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 worshipped him. 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. When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Thursday marks the feast of Epiphany, or Theophany as it is known in the Eastern churches, both names carrying a sense of “shining forth”. It celebrates the revelation of Christ - principally to the magi, whose visit we have just heard and sung about, but also through his baptism, arguably the singular moment in all of scripture in which all three persons of the Trinity are witnessed at once, and at the wedding in Cana, the transformation of water into wine being “first of the signs through which he revealed his glory” according to the fourth gospel.
We are perhaps more familiar with the tradition of Twelfth Night, when many of us take down our Christmas decorations, but Epiphany was for a long time one of the great holy days of the church year, and it is still a major festival in some countries and denominations. In Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, children leave out grass for the camels and shoes for the kings to fill with gifts. In Egypt, the Coptic Church blesses the water it will use in services throughout the year, and it is considered a privileged day for baptism. In the Lutheran Church in Finland, there is a focus on missionary work. And in various regions of India, churches hold fairs and parades.
I’m not sure why Epiphany has lost some of its significance, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the timeline and geography of the Christmas story are actually quite tricky, and so it’s easier to roll the wise men and the shepherds in together and not ask too many questions about the details. Indeed it wasn’t until my undergraduate theology degree that I realised there were two entirely separate birth narratives in the gospels. Luke has an angel coming to Mary, a journey to Bethlehem which ends in Mary giving birth among animals, and the visit of the shepherds. Matthew meanwhile has an angel visiting Joseph, a much less dramatic labour with the birth taking place at home in Bethlehem, and the visit of the magi.
Even if we assume that Luke and Matthew have heard or prioritised different parts of the story, and try to slot them together like jigsaw pieces, Herod orders the death of all boys aged two and under, based on the appearance of the star and the likely age of the child, so it seems Jesus must have been a toddler not a baby when the magi arrived. That changes the picture on our Christmas cards, doesn’t it? A little less crowding with the shepherds long gone, and a two year old Jesus running and climbing and babbling rather than sleeping sweetly in a manger. Then there’s the fact that we may have sung about “three kings”, but in truth no number is given and they are more likely to have been Zoroastrian mystics. And that’s before we take another look at Luke’s account and realise that Mary and Joseph probably weren’t alone in a stable, but supported by a local midwife in the main living space of a home, which is where animals would be brought in for the night.
I think it’s important to recognise just how much our image and understanding of the Christmas story has been shaped by paintings and poems and school nativity plays, all of which take a degree of artistic licence, to keep things simple or to bring out some nuance, because it reminds us to dig a bit deeper into what we think we know. That digging perhaps reveals that the gospel writers took some artistic licence of their own, telling the story they thought would best help their readers understand the significance of Jesus’ birth. As I heard someone put it recently, “it may not have happened this way but that doesn’t make it any less true”, because truth is in meaning as well as in fact.
So what meaning might we find in this morning’s passage? On the significance of the gifts brought by the magi, the traditional reading is gold for royalty, frankincense for worship, and myrrh for death. That interpretation fits perfectly with our understanding of Jesus as king and God and sacrifice, but perhaps there are other layers of meaning too. King Seleucus II Callinicus offered gold, frankincense and myrrh to Apollo at the Miletus temple in 243 BC, so there was already a precedent for offering this particular set of gifts as an act of worship, regardless of any additional meaning the individual items might hold. And thinking far more practically, frankincense and myrrh were used in postnatal healing, while it is possible that the gold supported Jesus and his parents during their time in Egypt. So perhaps these gifts were not just homage to Jesus, but provision for his family.
I was fascinated to read about how one church took this reading and ran with it, using it to reflect on the ongoing importance of maternity care and support for parents. The blogpost I read is a few years old now, so I don’t know if this has become a regular thing, but for at least one Epiphany they held a baby shower for Mary, inviting gifts for new parents to be donated to the local pregnancy crisis centre. You might say that we joined them without realising it when we took up a collection for The Zinthiya Trust on Christmas Day, supporting their work with vulnerable women and their families. And I wonder if we might reflect further on the connection between paying homage to Jesus and providing for his family.
I want to move now from thinking about the gifts to thinking about the magi themselves. They were wise men...who risked making themselves look foolish with what may have turned out to be a wild goose chase. They were powerful men...who knelt before an infant then crept away by a secret path. They were rich men...who by stepping into Mary’s home accepted hospitality from the poor and humble. They were Gentile men...who worshipped a Jewish messiah as their own. Everything about them is turned on its head. It’s absurd, but as the hosts of the Pulpit Fiction podcast have it, it is the best way to begin a gospel, because it’s only going to get more absurd from here, as the poor will be blessed and the last will be first and the son of God will be nailed to a cross.
I wonder if Mary recalled her song when the magi arrived at her door. Two weeks ago we heard her sing that the mighty had been brought down and the humble lifted up, the hungry had been fed and the rich sent away empty. And now we see the powerful at the level of a child, giving generously and taking nothing away in return. Isn’t this a glimpse of what Mary imagined? And isn’t it wonderful? There is no malice toward the rich and mighty, and no patronising of the hungry and humble. There is only joy, as all expectations are subverted and people are brought together.
Sadly this moment of kingdom bliss is soon interrupted by the massacre of the innocents. My original service plan ended the reading at verse twelve, which is where the lectionary cuts off, but it felt disingenuous to skip the hard bit, so I extended the reading to verse eighteen. By the time I had written that last paragraph, I understood better why the lectionary leaves out the end of the story. I wanted to finish with an image of the magi and Mary playing with Jesus, a fulfilment of Mary’s song and a foretaste of the kingdom. I didn’t want to bring us all crashing back down with the horror of murdered children.
But as Mike pointed out, that is precisely where we are. We get these moments of things being just as they should be, crashing up against moments of things being so desperately wrong, because we are caught in the now and not yet. The kingdom has come and the kingdom is here and the kingdom is still to arrive. We recognised as much when we decorated our tree, with our signs of hope and joy and our prayers for peace and flourishing. So what do we do about it? How do we celebrate the good without ignoring the horror? How do we mourn the horror without losing sight of the good? Perhaps we could do worse than to follow in the footsteps of the magi, seeking after Christ and providing for his family, subverting our expectations and welcoming the absurdness of it all.
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