Change Your Perspective
We saw its star at its rising and have come to do him homage.
This is the gospel of Matthew,
and it is very different from the gospel of Luke,
which we read over Christmas while celebrating the nativity.
In the gospel of Matthew, Mary is barely mentioned.
Mary sees the angel appear in a dream
and that is pretty much all that we hear of Mary.
But we hear all about Joseph, and how he is from the line of David.
An angel appears to him in his dream,
and he takes care of baby Jesus
by making a run to Egypt to avoid King Herod.
This gospel is oriented at a Jewish community
to try and convince the people that
this really was the fulfillment of scripture,
that this is the Messiah.
This is also open to all non-Jews
because Jesus came to save all people
thus we have the three kings.
This is only mentioned Matthew’s gospel.
We traditionally see the magi as three kings,
but they would have come with more than three people.
We say three because we see three gifts.
We assume there were just three magi.
There was probably a whole caravan of these travelers
who ascertained by celestal navigation the location of the messiah.
They saw how the stars worked and
that is how they navigated.
It is a completely different perspective of how
the gospel is the fulfillment of scripture.
And now it is open to all people
and the magi were foreigners.
They were gentiles so they were bringing a message to the Jews.
Even the Jewish leaders get called by a non-Jew leader, King Herod,
to ascertain, where this Messiah is to be born.
They tell them, and then the Gentiles to go to Bethlehem
but Jewish leaders do not go in search.
There are layers of irony here that Matthew
is trying to communicate to his Jewish audience,
kind of waking them up.
“Hey, hello. It is the Messiah.
The Messiah was born.
You need to go to Jerusalem.
You need to leave Jerusalem and go to Bethlehem.”
But they missed the point.
Why did they miss the point?
It is because they are so rooted in their own belief,
their own perspective.
That is so hard when we sit in the same place for so long,
it is hard to see things differently.
If roght now, I would pick somebody on this side of the church and
ask you to switch seats, and you go all the way over here
and you guys sit all the way over here.
It would be hard to switch seats even if for an experiment.
It is one thing talking about it, it is another thing doing it,
change your perspective.
Changing seats is a big deal.
We get used to our perspective.
We get used to seeing things a certain way.
Pretty much all of you sit the same seats every week,
and when you change seats, you throw me off.
What are you doing?
You should be over there.
I mean, we all do it in our own lives.
We have our own perspective in our own life,
and we see life through that perspective.
There is a great phrase, I am not sure who it belongs to,
but goes like this:
“We do not see life as it is,we see life as we are.”
In other words, we see it from our perspective.
Now at the beginning of a new year,
we are called to, to see things differently, if you would,
to change our perspective a little bit, to look at things anew. That is what this feast day is all about.
That God manifests his love to all people, all nations,
not just to us, not just to me as an individual, but to all people.
But yes, to me in particular.
What is interesting about these foreign magi,
is even though they saw the star at its rising,
they still had to ask the locals how and
where the star was, where and what it meant.
Because the star set over Bethlehem,
but that does not tell you the exact house.
So we have to get more specific.
God does not just come in general to us.
God comes specifically to each and every one of us.
God comes in your life and my life.
To do that, we have have to look again at how God loves us.
I want to share with you a little more about that book,
which I mentioned before, The Book of Joy
by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
It talks about how we get to joy,
which is the ultimate goal of our lives, to live the joy.
And that is part of the gospel, to live the joy of the gospel.
They go through eight pillars for the pillars of joy.
Four for the mind, and four for the heart.
The four for the mind are:
perspective, humility, humor, and acceptance.
The four for the heart are:
orgiveness, gratitude, compassion and generosity.
Now, I am not going to go through all eight,
I just want to go through the number one perspective
because I think it changes everything.
I think the challenge for us is that
we sometimes get frustrated and our emotions kick in.
It is very hard to change our emotions,
whether is an interpersonal relationship in the family
or with friends or with a situation.
Once we have an emotion, it is very hard to change it.
But what we can do is change perspective before
and we can change perspective even in the middle,
which will determine our emotional output.
Let me give you an example with a quote in their book.
Two people can get involved in the same accident
and have two different end results.
They both have the same initial result.
They both are paraplegic as a result of the car accident.
One is sour and bitter for the rest of his life,
he sees this accident as taking away everything that he had.
The other sees this accident as
having been given a second chance of life.
She almost died and she sees it completely different.
Same accident, same initial result, but two different final results. Why?
Because of perspective.
I have a bazillion examples I could personally give.
There are people who get cancer or get very, very sick
and they have to go through a whole bout of chemo.
Some get bitter and angry that they have ever had the cancer.
Others are just grateful for the second chance of life
and see it as a new opportunity to see where God is working in their life.
The same thing, but different perspective.
What is it about this? What what do we need to do?
The Dalai Lama says it really well in this book.
When we see something,
we are seeing this from our singular perspective.
When we look at something,
it does not matter what it is that we are looking at,
we are looking at it with only one single perspective.
And if we want to be less frustrated,
less angry, less tumultuous because of what is happening,
then we have to move, we have to get ourself out of one perspective
and look at it from a different angle,
look at it at another angle.
Now all of a sudden I see Jesus.
Before I never saw Jesus. Why?
Because I had my back to Jesus.
I did not see him. How could I?
Because my perspective was outward facing, not inward facing.
See my friends, we have to make the effort to change our perspective.
And that is hard work. I am not lying.
But it is a whole lot easier to change your perspective
than to change your emotion.
You have heard me talk about tiny habits,
so how about we just take one thing to change this year.
Maybe this year we will just take this one thing
and every time we get frustrated at something
we are going to change our perspective.
Look again, move and move and move
until we get a new perspective, we go, “Ah,
now I see why people say that
or why that person is experiencing that.”
My friends, God is manifesting himself to us all the time.
If we are not seeing it, it is because we have our back to Jesus.
We are not seeing it because we are not looking from the right angle,
the right perspective.
We have to turn and keep turning and keep turning
until we see Christ this new year.
2025 is a year of jubilee.
It is a year that we are meant to go on pilgrimage,
at least in our mind and our heart.
Where we are called to look at things differently.
Not just for our own life, but for the whole world.
To see the whole world as one single family, all with one God.
In one graced moment, my friends,
let 2025 be a year that we always change perspective
and we see the God who manifests himself to us
and to all nations, everywhere.
We saw its star at its rising and have come to do him homage.