The story of the wise men – magi,
as it is in the Greek – is so familiar that it's difficult to see it clearly, hard to see it for what it is . . . ghosts from
Christmas pageants past crowd our minds . . . we
tend to remember details that aren't there,
and forget ones that are. Unlike in the hymn we'll
sing in a little bit, nowhere does it say there were three magi, nor does it say they were
kings . . . These were read back into the story by the assumption that Psalm 72
and others predicts today's story . . . and perhaps by assuming only one magi
per gift of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Some folks might be stingy
enough to give a new-born Messiah one gift apiece, but there's no evidence that
the magi were.
There's a whole picture in our minds of wise men standing around
with shepherds, surrounded by lowly cattle and sheep, all in awe over a baby
asleep in a manger filled with hay. But this picture is mostly from Luke – in
Matthew, Jesus is born in a house, and there's no indication Bethlehem wasn't
Joseph's home town. There's no census, no pregnant ride for Mary, no away in a manger no crib for a bed. There may be shepherds keeping watch by night
-- all seated on the ground – but if so,
Matthew doesn't tell us . . . his story is a straightforward tale of
worship and betrayal, of outlanders who seek the truth and a king who talks a
good show, but reveals his true colors in the end.
The magi are mysterious, and stand out on Jerusalem streets, even
though they’re crowded and dusty – after all, Jerusalem is a back-water,
and its people are provincial – and the magi are exotic and weird, and from the East, where as everybody knows, anything can happen, and often does . . .
and they’re magi, outlandishly
dressed in clothing no decent, God-fearing person would wear; they’re magi, at the very least astrologers, and
maybe sorcerers and magicians to boot, but at the very least
astrologers, who tell the future and the present from the stars, and it was
what they'd seen in one particular star that had driven them to
Jerusalem, and now here they are, saying what they’re saying, asking what
they’re asking on the streets and in the squares and marketplaces.
And their words pass from man to woman, peasant to shopkeeper, centurion to slave,
and soon the whole city is talking . . .
they’re looking for the King of the Jews, But it’s not the current King
Herod, it’s somebody new, a new-born King . . . They'd seen his star
while in the East, and they'd come to pay him homage. And underneath all the
talking and rumors and excitement runs a whispered anticipation . . . “Can this be who was foretold? Could this be
the Son of Man, the Messiah whose coming was predicted by the prophets?” As the magi pass through the streets, and
around the stalls selling leather goods and chickens, and by the open
courtyards of the well-to-do, a wave of excitement follows them. Indeed, if you’re up on the Mount of Olives that
day and happen to look down, you see the disturbance ripple through the city,
like some creature swimming just below a pond's surface, or the remnant wake of
a boat that passed hours before.
And when one of these ripples reaches the palace, Herod becomes agitated
as well, and just a bit frightened, because the wise men’s words mean trouble
for him . . . he’s the latest in a line governors of Judea, given the title
“king of the Jews,” and he knows that many of his subjects hate his guts. After all, he’s in league with the
Romans, a traitor that does their bidding and enforces their laws, and when the
Romans say jump, he says how high. And
so there’s a whole raft of his fellow Jews who can’t stand him, and he surrounds
himself with toadies of his own, political flunkies and yes-men, and
plenty of guards to keep the rabble at bay.
And he’s disturbed when
he hears what the wise men are saying, and so he calls his own wise men,
the priests and scribes of the people, and asks them where this usurper is
going to be born. And I can picture these temple functionaries – of the temple
built by Herod himself – and I can almost see the wheels grinding in their
heads as they figure the odds, because they’re men used to the ways of power,
and they’re figuring the odds of increasing theirs under a new regime.
But they tell him the truth, that the king of the Jews will be born in
Bethlehem, and then quote Scripture to back it up: “But you, Bethlehem, in the
land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you
will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.” And, in the
manner of rabbis, they amplify it to suit the moment, and combine the prophet
Micah – the part about Bethlehem and Judah – with Second Samuel – the bit about
the shepherd – to make sure Herod gets the point. Let's see . . . a ruler who was also a
shepherd – who does that remind you
of? And from Bethlehem, that ruler-shepherd’s own birthplace,
no less.
And Herod’s discomfort rises by the minute, so he sends for the magi
in secret – it wouldn't do to let his flunkies know he’s scared – and
orders them on to Bethlehem to find this child, to diligently search for
him – and bring back word so that he, Herod, might also go and pay him homage.
And are the wise men actually fooled
by this? They’re not from round
here, after all, they may not know what a snake Herod really is, but whatever,
they go along with his plan, because their needs coincide – after all, they had come to Jerusalem to find a new-born
king.
