Like the Magi
Psalm 84:1 1 How dear to me is your dwelling, O God of hosts! My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of Abba God; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
Introduction
Happy New Year!
The beginning of the New Year can be a way to reflect backwards on what was to gather a plan to do things differently and improve on the version of the you that was. To be honest, I like New Years and the tangible break it offers me. Like, here’s a day—just one day—that’s feels completely different from the one before it (even though, intellectually, I know it’s just another day in the week). There’s something gracious about being given a day—as random as it might be—that offers a true turning from what was (last year) and a turning toward what will be (this coming year). Celebrating what was, welcoming what’s new, there’s something absolutely refreshing about New Years. On the 31st of December I can look back over the terrain behind me and see the mountains I climbed and the valleys I made it through; on the 1st of January I can turn that gaze forward with both excitement and a little bit of (healthy) intrepidation.
This “what was” and “what will be” pares well with our liturgical journey through Christmas tide (today being the last day of Christmas!). While we are forever listening and looking backward through stories about the waiting of the Messiah’s coming, the birth of the Messiah, and what follows, we are (paradoxically) reoriented toward what will come, to the new, to the not yet and away from the already was. While we know the story and what has happened (last year) we are now faced with how this story will play out uniquely in front of us (this new year). As well as we have known this story, there will be new ways God’s word unfolds in our lives, ushering us into new territory, calling us to follow new stars, even luring us to take a completely different route home when necessary…
Matthew 2:1-12
“When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.” (Mt. 2:10-12, NRSVUE)
Our gospel author, Matthew, introduces us to the Magi and King Herod. Matthew is sharing two things with his audience. First, the reference to King Herod locates the audience with Jesus and Mary and Jospeh under tyranny.[1] According to one source, “There were three Herods…Herod the Elder, Herod his son, and a grandson Herod. Herod the elder, the one at the time of Jesus’ birth had ordered two of his sons to be strangled on suspicion of conspiracy, and he also killed one of his wives. At the time of Jesus’ birth he killed more than three hundred public servants on other suspicions of conspiracy.”[2] Knowing this, we get a sense of the anxiety and the terror of the socio-political atmosphere under the murderous rule of Herod; there is no rest under such a ruler who is so insecure that not even his own sons can live with ease, let alone the birth of the one who is considered Messiah, “The King of the Jews[3].”[4] Second, the news of Jesus’s birth is not isolated to just Bethlehem or Judea proper, but is spreading beyond imposed human made boundaries marking nations and principalities. So, into this situation come the Magi, the “Three Wise Men” from the east, who were noble men of philosophy and science, especially of the stars,[5] and religious teachers of Zoroaster. And, they intentionally head to Jerusalem (v. 1) seeking the arrival of a new king born of the Jews because the stars (planets?) had aligned a certain way in the sky and this proclaimed the birth of a new ruler (v. 2).[6]
After introducing us to Herod and Herod’s rule and the inquisitive and humble[7] Magi, Matthew tells us that it’s the inquiries of the Magi in Jerusalem that send King Herod into a fit of fear, and with him the rest of Jerusalem (v. 4)—both those in league with him whose power is also being threatened and those who are subject because when there’s an insecure ruler on the throne, no one is safe because everyone within reach is a threat and an enemy.[8] Anxious and full of fear, Herod not only consults his own chief priests and scribes (think Pharisees and Sadducees) about where the birth of the Messiah would occur, but he also “secretly” calls for the Magi and seeks information from them (vv. 5-7). Then, Herod sends the Magi to go and find the child and return to him so he can go and worship, too (v. 8). All this so that Matthew can tell us that God is not at work in the heart of the empire, Jerusalem, but elsewhere, in meager Bethlehem home not to rulers and the powerful but to people living on the fringe and the peasants.[9] Herod and his fellow leaders and rulers are being exposed in Matthew’s work; they are (rightly) already on the defensive and afraid; the imposters—claiming to rule as representatives of God in God’s name—are beginning to feel the initial tremors of the shifting of power from them to the true king of God, to the humble baby swaddled in manager. In other words, through the arrival of the Magi in Jerusalem these rulers of the kingdom of humanity are put on notice and are afraid, “…for they are linked with Jerusalem’s fear, and they are allied with Herod’s scheming (2:3).”[10]
The Magi proceeded to follow the star that summoned them from the east until it stopped over the place where the child was (v. 9). According to our text, the Magi were “overwhelmed with Joy” (v. 10), and they entered the house, found the baby Jesus in Mary’s lap, knelt, paid homage, and offered gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (v. 11). These gifts, as odd as they may seem to us are valuable treasures at the time; they will come in handy once Joseph is given a vision that he must flee with his family out of Bethlehem and into Egypt to save the life of his son since Herod is moments away from decreeing a massacre of all children two years old and younger (Mt. 2:13-18). Gifts like gold, frankincense, and myrrh will help the family live in Egypt until God summons them back after Herod’s death (Mt. 2:19ff). When we proclaim the migrancy of Jesus’s family in these early days, we tend to picture both the scene with a very, very pregnant Mary and the scene of Joseph leading his family into Egypt in sentimental terms against peaceful and pastoral backdrops. But both events are anything but; they are events that are whipped through with fear and anxiety because they are doing whatever it takes to fight for their lives. And it’s here, for Matthew, where Jesus—the son of God, the king of the Jews—is situated deep in the human predicament and plight: in the pain of being human in an inhuman world.[11] And it is this inhuman world run by the kings of the kingdom of humanity that Jesus will, decades later, come face to face in conflict.
Finally, Matthew tells us, “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.” Matthew’s story about the birth of the Messiah, the Christ, Jesus the son of Mary, begins with resistance. Worried more about the life of this child, they defy Herod’s order to return to him, and they find their way back home via a different route. Here, the Magi—wise and noble, with access to power—sided with the little one in the lap of a humble woman of color, one who was already being threatened with persecution.
Conclusion
It’s a new year. So, we are presented with a glorious many roads to take. Grateful, though, becaues our examples—our “shining guiding stars”, if you will—the Magi present to us the very clear way we must walk forward this year: aligned with the marginalized, the oppressed, those being threatened with death and met with hostility. There is, if I’m understanding the Christian story well enough, no other way than to find another way home and refuse to side with power that is so insecure it will destroy millions upon millions of lives one way or another. We like the Magi must be humble, bend our knees, adore the word of God made known to us in Christ—his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension—and bring our gifts for the advancement of God’s reign, participating in the mission of God’s revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world for the well-being of our neighbor.
[1] Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname, translated by Donald D. Walsh (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 31.
[2] Cardenal, Solentiname, 31.
[3] Cardenal, Solentiname, 31. “It was known that the Messiah was going to be king, an that’s why the wise me arrive aksing for the king of the Jews, meaning the Messiah.”
[4] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 27.
[5] Cardenal, Solentiname, 31.
[6] Case-Winters, Matthew, 27.
[7] Case-Winters, Matthew, 27.
[8] Case-Winters, Matthew, 27.
[9] Case-Winters, Matthew, 27.
[10] Case-Winters, Matthew, 28.
[11] Case-Winters, Matthew, 29-30.
#AnnaCaseWinters #ErnestoCardenal #Herod #Identification #KingHerod #NewYear #TheGospelOfMatthew #TheKingOfTheJews #TheMagi #TheThreeWisemen #TheWisemen
