It was my turn to preach again on January 1. The sermon was well received, but what I liked most about it is that people were willing to respond during the sharing time which followed. Those discussions made the morning complete in my mind. Anyway, here is an excerpt from the sermon:

The wise men are strange visitors; they most likely don’t worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Why would God use these foreigners, these non-believers for his own divine purpose? Whatever the reason, it isn’t the first time.
The first scripture that I read from this morning was from the story of Balaam and Balak. It’s an interesting story from the time when the Israelites were marching through the desert. Balak is the king of the region and he doesn’t like the Israelites squatting on his land and he wants to get rid of them. They outnumber his own army, so first he wants to put a curse on them. To do that, he hires Balaam, the local sorcerer. Balaam agrees initially and sets out to deliver a curse upon these people. He has no allegiance to Yahweh or to the chosen people of God. He has a job to do and he practises his own type of sorcery or magic through different powers. But God intervenes. Balaam gets a visitor of his own. An angel comes to kill Balaam, but he is rescued by an unexpected source. After Balaam has an intense conversation with the donkey he’s riding, he realizes that an angel is blocking their path. The angel tells Balaam not to deliver the curse, so he doesn’t. Balaam then decides to listen to God and he blesses the Israelites, which quite upsets Balak. Balaam was an unexpected and uninvited visitor to the Israelites, but this Gentile sorcerer delivered a blessing upon them from their own God.
These wise men from the east and this desert sorcerer from the west are both outside of the Jewish religious system, but they both have a very important role within their respective stories. Despite their cultural and religious backgrounds, they carry out God’s plan, and they worship God in the process.