Matthew 2:1-12
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
“‘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 shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Today we should be reading the story of the Baptism of the Lord, but today is also, technically, the 1st Sunday after Epiphany, as Epiphany, an un-moveable feast, is always celebrated on January 6th, and I have chosen to discuss it this year rather than the Baptism.
The secular definition of epiphany according to Merriam-Webster, is “a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.” Within the church world then, epiphany describes the revelation – the sudden realization by humans -- of the Divine incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.
We all know that these magi were really astrologer/kings who traveled across the desert on camels; that there were three of them (we even know their names: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar); and that they brought three gifts.
But how do we know these things? The only part of what I just said that is ever mentioned in scripture is the part about there being three gifts – that is part of today’s opening reading – the rest is not. We are never told how many magi there were – we only assume there were three because there were three gifts. There could have been two or half a dozen – we are never told.
And we most certainly don’t know their names or their countries of origin. Why? Because these twelve verses of today’s reading from Matthew are all there is in the entire Bible that tells this about this event. This is it. Twelve verses, no more.
Everything else is just story – story that makes no claim to be history. It’s all just fiction or, at best, good-sounding guesses. We call them astrologers because they tell Herod they are following a star belonging to the newly-born king and the most common numbers of astrologists were probably Zoroastrians from Persia – to the east. A good guess but hardly definitive. The people of almost every nearby culture of that time were followers of the stars, and Israel/Judah was almost in the Mediterranean Sea so that left an awful lot of “east” to the other side.
As far as their names go, that is pure fiction.
But that is exactly what is wonderful about this story. The story isn’t really about these main characters. They are important simply as witnesses to this epiphany – not because of who they are but because of what goes on around them.
The details of this story are supplied so sparsely that it leaves a lot of blank space to be filled by human imagination – all without causing any damage to the revelation. And human minds have filled in so many of the blanks with such wonderful imaginative detail that the story has been told over and over and over again in all its many forms.
These re-tellings give us a broad cast of individuals. Sometimes the main characters are kings, sometimes they are peasants. Sometimes they are naïve, sometimes they are wise. Often times they are completely unaware of the bigger story happening around them. Sometimes their choices are right and sometimes they are mistaken. They are, in fact, just people trying to get by –just like us. Their presence here helps us see ourselves in this story of God interacting with humankind.
“Amahl and the Night Visitors”; Henry Van Dyke’s “The Story of the Other Wise Man”; T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi”; Langston Hughes’s lovely poem, “Carol of the Brown King,” -- these are just a few of the poems, novels, operas and short-stories with their different locales and scenarios – each so beautiful in their own way -- so different in detail and yet all so powerful at emphasizing the important fact of the changes one child’s birth made in our world.
To end with one more take on this versatile story I want to quote from the Epiphany reading from our Week of Compassion Advent Devotional. This last quote is from Caroline Hamilton-Arnold,
That’s one of the things I’ve always loved best about this story – that the magi, realizing they’ve made a mistake in initially trusting Herod, end up turning around and going home by a totally different route – not the easiest, but the longer, more difficult route -- in order to avoid him and correct the error they made in trusting him in the first place. This story tells us that we too – when we need to -- can correct our mis-steps and start over in a new direction. It’s been done before.
The secular definition of epiphany according to Merriam-Webster, is “a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.” Within the church world then, epiphany describes the revelation – the sudden realization by humans -- of the Divine incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.
We all know that these magi were really astrologer/kings who traveled across the desert on camels; that there were three of them (we even know their names: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar); and that they brought three gifts.
But how do we know these things? The only part of what I just said that is ever mentioned in scripture is the part about there being three gifts – that is part of today’s opening reading – the rest is not. We are never told how many magi there were – we only assume there were three because there were three gifts. There could have been two or half a dozen – we are never told.
And we most certainly don’t know their names or their countries of origin. Why? Because these twelve verses of today’s reading from Matthew are all there is in the entire Bible that tells this about this event. This is it. Twelve verses, no more.
Everything else is just story – story that makes no claim to be history. It’s all just fiction or, at best, good-sounding guesses. We call them astrologers because they tell Herod they are following a star belonging to the newly-born king and the most common numbers of astrologists were probably Zoroastrians from Persia – to the east. A good guess but hardly definitive. The people of almost every nearby culture of that time were followers of the stars, and Israel/Judah was almost in the Mediterranean Sea so that left an awful lot of “east” to the other side.
As far as their names go, that is pure fiction.
But that is exactly what is wonderful about this story. The story isn’t really about these main characters. They are important simply as witnesses to this epiphany – not because of who they are but because of what goes on around them.
The details of this story are supplied so sparsely that it leaves a lot of blank space to be filled by human imagination – all without causing any damage to the revelation. And human minds have filled in so many of the blanks with such wonderful imaginative detail that the story has been told over and over and over again in all its many forms.
These re-tellings give us a broad cast of individuals. Sometimes the main characters are kings, sometimes they are peasants. Sometimes they are naïve, sometimes they are wise. Often times they are completely unaware of the bigger story happening around them. Sometimes their choices are right and sometimes they are mistaken. They are, in fact, just people trying to get by –just like us. Their presence here helps us see ourselves in this story of God interacting with humankind.
“Amahl and the Night Visitors”; Henry Van Dyke’s “The Story of the Other Wise Man”; T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi”; Langston Hughes’s lovely poem, “Carol of the Brown King,” -- these are just a few of the poems, novels, operas and short-stories with their different locales and scenarios – each so beautiful in their own way -- so different in detail and yet all so powerful at emphasizing the important fact of the changes one child’s birth made in our world.
To end with one more take on this versatile story I want to quote from the Epiphany reading from our Week of Compassion Advent Devotional. This last quote is from Caroline Hamilton-Arnold,
- “The story of the Magi is messy; but we discover new grace in the Christmas story. God is present even in our failings, inviting us into a new dream for the world, pointing in new directions, prompting us to take the long was around.”
That’s one of the things I’ve always loved best about this story – that the magi, realizing they’ve made a mistake in initially trusting Herod, end up turning around and going home by a totally different route – not the easiest, but the longer, more difficult route -- in order to avoid him and correct the error they made in trusting him in the first place. This story tells us that we too – when we need to -- can correct our mis-steps and start over in a new direction. It’s been done before.
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