How to be a Wise Guy

I love nativities.  I love collecting them.  I love seeing them.  I love seeing different versions and interpretations of them. 

Marko, a youth ministry professional has a blog that he listed some of the 20 worst nativities ever. 
It's entertaining... you can look at those here. ( http://whyismarko.com/2010/top-20-worst-nativity-sets/ )

Nativity sets always have Mary, Joseph and Jesus, but one thing I tend to notice is that the next characters in a nativity scene are usually the Magi.

Amy tends to laugh at me when I set out Nativity sets.  I think its funny that the magi likely didn't show up for several years, but they are always included in the nativity sets.  So I set the magi on the other side of the room.  They came from afar, so I place them afar. 

Even though I place them far away as a joke, I think part of me does that because the magi just never seem to fit the story to me.  They are foreigners to the story and they give awfully odd gifts to a child. 
It also seems that the traditional way we talk about them is off base.
We talk like they showed up the night of Jesus' birth, which isn't likely.
Though we refer to them as "kings", they were likely astrologers. 
We always say there were 3 of them, due to the 3 gifts, but in reality, we have no idea how many of them there were. 

We just seem to be off base when we talk about the Magi, but I think we can still learn from these "wise guys."

The Magi came from the east, seeking out the "one who was born to be king of the Jews." Hearing that these Magi were poking around, Herod sends for them and he sets these guys up.  King Herod sends these guys to find Jesus so that he may also go "worship" Jesus.  Herod's only real motives were to kill Jesus.  Herod did not want competition to his throne and there was too much grumbling about this Jesus kid. 
The Magi follow the star from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, find the Christ child, worship him and offer him some very strange presents. 

And here is the part of the story that always gets me... "And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route."

Its a short verse in Matthew Chapter 2.  It is often looked over as well, but the Magi did a gutsy thing.  They did not obey Herod's orders.  Now they were not from Jerusalem and were not under Herod's "reign."  However, they were from a foreign land and probably stuck out like a sore thumb.  To not return to Herod would have been a dangerous move.  However, these guys followed what they thought was to be right. 

Herod was a powerful man and he was mad, so he ordered all the young male children under 2 years of age to be killed. 

It seems like an odd passage and you may be wondering what in the world I get out of it. 
But I think about how as a Christian, I often feel like a foreigner in a strange land.  I often feel like folks do not understand my actions as a Christian and think I waste my time doing what I do. 

Too often I/we fall into the pressure to conform to what the world wants/expects of us.  Our culture seems to thrive on conforming.  Companies are always trying to market what is cool, trying to appeal to our conformist attitudes.  If we were not so drawn to "blend in" with everyone else, then this marketing would be a big waste of money. 

To me, what made the Magi "Wise men" is not their ability to follow the stars, but their faith and trust to not conform to what Herod wanted, even when it maybe meant they were in danger. 

Christmas season is a time when companies are definitely trying to market "Conforming."  Businesses try to bank on Christmas all of the time.  Its easy to see that when Christmas stuff starts hitting the stores just after Halloween. 

How are you conforming with what the "World" expects of you this Christmas season?  Are you doing anything to stand out and stand up for the true meaning of Christmas?  Are you focusing on the business side of Christmas, or the HOLYday (holiday) part of Christmas?  Are you conforming this Christmas and blending in with the world, or are you standing out for Jesus this Christmas, even when its not the popular thing to do?