First Presbyterian Church



MAGIMatthew 2:1-12A Communion Meditation by Robert E. DunhamThe First Presbyterian Church in the City of New YorkEpiphany SundayJanuary 5, 2020The Wise Men. Magi. All sorts of legends have developed around the story of these mysterious visitors to Bethlehem… and many of them have been merged into the single, partially apocryphal story most people seem to have in their heads. Specifically, that popular story depicts three royal figures, riding camels, following a star that stops directly over the Bethlehem stable, arriving at the manger shortly after the visit of the shepherds, worshiping the child, presenting their gifts, and then heading back to their homes by another way. There were three of them, that story says, but the truth is, Matthew is the only gospel writer to tell of these visitors, and he doesn’t say how many. He does describe three gifts that were brought to the Christ-child, and that explains the supposition that there were three gift-bearers. But various strains in the Christian tradition have mentioned as few as two and as many as twelve. Matthew doesn’t offer a number; he simply says, “Wise men from the east…”We sang this morning, to Tom Brown’s delightful accompaniment, “We Three Kings,” but the assumption of the magi’s royalty has more to do with a passage in the prophet Isaiah (60:3), predicting that kings would worship the Messiah, than with anything Matthew actually reports. They are magi, wise men, perhaps astrologers. Many Christians place them at the stable on the night of Jesus’ birth, but Matthew says they entered a house to visit the Christ-child, and the scholarly consensus is that the visit occurred not on the night of Christ’s birth, but sometime later.Many of the paintings and Christmas cards I’ve seen also depict the magi as traveling to Bethlehem on camels. But Matthew never mentions camels or any other animals. The fact of the matter is, they might have walked. One early Christian artist depicted them riding on horses. So far, Hallmark hasn’t put his work on any Christmas cards that I’ve seen.And, of course, there is the legend about their names. The names we know best, of course, are Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar, but those names were offered up by a fifth-century Greek manuscript and later immortalized by Longfellow, not by Matthew. Matthew, the only Gospel to mention the wise men, never names them. The truth is, we don’t know their names… don’t know much about the magi at all. But they are such mysterious characters that it is no wonder so many stories and legends have grown up around them. The problem is that many of those stories have no roots in the Biblical story and thus tend to obscure the meanings Matthew is trying to communicate in his telling of the story. What we do know is that they came from the East, and thus that they were Gentiles, not Jews. New Testament scholar Gene Boring says that the magi were “Gentiles in the extreme, characters who could not have been more remote from the Jewish citizens of Jerusalem in heritage and worldview.” We know they had a star to guide them, but not so precisely that they didn’t have to ask for directions from King Herod and his constituents. And we know that Herod and his constituents and the magi had one thing in common: they were all recipients of the “epiphany” we celebrate in these days. This coming Thursday is the day of Epiphany, counted in most traditions as the day after Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas. Epiphany means a “manifestation or revelation of God,” and particularly in our tradition, the revelation Matthew describes in our text this morning, the revelation of God in the Christ-child to the magi… and thus to the Gentiles. And the gifts they brought – gold, frankincense and myrrh – well, they were hardly customary gifts for a baby shower... then or now. The gold was a gift for royalty, frankincense was used for incense in the Temple, and myrrh was an embalming resin often used to prepare a body for burial.Several years ago my pastor friend Carla Pratt Keyes told a story about her then four-year-old son, Elijah, and of a Christmas present a church member had given him – a nativity set she’d made – the kind with pillowy figures of the holy family and shepherds and wise men – one made just for kids. We set ours up … at Elijah-level. The first day he saw it, Elijah went straight for the scene and stood in front of it, captivated. I watched him from a distance, quite taken with the scene myself! After looking for a while, Elijah picked up Mary gently, tenderly; he made her bend over and kiss the sleeping figure of Jesus. Then Mary turned on the wise men and attacked them – knocking them right off the table. “Hi-ya!” Elijah said, as Mary dove from the table herself, to continue the assault. I wandered into the den, acting nonchalant, and asked Elijah what was going on. “They’re bad guys,” he said. “But they brought gifts!” I told him. He didn’t even look up. He [simply] said, “She didn’t