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Comments and Observations
In common parlance if someone says she had an "epiphany," she means a new insight that came from out of a clear blue sky. Technically, "epiphany" means "appearing" or "appearance," which is how it is used in the New Testament in terms of Christ's "appearing" in judgment at the end of history--this was the apostle Paul's favorite term for what we often call "the second coming" of Christ. The Savior who has been invisible since his ascension into heaven will one day be made manifest once again. In terms of the liturgical year, Epiphany refers to the appearance of the star in the east, leading the Magi to the Christ child.
But for Matthew's original readers, the story of Matthew 2 must surely have been something of an epiphany in the sense of a shocking revelation. Mostly, though, we tend to miss the scandal of this text. Because of the Magi's routine inclusion in Christmas pageants right alongside of the shepherds and angels, we have come to expect, and even welcome, the presence of these Magi, or Wisemen, or Three Kings of the Orient. They add a dash of color to the spectacle with their royal blue garments embroidered with gold foil. They provide a whiff of the exotic through their Persian ways as hints of spices fill the air. Above all, perhaps, they sound just the right note of royalty for the child-king in the manger.
Yet it appears that no such thoughts were intended by Matthew, and probably Matthew's original audience would have sensed this acutely. First of all, the Magi were almost certainly not royalty--at best they may have been associated with the royal courts of Persia, though even that much is uncertain. Further, we don't really know how many of them there were. The long tradition of "three wisemen" is mostly based on the slender a piece of evidence that they gave young Jesus three gifts. But when you think about it, that proves virtually nothing. But the notion of three kings was furthered in the 8th century when St. Bede the Venerable strangely supplied the names of Melchior, Gaspar, and Baltasar for the Magi. Where he got those names is by no means certain. He may have just made them up. Some centuries after that odd new development in Magi lore, the Empress Helena made her own contribution to Magi mythology by claiming to have had a vision that led her to the burial site of these three kings. She had the remains exhumed, and the ostensible skulls of the three kings remain to this day on display in Cologne, Germany.
It's all fantasy, of course, on a par with Steven Spielberg's fast and loose fiddling with the legend of the holy grail or the Ark of the Covenant in the Indiana Jones films. The biblical record is the only evidence that we have to go on. Based on the Bible what can be said with some certainty is that these magoi were the ancient equivalent of "magicians" not of the Harry Houdini or David Copperfield variety but more like what we would call astrologers and star-gazers, people who tried to get the hang of present and future events by reading what was in the stars. These were, in short, the guys who wrote the daily horoscopes for the Baghdad Gazette.
The Magi, in other words, were what many today would label as quacks and maybe even charlatans. Currently there is a popular show on TV called Crossing Over on which the host supposedly is in communication with the dead and so conveys messages from the dead to their living relatives who appear on the show. It looks for all the world like another high-tech flim-flam, but if the Magi were alive today, that might just be the kind of show they would be interested in hosting themselves! That's why the Old Testament actually provides even more choice language for such persons: the Bible condemns Magi-types as idolatrous deceivers who are to be avoided by Godly folk. Indeed, a Jewish rabbi, writing not long before the birth of Jesus, once wrote, "He who learns from a magi is worthy of death." In short, the presence of the Magi in Matthew’s gospel is scandalous.
But Matthew has been presenting similar scandals from the very outset of his gospel. Matthew seems intent on opening up the circle of salvation to include all people and all nations in fulfillment of what God had promised to Abraham millennia before: "You will be a blessing to all nations." That's also why in his opening genealogy of Jesus Matthew broke with genealogical convention by including not only four women but four women each of whom had something foreign or scandalous attached to her. Tamar played prostitute in order to get impregnated by her father-in-law, Judah. We looked at that sordid story in our Genesis series one Sunday evening last year. Rahab was a prostitute and from the foreign city of Jericho at that. Ruth brings Moab into the picture, and though Bathsheba is not specifically named in Matthew 1, Matthew actually finds a way to twist the knife more painfully by referring to Solomon's mother as "Uriah's wife," and everyone remembers what David did to hapless Uriah! That's one of those incidents in the Bible that looks more like an episode of The Sopranos than a cozy Sunday school story!
Apparently, Matthew is trying to strike a universal tone. He wants not just men but women included; not just Israelites but people from all nations; not just those whose lives conform to the standard shape of orthodoxy but even Magi who were the least likely candidates for God's love that you could imagine. Matthew 2, of course, does not vindicate astrology or deny the Bible's earlier warnings about diviners and quacks such as these Magi. What Matthew may be trying to convey, however, is the reach of grace. Matthew is giving a gospel sneak preview: the Christ child who attracted these odd Magi to his cradle will later have the same magnetic effect on Samaritan adulterers, immoral prostitutes, greasy tax collectors on the take, despised Roman soldiers, and ostracized lepers.
Matthew 2 truly is an epiphany for any and all who tend to think that salvation is a Members Only club, the adherents of which are easily recognizable to those in the know.
Questions to Ponder/Issues to Address
What did the Magi see? If their faux science was really quackery, how did they get something right as Matthew claims they did? They knew that something cosmic had happened in Bethlehem of Judea. By their lights they somehow correctly sensed from the heavens that something important had happened on the earth. They were so sure of this, in fact, that they undertook a long and dangerous journey to investigate the matter. Just how and why that all worked is unclear. Traditionally we talk about the Magi "following the star," but you can no more follow a star than you can follow the moon.
