Star-Followers from Far Away

Not far from the temple where old Simeon had held the baby, a group of strangers walked into Jerusalem with a question that made the whole city nervous.

They were magi from the east, wise men who studied the night sky. (The Bible never says there were three of them. It counts the gifts, not the men.) Dusty from months on the road, they went through the city stopping people to ask the same question.

"Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?" they asked. "We saw his star when it rose, and we have come to worship him."

Soon the question reached King Herod, an old man who had worked hard to stay king, and he did not like the words "born king" one bit. When Herod was upset, all Jerusalem was upset with him.

Herod called in the chief priests and the teachers of God's law. "Where will God's promised King be born?"

They hardly had to think. "In Bethlehem," they said, and they read him what the prophet Micah wrote long ago: "Bethlehem, you are by no means the least among the towns of Judah, because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel."

Bethlehem was six miles away. The teachers had the answer in their scrolls, and the strangers had crossed deserts to ask the question.

Then Herod sent for the magi secretly. He asked exactly when the star had appeared, and smiled. "Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. When you find him, come back and tell me, so I can go and worship him too."

(Herod was not planning to bring a present.)

The magi set out, and there it was again, the same star, going ahead of them down the road! "Look!" they cried. They were so full of joy they could hardly hold it. The star stopped over one house in Bethlehem.

Jesus was no longer a newborn in a feeding trough; his family lived in a house now. Inside, the magi found the child with Mary, his mother.

These grand men got down on their knees in front of a little boy and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests. Gold, a gift for a king. Frankincense, a sticky tree sap that priests burned in God's temple for its sweet smoke. And myrrh, a costly perfume used to wrap the body of someone who had died. (A strange present for a small boy. The magi may not have known why they brought it.)

That night God warned the magi in a dream not to go back to Herod. They went home to their own country by a different road, and Herod waited for news that never came.

One visit from one far country could not bring every nation to his door, and most of the world had never heard of Bethlehem.

Jesus grew up, and people from outside kept finding him: a Roman soldier, a mother from Canaan, Greeks at the festival who said, "We want to see Jesus." Then the magi's question came back. Soldiers nailed him to a cross, and over his head they hung a sign: "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." He died there, and two of his friends wrapped his body with myrrh and laid him in a tomb.

On the third day he was alive. Years later, Jesus' friend John saw a vision of the end of the story: a crowd from every nation and tribe and language, too many to count, standing before the King's throne. Not one of them will need a star to find the way.