What They Left Out

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on the Epiphany of Our Lord + January 5, 2025.

What was left out? When I see a movie after reading the novel of the same story, I am often frustrated by what they left out. I get it. It’s hard to compress a novel-length story into a couple of hours of movie.

On the day after Christmas we went to see the movie Wicked. And loved it. Since the movie was two hours and forty minutes and part two is still to come out later this year, it made me wonder. If the Broadway musical is about three hours and the two movies together will be nearly six hours, what is being added? What was left out from the 1995 novel Wicked? Same with the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. What was left out?

The story of the Magi is familiar. Yet the account leaves out details that have been added later through art, music, and imaginative retellings. We don’t know that there were three wise men. We don’t know that they were men. We don’t know where they were from, possibly Persia in what today is Iran. We don’t know their names, but since the fifth century names were assigned: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. We don’t know how long it took them to journey to Bethlehem, though some scholars wonder that it may have taken up to two years. For one thing the visit happens not in a stable but in a house. A lot of details are left out. 

Some wonder whether these early stories from Jesus’ life are true. One writer (Barbara Brown Taylor) reminds us that these stories speak truth to us, regardless of what really happened. The author writes, “It is not that the facts don’t matter. It is just that they don’t matter as much as the stories do, and stories can be true whether they happened or not. You do not have to do archaeology to find out if they are genuine, or spend years in the library combing ancient texts. There is another way home. You listen to the story. You let it come to life inside you, and then you decide on the basis of your own tears or laughter, whether the story is true.”

So bring curiosity to this story. What do you wonder about? I am often drawn to several themes that I often preach about. One is the theme of journey. Where is the star leading you at this time of your life? Another is gifts. What gifts are you offering the world? Another is the exotic nature of the Magi. They are Gentiles, strangers, outsiders. Of a different religion. How do you welcome and receive the gifts of those of different cultures, ethnicities, and religions?

There is also something important left out in our Epiphany story. All is calm and all is bright in our manger scenes. Yet verses later the tyrant and threatened King Herod has all the boys under two murdered. All is not well. The world is full of violence and evil. Political egos are fragile. Innocent lives taken. We can’t help but think of the thousands of innocent children killed in Gaza and in other war-torn places. 

Though the Magi conferred with Herod before they set out for Bethlehem, one of them had a disturbing dream that suggested danger. So they decide to leave the king in the dark and return home by another way. Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt where would be foreigners and refugees.

What is the other way home for the Magi? What is the other way home for us? They left that part out. We get to write that part of the story. Make sure you bring a dose of curiosity as you reflect on that.

James Taylor has a song 1988 song about the visit of the Magi. Called “Home by another way.”

They tell me that life is a miracle
And I figured that they're right
But Herod's always out there
He's got our cards on file
It's a lead pipe cinch, if we give an inch
Then he realized it'd take a mile

It's best to go home by another way
Home by another way
We got this far through a lucky star
But tomorrow is another day
We can make it another way
Safe home as they used to say
Keep a weather eye to the chart on high
And go home another way

Whether a yellow-brick road, an el ride, or sidewalks in your neighborhood, may the star that is Christ lead you as well. Lead you to your true self. Lead you to this table. Lead you to one another. Lead you to all in need. Especially when it is best to go home another way.