And as they travel, always with them is the star, and it shines
coldly in the night and white hot by day, it moves with the magi toward
Bethlehem, confirming what the priests and scribes and temple hangers-on had said,
and the magi are filled with awe and wonder, because they've never seen
a star that acted like that, and believe me, they'd seen a lot of stars in
their day . . . and they rejoice as they see the star and as they get closer
and closer to their king.
And they reach the house where Jesus and Mary and Joseph are, and the
star stops right over the courtyard, right over the cradle where the baby lies,
wrapped in baby clothes. And it bathes them in blue-white light, and they seem
frozen in time, at least that was how they remember it in later years, like a
snapshot, a strobe-lit moment in God's salvation history. And then they do
exactly what they’d said they would – and what Herod said he wanted to do –
they kneel down and pay homage to the child
king.
One-by-one they unpack gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh,
extravagant gifts carried all the way from their homeland . . . they’re kingly
gifts, rare in Palestine, and rich in symbolism . . . gold, the metal of kings,
beautiful and yet infinitely workable . . . frankincense, the odor of prayer
and worship, used in the sanctuary and burned at sacrifices . . . and myrrh,
used in both the oil of anointing and the fluid of embalming . . . present at both the birth and death of kings.
And they worship Jesus as Mary
and Joseph look on, and when it is time to go,
when they would've gone by way of Jerusalem and Herod, they’re warned in a
dream, and they go home by another way.
And Herod never does
find out which child was the Christ, he never learns who his parents are, or
what Joseph does for a living . . . and so with cold calculus he orders all
male babies in Bethlehem slaughtered. But not before another angel appears to
Joseph, warning them to flee to Egypt, lest Jesus be murdered with the rest.
And so like his Hebrew forebear Moses, Jesus sojourns for a time in the land of
the Pharaoh, before returning to Palestine, to a new home in Nazareth.
_________________
Scholars talk about the “Jewish-ness” of Matthew’s gospel . . .
his use of Hebrew scripture, how he guides the reader through the prophecies so
that they come to the conclusion that Jesus really is the Messiah, he whose
coming was foretold. In fact, Matthew’s
community probably didn't regard themselves as a new religion, but as
continuous with Judaism, sort of like Messianic Jews of today. In contrast, we
point to Luke as the most universal evangelist, the one most concerned to show
the gospel is for everyone. But today’s passage shows that this is not
hard-and-fast. As a matter of fact, Matthew begins and ends his gospel
universally – in the last verses of the last chapter, in the great commission,
Jesus commands his followers “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost . . .”
And here, at the very beginning of the story, gentiles are led to
worship the Christ child, and not just any
gentiles, either – the magi were “super-gentiles,” astrologers who gained
insights and knowledge by study of the stars and their alignments. Their way of
understanding the world, their world-view, seems to be totally different, at
right-angles from ours . . . we get inspiration and knowledge from divine
revelation, from holy scripture and, less often, directly from God. And we
believe that the ultimate revelation is God’s own self, the revelation embodied
in human form, the Word made flesh . . .
But in our passage, we see these ways of knowing, these ways of
being in the world, converge, we
see them point to the same thing. The stars led these
ultimate gentiles, these archetypical pagans to the same place as Hebrew
scripture, to the same place as the angel in Joseph’s dream – to the
Christ-child on a cold winter's night.
And why not? God created the
stars, just as God created the scriptures and the angels and all other forms of
revelation.
But we often ignore this, and prefer to get all moralistic, and
compare the response of the gentiles – i.e., those like us – with the
hypocritic actions of the corrupt Herod. Look, they say – the gentiles
responded to Christ by obeying, by following, by bringing him gifts, but the
Jewish establishment – his own people – secretly plotted to kill him.
And while we shouldn’t minimize the magi’s actions, we can’t
degenerate into anti-Semitic self-righteousness, either . . . we're much closer
to our Jewish brothers and sisters than we are to the gentile magi. Our mode of revelation, our faith, if you
will, is much more like that of the chief priests and rabbis than it is to the
star-gazing wise men. And although the magi’s response of adoration and giving
is important, the point is that it is a response, and one to God’s initiative. It’s a response to God’s grace . . .
there's no works righteousness here. God
came to the magi first, before their own action, and came to them where
they were at, in the stars that they understood so well.
And that sort of sums up the Gospel itself, doesn’t it? It wraps it up in a neat Christmas package
and ties a bow around it. It's the Good
News in a nutshell . . . we don’t have to go to God, do we? God comes to us,
and comes in ways we understand, in stars we
know . . . in fact, the Word was
one of us, it became one of us, it came down as flesh and
dwelt among us, and we celebrate it
at this season.
God comes to us unexpectedly, unlooked for, a bright-cold fire in
a winter’s night, and we are transformed in ways we only begin to
understand. Like the magi, like those
old tea-leaf reading, star-watching wise men, we confront an ultimate truth,
and we're suddenly on a different journey. And like them, on that journey, we're led home by another way. Amen.
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