Merry Christmas! Christ is born! Hallelujah! Today is the ninth day of Christmas, but I do not believe the liturgy calls for nine ladies dancing. Instead, we have heard the story of the magi, astrologer priests from Persia, who have seen in the skies the arrival of a newborn king.
This occasion is known in the Church calendar as the Epiphany. It follows the 12th day of Christmas, so if you are keeping score at home that will be Thursday, January 6, 2022. We won’t be here that day, and next Sunday will be the first Sunday after the Epiphany, so today is…Epiphany lite. We aren’t fully feasting—as it’s too early—but we’re not skipping this story, either.
Like many things in the Christmas tradition, we are stretching a bit when we place these “wise men” in the creche with the newborn Jesus and his parents, as it was not 12 days but more like two years after the birth of Jesus that they arrived.
What a delight, the toddler Jesus must have been. I just spent the holidays with my beloved two-year-old niece and it was mostly her shouting “puppy!” every time my dog came into view and then insisting that we watch either Frozen or Frozen 2 every day. Jesus didn’t have Disney Plus, so there was at least that difference.
Why do you think it is so important that we mark this particular occasion? Why, of all the milestones in the life of Jesus, of everyone who probably came to meet him—grandparents, neighbors, other kids, various farm animals—what’s the significance of these Persian astrologer priests? And why, of all the babies born, did they travel across the known world to meet him?
As an aunt, separated from that niece by a pandemic and about 700 miles, I can understand the impulse to move heaven and earth to pinch a baby’s cheeks. But I do not think that is the reason. Let’s investigate, shall we?
The magi, as we’ve said, are from Persia—now formally called the Islamic Republic of Iran—and they are Zoroastrian astrologer priests. They study the skies and try to piece together the mysteries of the universe. I bet they were very interesting people, and I would love to have watched them work. One night, or perhaps over the course of several nights, they saw an unusually bright star. This star’s appearance provided them an epiphany, signaling the birth of a child in Judea who was God, come to life on earth.
Being wise men, as the story tells us, the magi knew they had to make the trek to see this baby for themselves. To see if what they had read in the stars could really be the truth.
Persia is a significant distance from Judea, especially in the first century, traveling by nothing faster than a camel. Their route to Jesus takes them through Jerusalem, where they meet Herod, tetrarch of Judea. I will forgive each and everyone one of you for not knowing what a tetrarch is. This title means that Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, was the ruler of one quarter of his father’s kingdom, and was not, in fact, a king. But we hear him called King Herod in our scripture, so we don’t learn the word “tetrarch” in Sunday School. But we learned it today!
Okay, so, these Persian astrologer priests are not Jews, and as such are not under Herod’s rule or the rule of this child they are calling King. But they tell Herod what they know, and that they are going to witness it firsthand.
King Herod does not have the same wide-eyed wonder that I imagine the magi had. He does not drop everything to travel a long distance to fall to his knees in awe of the embodiment of God—the Word made flesh—in the baby, Jesus.
King Herod, like many rulers, stepped on a lot of people to get to his throne. He had a poor example in his father, Herod the Great, who had 10 wives and had several people assassinated, including some of his other sons, as a preventive measure so they could not assume his throne. A legacy of paranoid warmongering. Charming.
It is not hard to imagine how this Herod would take the news that there was a new King of the Jews out there. “When King Herod heard this,” the text says, “he was frightened.” We should not be surprised by this. Powerful men do not like to become less powerful men, and a new King is seen as a direct threat to the current one.
Calling together his most reliable sources, Herod learns that—in accordance with the prophets—the child has been born in Bethlehem. The wise Persians go on their way, with fairly dubious instructions to come back through Jerusalem and inform him about where, exactly, they find the child.
