14 January 2024, The Epiphany (transferred), Austwick, Keasden
The visit of the Magi is the strangest and most wonderful of stories, and only Matthew tells it. It’s full of a mystery and symbolism which is captured beautifully by our Christmas carols. We think there were three of them only because we know they pulled three sorts of gifts from their treasure-chests. Gifts full of meaning. Gold for a king, Frankincense for a God, and Myrrh for a death.
Gold for a king. Question is, what kind of king were these wise travellers looking to honour?
It turns out, not a king like Herod the Great, with his voracity for power and wealth, coupled with a chronic status anxiety, which made him so much fear the baby the wise men sought, that he ordered all the newly firstborns in the land be killed. [2]
Before and after their meeting with Herod, the Magi were sagely searching for a king with no interest in gold or power games, but in the well-being of the mass of ordinary people in the land. A king like the One the Psalmist dreamt of, and described in Psalm 74, ‘who shall have pity on the weak and poor; who shall preserve the lives of the needy, who shall redeem their lives from oppression and violence’. [3]
That is what the Magi found in Jesus - the One whose mission statement about his kingdom began with ‘good news for the poor’, whose idea of power was about giving it away, saying ‘The first shall be last and the last shall be first’, who put open-minded children before adults obsessed with their status, the One who said ‘The love of money is the root of all evil’ and who warned about storing up treasure on earth, the One who constantly questioned the speciousness of established religion and who mocked royal pretensions by lolloping into Jerusalem on a donkey whilst Pontius Pilate paraded on a war-horse, the One who only ever wore one crown - a crown of thorns - and transformed that from a symbol of failure and shame into a sign of new life and resurrection hope.
Then, they brought Frankincense for a God. But what kind of a God did these wise travellers think they were honouring? There were gods-a-plenty at the time the Magi made their westward journey. They tended to be angry gods, jealous gods, quick to accuse, quick to judge, quick to condemn anyone who got in their way, and quick to exercise their wrath in blood and fire and storm and other forms of divine rage.
Scary gods, who demanded sacrifices from people to keep their wrath under wraps. Funny - these gods acted very like the kings of the nations, guarding their power jealously and exercising it viciously; just as the kings of the nations insisted on being treated like gods - that the people should revere them, and make sacrifices for them: through taxes and hard labour, and on the battlefield, with their very lives.
Frankincense for a God? That doesn’t smell quite right… unless the Magi’s wisdom was in looking for a God who wasn’t like the other gods at all, One, they instinctively knew, who would be found in the shape of a vulnerable little baby.
In their remarkable wisdom they’d discerned a different kind of God, One who later taught that he would take the form of a good shepherd, One whose only two commands were both about love - to love God and love one’s neighbour. They perceived the astonishing insight that this was a human God, a little child, who would grow to call his ‘Father’ the God who creates in love, and judges in compassion and grace. This human God only had one relationship with wrath; and that was to be on the receiving end of the wrath of the jealous powers of his day when they meted out their ultimate punishment on him.
And the Magi brought Myrrh for a death. Now, where is the wisdom in bringing death ointment to a newborn child? Death was what people avoided, health-obsessed just like we are, anxious about their fitness with their Roman baths and spa treatments; food-obsessed just like we are, anxious about their diet with their olives, pears, figs and various vegetables, their lovely breads and honeyed wines; obsessed with sexual power just like we are, their men anxious about their social status with easily available divorce enabling them to move from partner to partner to ensure that they had children came along so that their family line would not die. The threat of death was one of the prime weapons in the armoury of the ruling powers. Death was to be feared.
So, what were these wise travellers thinking, bringing the baby Myrrh for a death? Perhaps they shared the same inspired view as the composer of Psalm 74, who saw God as One who eclipses death, ‘whose name remains for ever, and is established as long as the sun endures’. [4]
Their insight was seek One for whom death was inevitable, like any human, but irrelevant. They understood that this child, although born to die, as we all are, somehow existed outside of death. The adult Jesus validated their deep wisdom by making it known that he didn’t fear death, that he wasn’t threatened by death. Over and over again he predicted his death, but he didn’t spend all his time trying to avoid it. Rather, when it came, he embraced it. And he overcame it.
The Magi’s wisdom was in sensing that this child held the key to what he later coined ‘eternal life’. They saw that this king-like-no-other-king would so rattle the actual kings and rulers of the land that they would use death to be rid of him, that this God-like-no-other-gods would so challenge the image of the wrathful sacrifice-demanding gods and replace it with the image of a loving all-embracing Father not at all affected by death but totally given to life, in all its fullness.
In one of our Epiphany carols we sing that God, in Jesus, was ‘Sealed in the stone-cold tomb’. But he wasn’t sealed for long. Our wise travellers foresaw that many years later Jesus, when dead, would not be held by death.
These wise travellers, outsiders, from a different place with a different set of beliefs and values, brought wisdom with them which has proved to be the wisdom of the ages, an understanding of who this baby was then, and who he would grow to be. They believed in the power that is powerlessness; in the love that is letting go; and in the God whose strength is revealed in weakness. [5]
Despite being different, they were welcomed by those they visited, these strangers were welcomed by Mary, which gives us another great and lasting sign: that, as Mahatma Ghandi once said, ‘Jesus belongs not solely to Christianity, but to the entire world’. [6]
The Book of Common Prayer describes the Epiphany as ‘the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles’. Which means the Magi; and also means you and me. Like them, our life of faith is a journey of discovery, a path we tread in awe and joy each day. May we let their wisdom shine its wonderful light for us as we travel on our way.
Notes
[1] A rewrite of Their gifts revealed their wisdom: the wise men’s new ways of seeing, preached in Somerset, Epiphany 2017.
[2] See my Jesus - killing the king, raising the Kingdom, preached at Llanasa, November 2013.
[3] Psalm 74.13-14.
[4] Psalm 74.17.
[5] With thanks to Robert Gallagher for this triptych.
[6] Walter Wink, The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of the Man, p.336, note 3. See these other sermons for more on this: Becoming Human: the shepherds’ instinct, the Magis’ hunch (2015), The global enterprise with a different set of values (2016).
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