We may have packed away our tinsel and Christmas trees for another year, but the Christmas story doesn’t end with Christmas Day.
The Gospel of Matthew tells us that “After Jesus was born … 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’.” (Mt 2:1-2).
A few verses later, Matthew tells us:
After hearing [King Herod], they went on their way. And there it was – the star they had seen at its rising. It led them until it came and stopped above the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overwhelmed with joy.
Entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and falling to their knees, they worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their own country by another route (Mt 2:9-12).
The “star of Bethlehem” is one of several mysteries associated with the birth of Jesus. There are various explanations for it:
- A close planetary alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, dated to 7–6 BCE, could have appeared as an unusually bright or symbolically meaningful “star.” Some Greco-Roman writers associated Jupiter with kingship and Saturn with Israel, making the conjunction theologically suggestive.
- A comet – often interpreted as portents of major changes in the ancient world. Some suggest that the Magi followed a visible comet, though these were more often associated with disaster.
- A nova or supernova (a stellar explosion) could explain a sudden, bright appearance in the sky, although no definitive match has been identified.
- A symbolic reading of planetary movements rather than a single object. This fits well with Magi as astrologer-scholars and explains why the phenomenon had meaning for them but not for others.
- A supernatural light: some Christian traditions interpret the star as a direct divine sign, not bound by normal astronomy—appearing, moving, and disappearing according to God’s purpose.
- Theological symbolism rather than historical astronomy. On this view, Matthew uses “the star” as biblical imagery (cf Num 24:17), implying that creation itself bears witness to the birth of the Messiah, especially to Gentile seekers.
Ultimately, we cannot determine the nature of the star. What we can say is that it appeared, at the right time and place, and it somehow led the wise men to where the infant Jesus was housed. But the story of the Magi has wider and more challenging implications for us in Sydney today.
The familiar story in Matthew 2:1-12 is also a profound lesson about respect for difference, the wisdom of outsiders, compassion across borders, and the unsettling freedom of the grace of God. As we read it carefully, the story speaks to contemporary debates about Australian immigration policy, border security, and our moral posture toward strangers who arrive from across the seas.
Think about it: the Magi are not insiders to Israel’s faith. They are outsiders. They are strangers, foreigners, astrologers from the East, practitioners of a discipline viewed with suspicion by Jewish law. They don’t belong ethnically, culturally, or spiritually.
Yet it is to these strangers that God gives directions to locate the infant Jesus. It is to astrologers from the east that God grants the insight to recognise the theological significance of “his star” (v. 2), when all but a few Jewish faithful have no idea what is happening.
They travel from a great distance, at personal cost and risk, guided by fragmentary knowledge and deep curiosity. Matthew’s Gospel makes a startling claim: God does not wait for them to become “like us” before welcoming them. God does not wait for them to adopt “our worldview,” and adapt to “our culture,” before embracing them with his grace and truth. God meets them just as they are, and their difference is not erased by their new knowledge. It is honoured.
This challenges a deep instinct in both ancient and modern societies: the basic instinct to see difference as a threat to be feared and shunned. Herod embodies this fear. Faced with news of a mysterious child whose existence does not conform to his carefully controlled order, he reacts with violent intent. He treats the arrival of something new as a danger to be neutralised. He wants the boy dead. The contrast between Herod and the Magi could not be sharper: one responds to difference with envy, fear and coercion; the others with humility, insight, and joy.
Here the text intersects uncomfortably with contemporary Australian immigration debates. Policy discussions are often framed around risk management, deterrence, and national self-protection. While governments have a legitimate responsibility to manage borders, and protect citizens from external threats, Matthew 2 warns against allowing fear to become the dominant moral lens for interpreting events.
When asylum seekers and migrants are reduced to problems to be solved rather than people to be encountered, we drift closer to Herod’s posture than that of the Magi. The good news of the kingdom of God invites us to ask not, “How do we control what is different?” but also “What might we receive from those who are different if we adopt a more merciful and gracious posture?”
The Magi come with their own intellectual and spiritual traditions, yet they listen to Jewish Scripture, and respond to divine light. They learn, adapt, and change course. The respect they demonstrate is not naïve relativism, nor is it cultural dominance, but mutual openness. In a plural society like Australia, this is a vital lesson: social cohesion, one of the great public goods of Western civilization, is not achieved by demanding sameness, or dumbing down, but by cultivating practices of listening, hospitality, and shared discernment.
Incidentally, this is one reason why I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement of a Royal Commission into the Bondi massacre, which will also look into issues of social cohesion in Australian society.
Finally, the story of the arrival of the Magi is suffused with unexpected grace. The first worshippers of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel are not priests or prophets, but foreign travellers. God’s grace often arrives from the margins and surprises the centre. And often the centre has a hard time reconciling this fact with how it wants to control the narrative.
This is a humbling truth for any nation, ethnic group, or religious culture that imagines itself as having all the answers, or as self-sufficient, or as morally superior.
Grace does not respect our categories of belonging. Grace sides with the vulnerable. Grace stands with those on the margins. Grace transforms the status quo. Grace overturns the tables of the money-changers. Grace privileges the underdog. Grace elevates the voice of the outsider. Grace champions a preferential option for the poor. Grace changes everything.
The narrative of Matthew 2:1–12 calls us to resist fear-driven responses to difference, to learn from those who come from elsewhere, and to trust that compassion is not weakness but wisdom. In welcoming the stranger, we may find ourselves, like the Magi, encountering God in places we never thought to look, finding joy, realigning our priorities, and going home by a different road.
Some food for thought as we reflect on the narrative before us.
Who are the “outsiders” God may be using to teach or challenge me in this season of my life? How open am I to receiving wisdom or grace from people whose background, worldview, or life experience differs from my own?
In what practical ways can I resist fear-driven narratives and embody Christian hospitality, compassion, and discernment in my everyday choices and conversations?
What might it look like for me to “go home by another road”? What attitudes, priorities, or habits need to change so that my life more clearly reflects the wisdom, humility, and joy of the Magi rather than the control and anxiety of Herod?
As I close, hear these words of a poem by Howard Thurman, a pivotal twentieth-century minister, theologian, mystic, and civil rights activist. The poem is titled “The work of Christmas”:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.[1]
Sermon 844 copyright © 2026 Rod Benson. Preached at North Rocks Community Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 11 January 2026. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020).
Reference
[1] Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1985), 28.
Image source: Pee-Wee Herman
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