"The Magi’s Pilgrimage"

Matthew 2:1-12

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

January 2, 2005

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

As you know, this is Epiphany Sunday.  That means we sing the hymns about the Magi that we skipped at Christmas in our pursuit of liturgical correctness.  It also means we remember the Magi and the gifts that they brought to the baby Jesus.

Let‘s face it, we don’t know much about the Magi.  Matthew’s second chapter is the only time we see them. 

We don’t know if they’re kings or not, despite any Christmas Pageant you may have seen.         We don’t know their names despite any Opera you might have heard. 

We don’t know where they came from exactly. 

We don’t know if they started out looking for Jesus. 

We do know they were co-opted by Herod, like many wise people are. 

We also know that they ignored Herod’s orders and followed in a long line of wise dissenters from Shiphrah and Puah to Jesus himself.

What we know from Matthew is that  the Magi came to see Jesus, and subverting the desires of Herod, they brought him gifts which were to symbolize a new relationship with the world.  The wise men wanted to worship Jesus.  Herod wanted to kill Jesus, for he feared the implications of the formerly voiceless having a voice.  He feared the poor being empowered.  He feared the truth being made known.  He feared that he would not be able to wield so much power with this child.

So it is in the world.  There are always those in power who will try to lord it over others.

There are always those who control the access to information which will put their own slant on the comings and going of the days.  And it is up to us to seek the truth as God would have it.

            I find myself wondering where the Magi got their information.  I mean, think about the sources of news out there.  The Magi were international and probably did not read the Jerusalem daily Journal, the JDJ.  Even if they did, they would have found it hard to understand, being in a different language.  Another problem was that the JDJ was owned and controlled by Herod.  Oh, he didn’t make a big thing of it.  It wasn’t public and his name wasn’t on the letterhead, but it always reported how magnanimous and great Herod was.  It trumpeted his building projects and his tax reform, which meant that people paid a whole lot more for a whole lot less.  People’s lives didn’t match what was in the JDJ, but it was dangerous to say so.  Most people privately took what was in the JDJ with a grain of sand.

            It might have been the Roman Free Press the RFP.  The RFP, we would imagine told the things that were happening from the perspective of the Romans.  It probably didn’t have an editorial page that was favorable to homeless Messiah children.  Maybe this intrigued the Magi.  The Romans were, after all in the business of exporting their empire as far as they could.  Maybe the Magi came to Bethlehem because they wanted to spy on Herod and the Romans.  Maybe they were ambassadors from some other king or nation-state.

            Then there’s the star-thing.  I got a wonderful Christmas card a week or so ago.  It has three wise guys sitting on camels.  One says, “which star are we following?”  Another says “I dunno.”  Still a third with an accordion map says “This doesn’t look right.”  The caption says, “We Three Kings Disoriented Are..”

A midrash on Exodus 1 in the Babylonian Talmud speaks of Pharoah’s astrologers perceiving that the mother of the future redeemer of Israel is pregnant.  Pharoah then orders all the Hebrew boys drowned.  Herod does the same thing 1300 years later. 

Where do you get your news?  There are plenty of official and unofficial sources out there.

            My first church right out of seminary was full of people who loved Christian radio.  It wasn’t that much different back then than it is now, except now the music is more hip.  The theology, however, was vastly different than the theology they were getting on Sunday morning.  It was hard to compete with this kind of authority.  I had them for maybe an hour on Sundays while Christian radio had them for 80 hours or more each week.

            But some of the messages we send are not as overt.  Peruse the children’s channels and you’ll see that the shows often have product tie-ins, making toddlers in to little consumers with their Barney underwear and Dora the Explorer backpacks.  We witnessed a sure sign of the apocalypse earlier this week when Amanda (our 8-year-old) was over-sugared, and under-rested.  She said that she wanted to be a cool girl which meant she wanted to have all the stuff and be Britney Spears.

            Think about this.  What if the Magi went to follow the star pursuing one king and came back worshipping another?    Maybe the Magi had believed everything they read in the JDJ and the RFP.  They were the only credible news sources around anyway.  They had network access.  They even were the first to broadcast the results of the census.  But what if the Magi heard another story on their journey?  What if they heard the words the shepherds were saying.  What if the Shepherds quoted to the Magi the words of Mary’s Magnificat, even the part about the mighty being taken from their thrones and the rich being sent away empty?  What if the Magi began to realize there was more to this story?

By the time the Magi got to Jerusalem, they knew where their loyalties lay.

Listen to what Matthew says about their encounter with Herod.  They ask him, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”  Herod should know.  After all for all intents and purposes, he was king of the Jews, although he hadn’t been born king.  The king had to be descended from David.  Herod was not and we know from the begats of Matthew, chapter 1 that Jesus supposedly was descended from David.  The audacity of foreigners saying to the King, “Where’s your successor, we’ve got gifts for him.”  That’s not what you do in the capital city.  You give gifts to the king in charge if you know what’s good for you.  But the Magi had been on a pilgrimage and had encountered a new truth along the way.  It says that King Herod was frightened and all Jerusalem with him.  All Jerusalem had felt the wrath of Herod.  They knew he didn’t like being told he was wrong, let alone arrogant, even if it was the truth.

            I imagine the Magi had a lot to consider.  I bet they began their own independent commission on miraculous events and messianic epiphanies.  And then the lights turned on.  The people who walked in darkness saw a great light said the prophet.  The people saw through the trickery of the Herods and Quiriniuses.  They saw a new set of possibilities out there.  They convinced the Magi.  Now the international community saw through Herod’s trickery and brutality.  And they began to do things differently.

            They realized that there was a new kid in town and that the old ways of might makes right were no longer going to fly.

            We should also note that the first people to believe and worship Jesus, according to Matthew, were wise people from a different country.  Foreigners.  Outsiders.  People of a different race, class and religion.  

Matthew says that the Magi didn’t return to Pharaoh, I mean, Herod.  They went home another way.  They got their news from another source—a source that really revealed the truth.

Wherever they came from and wherever they were going, they stopped along the way and shifted their attention to Mary, Joseph and Jesus. 

Their gifts, their traveling tariffs took on new meaning.  Gold came to represent Jesus’ royalty.  Frankincense came to represent his divinity.  Myrrh signified his humanity.

On New Years, many of us made resolutions to do something different in the coming year.

It’s a kind of going home by a different way.  It’s not unlike what the Magi did when they encountered a new source of information.

May your new Year’s resolutions bring you and the world more peace, more understanding, more guts, more audacity, more connection to the One who makes all things new—the real king, the one really worth celebrating.

May we, in the coming year, share our gifts as the Magi did--in defiance of all that is wrong with the world and in hope for all that is right.  And through it all, may we embrace the light of the world this day which we need so much.

AMEN.