CHOOSING YOUR PERSONAL ROAD IN LIFE
Psalm 29
MATTHEW 2: 1-12
JANUARY 11, 2026 – Celebrating Epiphany
The other day I received a text message … Sue and Tim are joining us on the Red Bird Mission trip this July. You remember RED BIRD, right? One of America’s poorest regions … a region where the residents are now facing even greater poverty due to the deep cuts in Medicaid and SNAP, which most of them have been on. Only some of you who are worshiping with us online with us know Sue and Tim; they have not worshipped in person here at St. Paul’s … Sue was once upon a time my JYG youth leader and Tim is one of those individuals who can look at a project and figure out exactly what to do with it. But they have been connected with St. Paul’s since 2016 … they know the work this church does … they know the joy we share and they are making the active personal choice to go on a mission trip beginning July 5th with us.
Like most folks who go on mission trips to help total strangers … Sue and Tim don’t have to choose that road in life. They could head off on vacation or stay at home, but they are choosing to join a group of individuals from this church, St. Paul’s United Methodist Church … to head to Kentucky on July 5th where we will take on some unknown project to help UGH … total strangers. EWW
Hard to believe but there are some folks out in the world who think strangers should fend for themselves … that strangers in need don’t deserve an investment in time to lend them a hand … let them suffer … let their bellies ache for food … let their living spaces collapse around them … not me I won’t … I can’t … I just plain don’t want to help THEM because they are not like US. Those strangers shouldn’t even be welcomed in the neighborhood … they look and sound different from us don’t they? And, yet people of faith step up to help … to care … to love … to welcome as Jesus taught.
Mission projects like RED BIRD meet the call of Matthew 25 … THAT WHAT YOU DO FOR THE LEAST OF THESE YOU DO FOR ME … that’s what Jesus had to say. God’s call to people of faith, like us, is to always ALWAYS provide food for the hungry … to ALWAYS make the lives of the poor better … God’s challenge for us is that we the faithful make the ACTIVE CHOICE to get up onto the unknown roads of life filled with Christ’s Light rather than choosing to travel along the world’s dark slimy highways that are always an option for humans … life’s roads where hate thrives.
We remember Jesus providing travel directions to His disciples and to the world in both Matthew and Mark’s Gospels … “All who want to come after me MUST say no to themselves, take up their cross, and FOLLOW ME.” We remember his travel directions to the disciples … Jesus saw Simon and Andrew as they were fishing and He called out … “Come, FOLLOW ME … I will show you how to fish for people.” And, then he provided those same travel directions to James and John … Zebedee watched as his sons made the decision to leave the world behind and follow in the light of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
These days … perhaps more than at any time of my life … it is really easy to discern the difference between the highway choices of life we all face … you almost have to be blind or deaf not to be able to see the difference between the well lit loving highway for living spotlighted by the teachings of Jesus Christ offering a connection with God providing eternal life in heaven and the dark hazard laden muddy world choices offered daily by the world out there. Somehow the dark mysterious world’s back alleys offer chances to feel powerful, entitled, and not obligated to fulfill God’s requirements for life.
Jesus keeps calling FOLLOW ME … no matter what challenges that you have faced … pick up those crosses from your journeys … FOLLOW ME … into the Light! Be the Light! Never forget JOY TO THE WORLD THE TRUE LORD came and is here … we received Him with JOY, at least on Christmas Eve, and can either worship Him or we choose to pack Him away with the Christmas decorations so that we can rush to our favorite talking head to hear how we should think and act and who we can hate today.
And yes friends … as the year 2026 begins perhaps we all need to be reminded of God’s requirements because we are all pressured to jump into the steaming sulfurous swamps alongside the world’s dark roads that lead to Satan’s throne. We have friends who have energetically chosen those roads … we see celebrities with a constant presence in our media saying … COME ON FOLLOW US … we will get rid of those folks you don’t like … we will give you everything you want and you won’t have to follow the teachings of Jesus and you can even call yourselves Christians if you want to because everyone on our road won’t care if you spit on the homeless, take food out of the mouths of starving Africans, turn the heat off in poor people’s homes or murder the helpless even if they are women and children just trying to get through life because after all they live in places we would never choose to live in or hang out with disgusting people.