like the gifts.”Well, darn right she didn’t like the gifts. We tend to conflate the stories of the gospels and imagine Mary as [Luke said] she was after the shepherds came – treasuring their words and pondering them in her heart. Matthew says nothing about Mary’s response to the wise men. But one can imagine how a mother might react to gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They were gifts for a king, gifts for a deity, gifts for one doomed from his birth to suffer a painful, sorrowful death. They were portents of the royal rejections, the military executions, and the political exile that greeted our Savior’s birth. They were gifts to kindle fear – even rage – in a mother’s heart.Of course, the real rage in the second chapter of Matthew belongs to King Herod, as the few intrepid souls who made it here during last Sunday’s snowstorm know. Herod had innocent children slaughtered in his attempt to destroy the Christ child. The magi had stopped to see Herod on their way to Bethlehem, asking for directions. Herod and his entourage were not Gentiles; they were Jews, yet they received a revelation of the birth of the child... oddly enough, from the magi, as they came to see the king of the Jews in order to find out where the new King had been born; only then did Herod and his scholars discover that they had that news all along in their scriptures. Now remember, these were people who gathered every Sabbath around the Book, the law and the prophets. They had access to sages of old. And yet they did not know, did not understand. Herod, representing the entire Jewish establishment, was surprised when the Wise Men came seeking the Christ-child.The wise men, on the other hand, did not have the scriptures. They did not have access to the traditions of Judaism and its ancient wisdom. Their epiphany came in nature, in the form of a leading star. Also, since they were not Jews, they would have seemed the least likely persons to receive a revelation. The popular wisdom of that day said that only the chosen people, God’s elect, could receive this revelation. Yet here are outsiders, Gentiles, who see a star, rightly interpret its meaning, and go in search of the One whose birth it announces. All through the Old Testament there are times when God chooses outsiders as instruments of the divine will, but still the coming of the Magi seems to surprise people. And herein is the clever part of Matthew’s way of telling the story. Neither of these groups – neither Herod nor the magi – had everything they needed to find the child. The people with the scriptures needed the outsiders to help them understand. The outsiders, with the natural revelation in the stars, needed the scriptures to help them understand what it was that was being revealed. Matthew’s stunning point seems to be that God’s truth is revealed to Jew and Gentile alike, but to each only partially. Jew and Gentile, religious insider and religious outsider, need each other in order fully to understand the manifestation of God’s truth. Another way to say it is this: God has a way of working outside the religious establishment as well as within it. Religious folks do not have the corner on God’s truth.Matthew is not content to make this point just here in chapter two. He keeps coming back to it again and again throughout his gospel. He tells of the Canaanite woman, a non-Jewish foreigner, who comes to Jesus seeking help for her child. Jesus says to her rather curtly, “I came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, not for foreign dogs like you.” But she catches him with her reply, “But Lord, even the dogs are allowed the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.” And Jesus responds, “Woman, great is your faith.” (15:21 ff.)At another point, Matthew tells of a centurion who approaches Jesus because he has a servant who has been paralyzed. The man does not dare invite Jesus to his home, as he knows Jews are not allowed to be in such close contact with Gentiles. So he says to Jesus, “Only say the word, and my servant will be healed.” And Jesus says to him, “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.” (8:5 ff.) Remember also the centurion on watch at Jesus’ crucifixion. Seeing all that happens at Golgotha he proclaims, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” (27:54) Matthew simply cannot let go of this important point. He wants us so to grasp it. God’s revelation is not limited to any one nation or religion or people. When God’s Messiah, God’s Son, comes into the world, that singular manifestation of truth and love and goodness is not limited by narrow human boundaries. It is available to all people… to all people. The sign of the star is a sign to all.Sometimes it takes some outsiders to help us see the light… like the magi did at Bethlehem in following that light that shone like a bright-beaming star above that Palestinian town… a guiding star that still shines… for all who have eyes to see. ................
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