First Presbyterian Church
January 6, 2024, Epiphany B
All the World
I am working on a basic presumption this morning. I am assuming that no one in this congregation this morning has any ancestry that traces its roots back to first-century Judea. This is actually somewhat significant for a reason. While the Christmas story as is told in the gospel of Luke is the one that everybody knows, the one that is the basis for every Christmas pageant ever, and the one that Linus recites when Charlie Brown pleads for anyone to tell him what Christmas is all about, it is Matthew's account in the first two chapters of his gospel that takes the boundaries of this story beyond the boundaries of first-century Judea, a province of the Roman state called Palestine.
The world outside Judea enters into this story thanks to the Magi, represented by the three figures in this nativity who are adorned rather differently than the rest of this cast. Of course, we see from Matthew's account that these Magi did not, in fact, come to any stable; verse 11 makes clear that when they arrived, they entered a house, their own house as far as we know, with no mention of mangers or stables or any other such thing. Matthew's story needs to be understood on its own every now and then, not wedged into Luke's very different story.
These Magi, however many of them there were (again, there were three gifts but that doesn't necessarily mean there were three Magi bearing them), make a very long trip from somewhere in the east to get to Judea. Most scholarship reckons that they came either from Persia (modern-day Iran) or Babylon (modern-day Iraq), which gives you an idea of the length of this trip they made with nothing but their camels or their own feet.
And about those gifts...
It has become something of a modern joke to mock the inappropriateness of these gifts for giving to a mother caring for a small child. Since we don't know how old Jesus was by the time the Magi got there, it would have been hard to know exactly what the child, maybe anywhere from infant to age two, would need. More to the point, though, is that these Magi first went to Jerusalem for a reason.
Since they saw a sign in the stars that provoked them to go search for a child born "king of the Jews," but had nothing else to work with (remember, there weren't any angels giving them instructions), the only obvious place for them to seek s newborn king would have been a royal court. However weird gifts of frankincense and myrrh might sound to us non-royals (I don't think anybody would refuse a gift of gold), they would be regarded as perfectly appropriate gifts to a royal court, which is where these Magi would have expected to bestow such gifts in a mannered and well-scripted ceremony of exchange across national borders.
The unexpected chaos at Herod's court sent these Magi off on a different path, with the star they had followed now behaving in very un-star-like fashion and "leading" them to Bethlehem and the house where Mary and Joseph and the child were. Probably they knew darn well, once they arrived, how odd their gifts were going to seem; but perhaps we should allow that those gifts might be overshadowed by what they did when they saw the child; they "bowed down and worshiped him," as Matthew describes in verse 11. These Magi from somewhere back east, not at all subject by human reckoning to a "king of the Jews" present or future, understood enough out of all the confusion they had caused and experienced to know that the only appropriate thing to do before this child was to bow down and worship. We could only hope and pray that we would have been so wise.
For their reward, the Magi finally got their own angelic dream, warning them to avoid Herod on the way home - an instruction they were probably only too glad to accept. On the other hand, if they had harbored any desire to stay and worship this child further, this angelic instruction made that impossible; they had to get out of the way and not risk bringing any harm to this child.
For all of this, the challenge for us to remember is that, for all practical purposes, these Magi are us, or at least as close to 'us' as there is in this story. All of those participating in Luke's accout are Judeans, practitioners of Judaism as much as the Holy Family was.
These Magi come from, and one might argue on behalf of, the world outside Judea and the religion of Judea. They are, in many ways, the first signal that we get in any nativity narrative that the "Gentiles," the term we will commonly see throughout the New Testament for the non-Jewish world, are welcomed to come and worship this newborn king. This young "king of the Jews" turns out to be one who welcomes and calls in all peoples from all places to come and to follow.
For the Magi and their journey for all the world, Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #152, What Star Is This, with Beams So Bright; #147, The First Nowell, v. 3-6 only; #146, Gentle Mary Laid Her Child; #151, We Three Kings of Orient Are; #---, Open our eyes (insert); #150, As With Gladness Men of Old
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