The star leads them to the town of Bethlehem. By this time, as we have noted, Jesus is not a newborn in the manger like in our nativity scenes. He’s a toddler, probably noisy and messy and learning to walk and talk and all of those beautifully human things. The wise men are overwhelmed with joy to arrive at the home of the Holy Family after this long journey. Their first instinct is to kneel down and acknowledge the greatness of the Christ child.
They open their treasure chests and give him gifts. We have heard about these gifts and will even sing about them later this morning: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I don’t think that any of you brought these gifts to the most recent baby shower you attended, so you may wonder why these are the gifts the magi bring to the newborn king.
They bring gold to signify that Jesus the Christ is truly a king. You may recall that several weeks ago we commemorated the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe—also known as Christ the King Sunday. We know that Jesus will be an altogether different kind of king than any of the Herods, but he is a king nonetheless. The second gift is frankincense, which signifies that Jesus is our Great High Priest, like those priests who light incense in the temple. The last gift is myrrh, which is an embalming spice, and foreshadows his death.
Have you noticed, this year or in previous years, as we sing the Christmas hymns, how many of them have a verse about Jesus’ death? It’s usually further down the page, somewhere like verse five, which we don’t often get to during the service. But so many of our favorite celebratory songs about the birth of God are also about his death.
Personally, I am squarely on the side that we should have this one day of Jesus’ life where we are not also talking about his torture and execution.
But as people who know the whole story, we cannot ignore that the birth of Jesus starts the countdown toward the death of Jesus. We’re in Matthew chapter 2 here, and just 24 chapters later, he’ll be arrested. The author of this Gospel wanted us to keep our eyes on the road.
It seems that the magi may have also known more of the story than their contemporaries did. The last line of this morning’s Gospel text is significant. These Persian astrologers, after meeting the Christ child, went home. They did not go back through Jerusalem, to tell Herod what they had seen and what they knew about what was to come. No, they were wise enough to see that there was another way home. They were wise enough to know that this tiny child, Jesus the Christ, would not be the same kind of King that Herod was, but that his power was far greater. They were wise enough to know that Jesus is Lord, and that Herod is not.
This is where our centuries of Christendom are a disadvantage. We hear this story, and we say, “yeah, of course Jesus is the King of the Kings and Lord of Lords, we know. What’s the big deal?” At the time of his birth, these terms—king, Lord, Son of God, savior—were reserved for people like Herod and Caesar. Political leaders, emperors, warriors. Not Jewish children born into poverty. The absolutely radical nature of the Word made flesh is staggering.
If Jesus of Nazareth is Lord, then Herod is not.
If Jesus of Nazareth is Lord, then Caesar is not.
If Jesus of Nazareth is Lord, then the President is not.
If Jesus of Nazareth is Lord, then no earthly ruler has ever been or will ever be.
Often, we reduce the Christmas story to quaint carols—though, it’s worth mentioning that the verse in “We Three Kings” about myrrh does not sugarcoat it’s meaning. We forget, or we don’t learn in the first place, that the incarnation, God-with-us, the Word made flesh, is a radical and political declaration about power.
True power is not to be found in the waging of wars; in the oppression of those marginalized and minoritized; in terror and fear; in self-glorification and self-aggrandizement. That death-dealing is not what we worship. Those warmongers are not the type of King that Jesus is; his reign is not of terror.
We have been given the gift, as Christians, to find our identity in Jesus, not in our nation.
So what are we to do?
Follow the star. See, by its light, what is real and true and good.
True power, true leadership, true salvation comes to us from the lowliest of circumstances, and leads us all to liberation. Liberates us all from the power of sin and death; liberates us all from fear; liberates us all.
Yes, the world around us is dark, and there are powers and principalities waging wars and wielding terror. There are pandemics and wildfires and massacres. Fear was real at the time of Jesus’ birth, throughout his life, and in the centuries since. But the reason we are gathered here this morning is—in no small part—because a star shined in the East, and guided some wise men to see the world in a new way.
We are gathered here this week and every week because a light has shined in that darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Amen.