Have you ever been traveling somewhere after dark only to have one of your children say from the backseat of the car, "Dad, the moon is following us!" "No, no, son" you might reply, "it just looks like that because the moon is so high in the sky that you can see it from everywhere you go." So also with whatever star the Magi saw: some scientists theorize it was a star that had exploded in a supernova somewhere out in space. But even if so, they could not have followed that star, and there is no good way to explain the idea of some heavenly body coming to rest over a house in Judea! But probably all those speculations are unimportant. The point is that whatever the mechanics of all this were, it was God himself who brought these Magi to the right place at the right time. That's why Matthew presents them at the side of the Messiah.
What would be the equivalent of the Magi today? That is, if Matthew was trying to shock his audience by bringing to the cradle of the Christ people who were outsiders (and so people you wouldn’t want to be near your Savior), who might represent this today?
Textual Points
The gifts presented to Jesus were not exactly your typical baby shower presents. Some have claimed that the incense and myrrh were actually items that pointed forward to Jesus’ death and burial. It would be the equivalent of bringing embalming fluids and a casket to a child’s post-baptism celebration! Others, however, see the gifts as royal offerings indicating that in their own way, the Magi recognized in this infant no less than a king.
So which is it: do the gifts indicate that Jesus will die some day and need embalming or that he is the king? Maybe we need not choose. Because as the rest of the gospel will tell us, Jesus becomes the cosmic King of kings and Lord of lords precisely BECAUSE he sacrificed himself. Because he was born to die he is now the One to whom all creation owes allegiance and honor. The world resists that, which is why no sooner do the Magi present Jesus with these gifts and we find Jesus and his family on the run from Herod, who will murder other children in an attempt to kill Jesus. The commingling of death and Jesus’ royal status really is on display in Matthew 2, especially if we read on into the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents.
Illustration Idea
Illustration Idea #1: The Magi are at once a cameo of grace and a reminder that real grace--truly tough, gritty, divine-style grace--can be difficult to swallow. It's one thing for any one of us to revel in the reality of grace. As this morning, so every week we enjoy getting to that "Assurance of Pardon" portion of the service and its wonderful reminder that we are swaddled in grace and so are forgiven despite our foibles, faults, flaws, and sins. But even so, who among us finds it easy to accept that same grace when we see it getting applied to someone who really hurt us, or someone who never hurt us but whose lifestyle over the years has been a good example of everything we despise? Don't we often find ourselves silently wishing that so-and-so would get his comeuppance before he gets any grace? Don't we chafe just a bit when we get the sense that a certain person is getting off scot-free, getting off the hook, slipping out of the noose, escaping his just deserts? That is what grace is all about, but sometimes it's a little tough to take!
As C.S. Lewis once wrote, we all agree that forgiveness is a lovely idea, right up until the moment when we have someone to forgive. Lewis wrote that right after World War II and in connection with the need for British people to forgive the Germans and the Italians. Today we could apply it to terrorists, to rogue and renegade nations, or less dramatically to any number of people whom we personally know and who have wounded us. But if we are to radiate grace, if we are to let our light shine as we talked about last Sunday morning, then this is our challenge.
Philip Yancey once noted that whatever else you might conclude about Jesus based on reading the gospels, it is clear that he was eminently approachable. People, including some of the most tawdry and sinful folks around, did not shy away from Jesus. Isn't that a curious fact? These days people who sense that their lives are not very religious steer well clear of folks who are religious. But that's often the way of it. Good people and bad people, righteous people and those who are perceived to be unrighteous don't associate together, and if they do, the unrighteous expect harsh upbraiding.
Again, that's the way it often goes. But as Yancey also said, no one was ever more perfect than Jesus, and yet far from being scared off by Jesus, sinners somehow found Jesus magnetic, attractive, approachable. Although Jesus was just an infant at the time, the Magi felt the same tug as a kind of preview of all that would follow once Jesus launched his public ministry. The fact that Jesus was so comfortable with sinful people does not mean that we may adopt an "anything goes" mentality. Jesus never did! But it does mean that when you are full of grace, as Jesus was full of grace, it means that you keep that grace as good news, as an instrument of healing and not a club with which to bludgeon people--we need to present good and healing news to especially folks who are different due to their past lifestyle, their skin color, their sexual orientation, their ethnic background, their socio-economic status, or their outward appearance. The baby Jesus did not reject these magicians from Baghdad, but then he was after all just a baby. But you know that if these same folks had come to Jesus when he was thirty years old, the story of acceptance would be the same.
Illustration Idea #2: From Debra Blue’s book Sensual Orthodoxy, p. 17 (Cathedral Hill Press, 2004): “I’ve been thinking maybe someone should start a small group of guerilla activists whose task it would be to plant shocking figures in manger scenes. They could work both inside private homes as well as in the most visible places. Suburban housewives will shriek to find Batman figures on the roof of the manger on their mantle. Churches will be horrified to find Barbies and plastic dinosaurs on their altars. But people will pay attention. They will look twice. They may even stop their car. They have even get out when they see a garden troll or a pink flamingo or a big plastic Homer Simpson leaning over the baby Jesus on the Cathedral lawn. I actually wonder if I’m not the first to come up with that idea. It might have been some guerilla group that first placed the wise men in the manger scenes.”