The wise men represent the eternal human condition – looking at power for mercy rather to one another in redemptive grace.
Looking for God in all the wrong places
Epiphany | Matthew 2:1-12
Last night we took down our trees, our greens, clove oranges, and decorations. We celebrated with Christmas music and festive cheer one last time on the twelfth night of Christmas.
And of course, we had to leave up the creche, as the wise men were about to visit the baby Jesus.
If you somehow missed the messiness of life that is the church, then this is a most beautiful symbol. Whether we count the 12 days of Christmas with Christmas Day or from Christmas Day is really a thing.
But since our Anglican roots are in England and there the greens are not allowed to be up for the sixth of January, that settled it for me.
Of course, I was thinking up high — the greens, the angels on the tops of the trees. I wasn’t looking low, to the nativity. It would be a shame to put them away before the wise men even arrived! What a tyrant I would seem!
The whole nativity in transit
If you haven’t grown up with these customs, they may seem a bit silly. But they serve a deeper purpose than any diminutive strangers sitting on shelves.
Because this scene begins with expectation. A mother and father (Mary and Joseph) alone until Christmas, when the baby comes to join them. And the shepherds arrive, bringing word from the angels. The nativity scene comes to directly resemble the birth story we get from Luke. And our participation, adding the Baby Jesus at Christmas allows us into the scene. What literature and drama refer to as “breaking the fourth wall”. We come to enter the scene when we place Jesus in it!
Then on the sixth of January, the Epiphany, we remember this part of the story in Matthew, when the wise men come and pay homage to the newborn King of Israel. And in my office, and in many homes, it is the day the wise men join our Nativity sets, traveling from the bookshelf. The epic journey across the room.
Matthew’s Birth Story
I want to draw your attention to how we’ve now changed gospels. This is Year C and we will be going through the gospel of Luke throughout the year. But this principle feast uses Matthew because this story only appears in Matthew.
And there’s a reason we don’t read Matthew on Christmas. It’s a little…less dramatic. Yes, it has angel announcements, it’s just not as direct.
The angel comes to Joseph in a dream and announces what God has planned and this is what it says:
“When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.”
Yeah, a little underwhelming isn’t it?
Matthew is far less interested in the matter of the birth than what happens because of his birth.
These three men, we call them wise men or sometimes kings, but they weren’t royalty. They were foreign astrologers from Persia. Think of them as a cross between scientists and holy men, like shamans, in an age in which science and spirituality were close to the same thing.
So these foreign dignitaries, ambassadors, or perhaps charlatans or grifters are called by God to find Jesus.
And where is the first place they look for the newborn king? In the halls of power. This is their grave mistake.
The Part About the Murders
We only read the first half of the story, of course. That foreboding last line speaks volumes:
“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”
What happens next is horrifying. Herod, a vassal king and puppet of Rome, was so afraid that a true king of the line of David would show up to depose him in 20 years, that he goes and has all the infant boys in and around Bethlehem murdered. From 0-2 years old, just in case.
And the holy family, warned of what was to come, take flight into Egypt — the land God told the Hebrew people to never return to — as refugees of political violence. And they are able to reside there, in literally the last place on earth they are supposed to go, until Herod dies.
The Christmas story in Matthew is disturbing and difficult. And from an early time, Christians sought to maintain these difficult parts in light of the merriment.
We read the difficult parts on purpose.
We celebrate our patron Stephen on the second day of Christmas, not because we’re happy, but as the first martyr. On the fourth day, we celebrate The Holy Innocents, all those infants killed by Herod. Then the Holy Name on the 8th day.
In hearing the whole story, we’re invited into the whole story, to remember that there is both light and dark. That we remember not only our savior but what he is saving us from. To remember that we continue to need saving from these same elements!
You get that the church did this on purpose, right? And that we foolishly avoid it on purpose as well. That our ancestors didn’t only want glad tidings, but hearts and memories tuned to celebrations and tragedies.
That we might hear the cries of the hopeless, of grieving mothers.
As our gospel will shortly remind us:
“When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’
Christmas isn’t joyful because we refuse lament.
It is joyful because we embrace lament and know that this isn’t what God wants for us. God wants a different relationship to our tragedies.
But so quickly Christmastide is closed and we celebrate another feast: the Epiphany. The Epiphany is about noticing. Noticing that God is already calling us, coming to us. God is already here.
Despite all that anger and fear and frustration and horror that we experience, we’re reminded that it isn’t of God. So we turn our eyes to what is of God. Presence. Love. Wonder. Hope. Welcome. Refuge. Grace. Transformation. Newness. Return. Reconciliation. All the good work of the Spirit.
Awakening
And lastly, because I have to share this each year, we remember that the Epiphany began with our friends from the Eastern church. They first began celebrating the Epiphany to remember the Baptism of Jesus, not the arrival of the wise men.
It is not the culmination of Christmas for them, but the dawn of Chirstly ministry. The baptism is the moment God broke the heavens and declared the blessedness of Jesus and everything begins! Now!
It is urgent! It is time!
Embedded in the Epiphany celebration is that call into service — that awareness of the beginning of ministry in us and its urgency.
So as we bring our wise men into the scene, looking down for them, among the lowly, rather than high with the stars, let us notice our God here, within these walls and well beyond them; sitting among us in these pews and out on park benches.
Let us also remember our calling to serve God in love and hope and joy, regardless of the season of our lives.
And may God’s love and transforming grace be with us, holding us in love and opening our eyes to all the wonders of the cosmos and God’s redeeming dream. That we may see it and know that it is for everyone.