “returned home by another road.” We can take this as a metaphor suggesting that their encounter with the sacred center of another religion had a transformative effect on them. Matthew doesn’t say, mind you, that they converted to Christianity after meeting the baby. Many of us make that assumption. They were probably Zoroastrians. They were so when they arrived and nothing in the story even hints that they became followers of Jesus afterwards. They went home. But they went home by a different road, meaning they allowed themselves to be influenced by the experience. The United Church has missionaries around the world. But they don’t go to their placements with all the answers. If you want a picture of what that kind of arrogance results in read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. You may remember that the missionary insisted on baptizing the African people in the river. They thought he must be crazy, for they knew what he hadn’t taken the time to find out, that the river was filled with crocodiles.

 

Sometime ask Kay Metheral or Muriel Bamford, both of whom spent a good portion of their ministries in India. They went with a set of skills, in their cases as nurses, skills which had been requested by the people themselves. And I think they will tell you that they returned home by another road, profoundly affected by the experience, having received at least as much as they gave, and having found Christ in the people they served, whether they were Christian or Hindu. May the wisdom of the Magi prevail.