It’s all about choices … it’s about the highways of life … and since we are in church or tuned into St. Paul’s Facebook page it comes down to whether or not you are not only accepting Jesus Christ into your life but the decision for life is whether you stand up for Jesus with your words, your actions, and actually it gets much deeper … do you stand up for Jesus with your thoughts that you keep to yourself or to just a few people close enough to you to keep your secrets?
Is your life’s highway choice God’s route … do those who pass you by in life as they travel on their personal highways recognize you as a Jesus disciple by your love? That’s the mark … that’s the highway dividing sign in the life we live … we are taught not to judge but there is a clarity in identifying people on the Jesus-lit highway of life … ironically this statement of Jesus was made AFTER that first Holy Communion … we come to the TABLE today remembering those moments so we should hold tightly to Jesus’ words as we head out onto our individual 2026 highways of life this morning … after Jesus used words I will repeat in a few moments … “This cup is the new covenant by my blood which is poured out for you” Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment: LOVE EACH OTHER. Just as I have loved you, so you MUST LOVE EACH OTHER. THIS is HOW EVERYONE … EVERYONE will know that you are my disciples when you love each other.”
Do you remember those old road maps that we kept in our glove boxes? Or the Triple A’s TRIP TIK’s … pieces of paper that offered directions but if I remember correctly the old road maps were rather difficult to read if you were driving at the same time … but thank goodness they still gave us our directions for the roads we were taking in life. We still have written guides for the highways we take in life … the Gospels of Jesus Christ offer us clarity … perhaps Matthew 25 is the clearest lesson in life because there Jesus declares what any human does for hungry, the thirsty, the poor, for strangers, for those who need health care, and for the prisoners they do for Him. More importantly Jesus declares that failure or refusal to feed the hungry, give a drink to the thirsty, to welcome the stranger, to care for the sick, or to care for the prisoner results as Jesus says, “eternal punishment.” Clearly something none of us want but it is a choice … a choice that we each will make in this life … choosing Jesus’ clear teaching or rushing to hug and world while endorsing policies that bring harm to those Jesus says we MUST care for and care about by loving all of them … ALL of THEM … so we will be known for our love of all.
The choices of our roadways of life, which brings us to those amazing WISE MEN or MAGI who saw the light of Christ in the sky and headed to see God’s gift for all humanity. They didn’t arrive alongside the shepherds on the night of Christ’s birth because their came from the east aware that Jesus had been born. They declare, “We’ve seen His star in the east, and we have come to honor Him.”
The Bible does not tell us who these men were nor who was traveling along with them but they knew that they needed to follow the light of Christ … they came face to face with an evil leader HEROD. Believe me … this self-absorbed leader was the epitome of EVIL … he was extremely self-focused and wanted more and more for himself. He thought he could rule forever. He feared this new King who had been born so he made plans to kill baby boys just to make sure the new King, Jesus, did not survive. He told the Magi that once they had found Jesus that they should return to him and tell him where Jesus was so he could … well so he could murder the baby.
The Magi were facing a choice of highways … they headed off following the star towards Jesus …. When they saw the star shining over the place where Jesus was they were filled with joy. They entered the house and saw Mary and Jesus. In the presence of the Son of God still just a baby they fell to their knees and honored Him. They gave Mary and Joseph those famous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They said their goodbyes and then were faced with a choice.
The evil leader had instructed them to come on back to him. I am sure Herod was smiling and encouraging these wise men with lies that he wanted to do good. Just travel on my highway called out the evil leader … I will make things so good … so great.
But the Magi knew there was another choice … a God-driven option … they had been warned just like Jesus warns humanity in Matthew 25 of what will happen to those who do not care for the poor, refuse to feed the hungry, do not give drink to those who thirst, do not welcome the stranger, nor care for the sick and those in prison. Their choice was to rush into the arms of someone who was clearly out to harm others or to return safely to their homes. They went back by another route not that of the king.
And, so we move towards the Lord’s Table … I don’t know what’s in your heart or mind but all I can do is to encourage you to read the Gospels, to embrace God, pick up your cross and follow Jesus while rejecting the world’s hate … the choice is very clear in the year 2026. And, maybe just maybe some of you will join Sue and Tim and others down in Red Bird … I have no skills but I go because I find renewal in my faith and relationship with God along the streams and green meadows and hills of Kentucky and frankly I need that restoration as much as any of you. CHOOSE YOUR HIGHWAY wisely my friends … walk with Christ … reject the world … it’s your choice! AMEN