“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star at its rising and have come to worship him.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Starting with today, I think we have something on the calendar just about every single day for the next three weeks. That seems to happen every year at this time. Winter sports begin and every group wants to have a holiday gathering and there are extra church activities and there’s extra shopping to be done and decorating the house and all of that sits on top the regular events and meetings that don’t stop simply because there’s extra stuff going on. All of this busyness can easily overwhelm us and leave us completely unprepared for the actual celebration that lies ahead of us. Rather than getting excited for the season, we just want it to be over. How do we keep that from happening? As we begin our Advent journey today, let’s talk about keeping our focus where it most needs to be.

You can generally tell when someone is fairly fresh out of seminary because the first Christmas sermon series they’ll preach will somewhere include a derisive statement about the fact that the wise men should not be a part of the traditional manger scene since they weren’t there for Jesus’ actual birth. It’s been a few years since I graduated, but I’m sure I included the requisite reference in my first seasonal series. I was just as insufferable as most recent grads are, confident as I was that I knew more than everybody else around me about the faith with a smugness that I mostly kept concealed so I didn’t look as bad on the outside as I did on the inside. Sometimes it takes a few years to work the seminary environment out of a pastor before they’ll be much good for real ministry.

In any event, in spite of the fact that such knowledge is often imparted as if from on high to a people steeped in their ignorance of the “real” story, it’s true. The wise men or magi – magoi in Greek – showed up sometime after Jesus was born, possibly as much as two years later.

Just for fun, it’s also correct that the whole thing should be called the season of Advent, not the Christmas season, because in the liturgical church calendar which is the source for the idea of a Christmas season in the first place, the latter doesn’t actually start until Christmas day and lasts until January 6 which is the generally forgotten celebration of the arrival of the wise men known as Epiphany. If you’re quick with your math, that’s a period of twelve days which, of course, is where we get the idea of the twelve days of Christmas. But as commercialized as the whole thing is, trying to convince retailers to not advertise the Christmas season as starting until Christmas day is probably a non-starter. It’s likely a lost cause thinking they’ll stop shifting gears to that after Back-to-School season ends. Hallmark celebrates the new season’s worth of ornaments in July.

So, the wise men arrived on the scene late. But the reason for this is that they didn’t get the astronomical tip-off that something significant had happened in Jerusalem until Jesus had actually arrived. As they said to Herod, “for we saw his star at its rising and have come to worship Him.” What exactly this tip-off was, we don’t know. I’ve heard several presentations over the years from both experts and thoroughly educated laymen who have endeavored to identify exactly what the “Christmas star” might have been. There are several potential options, but I suspect precise knowledge of what the wise men saw will have to wait until we are face to face with the God of the heavens.

Another question here is why exactly these Persian men from a class famed for their wisdom in a variety of different subjects that would have made them the closest thing to what we might identify today as scientific experts in their day associated this particular astronomical event as coinciding with the birth of a Jewish king. They would have had access to a variety of Jewish writings and prophecies dating back to the time of the Babylonian and later Persian captivity. A Jewish community had been thriving there ever since. But exactly which of these writings or which combination of them led them to conclude they needed to respond to the appearance of this heavenly light by packing up and going to Judea we don’t know.

Yet pack up and go they did.

They immediately started preparing for the journey. That would have taken some time in and of itself. You don’t pack up to be gone for a period of several months today without some prior planning. This was even more the case then. They would have had to get a variety of personal affairs in order. They would have had to secure necessary funding. They would have had to hire or request access to the servants and protection detail they needed for the trip. It would not have been a grab-everything-and-go sort of adventure. Then there was the journey itself. Even if they came from as far west as Babylon and not further east than that, the journey would have been almost 1,000 miles. That would have taken months assuming best case circumstances the whole way.

But they did it. They showed up late to the party, but they did it. That effort alone should warrant their being included in the manger scene you set up this season. Even if you have some fun with it and set them around the house in different locations until Epiphany, don’t forget about them. But if you take that approach, make sure not to put baby Jesus in the manger until Christmas day as well.

Okay, but what does any of this have to do with helping us stay focused on what matters most as we get into this season that is so often characterized by excessive busyness? Did you miss it in there? The wise men started a journey to Jesus several months before they actually arrived to see Him. We’re talking about staying focused for basically 24 days at this point. That’s less than a month no matter how you swing it. They were way up closer to 365.

Fine, but how did they do it? Well, not to be too cute here, but they had a guiding light leading them along their journey. What’s more, it was a guiding light they could only see for less than half the day over most of the time they traveled, and a significant part of that time they likely spent sleeping unless they did most of their traveling by night.

Let’s draw out just a couple of lessons here worth heeding. First and foremost, if you are going to get through this season without getting totally overwhelmed by the inherent craziness of it, you need a guiding light of some sort. Perhaps it’s too cliche to suggest Jesus for that, but I’m going to do it anyway. You need to intentionally build some times into your schedule both personally and with your family to reorient yourselves on Jesus after the busyness of the day. He is the reason for the season, after all. What exactly these times look like is up to you. They don’t have to be fancy or flashy. They certainly don’t need to become another thing – you have enough “another things” in your schedule already. But they do need to be intentional or they won’t happen.

Second, the wise men could only see the star, whatever form it happened to have taken, at night. That’s typically a time when things are quieter. There are fewer distractions. Build your times of refocusing into those parts of your day when there are fewer distractions to get in the way and keep them from being what you intend for them to be. If achieving this means saying no to some things, do that. You’ll likely get some grief for it, but do it anyway and ignore the grief to the extent you are able. If you aren’t so able, explain to the grief giver why you are saying no. If they don’t like that, too bad for them.

My guess is that the space you are going to have available for this will either be early in the morning right when you wake up, or late in the evening just before you go to bed. That’s fine. Those are great times for it. And again, what these times look like is up to you. There are tons of resources online for how these can be constructed from simple to elaborate. The intentionality is the key.

These two things may seem simple, and that’s because they are. But don’t let the simplicity deceive you. They are powerful. If your world is at all like mine, you are facing the beginning of a whirlwind that will swirl you through the next four weeks with such an intensity that by the time you get to the end of it, you’ll hardly remember where and when you started. It will feel simultaneously excruciatingly slow and insanely fast. If you do nothing, you’ll get lost to it and come out on the other side ruing all the things you missed or didn’t engage in as intentionally as you wanted. You’ll regret not giving sufficient attention to the reason for the season in the first place. So, rather than being a victim to the busyness, take control of it. Be intentional about how you engage with it and the lens through which you view it. Do these two simple things, and set yourself up now to enjoy the Advent season for all that it’s worth. You’ll be glad that you did.