The story of the wise men, or Magi, or three Kings, is mysterious in ways that differ from other stories about Jesus in St Matthew’s gospel. It’s more like a fairy tale and that is perhaps why the simple story which Matthew tells has been made more complicated and, in some ways, more mysterious over the ages.
A first question we might ask about Matthew’s story is when the wise men’s visit happened. Why did it take them two years to arrive in Jerusalem? If Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth in Galilee- why hadn’t they returned home long ago? Matthew does not in fact mention Nazareth at all (at this stage) and he has other reasons for keeping the holy family in Bethlehem as he wants to emphasise the tradition that they fled into Egypt to escape Herod’s soldiers coming to massacre the innocent children in Bethlehem just after the wise men have gone home.
The word he uses for the Wise Men is Magoi, or Magi in Latin. It’s the word which gives us magic in English. In the Bible it’s quite rare; it is what Nebuchadnezzar’s advisers are called- the ones whom Daniel supplants with greater wisdom based in his faith in the one true God of the Israelites and it’s also the word used for a dodgy magician or sorcerer called Simon whom the apostles encounter when taking the gospel to Samaria. Matthew is telling us how much Jesus’ power which comes from God is superior to the successful but slightly disreputable magic and trickery of other miracle workers.
Matthew does not call them Kings and he does not say there were three of them either. These are additions which later Christians added to Matthew’s basic story. Matthew might not have disapproved of these additions as he is keen to tell us how Jesus fulfils prophesies made in the Old Testament. We heard two of those prophesies in our reading from Isaiah who says “Nations will come to your light and Kings to the brightness of your dawn” and in our Psalm which spoke of the kings of Tarshish, Sheba and Seba bringing tribute and gifts. (None of those places is, incidentally, east of Jerusalem; they are all well south, but two of them are places where Frankincense and Myrrh came from) Matthew’s wise men seem to fulfil those prophesies and as they brought three gifts there was some reason to think there were three of them who eventually picked up names as Melchior, Balthazar and Caspar.
So, we have a story about a baby or perhaps a toddler by now, visited by wise men representing worldly wisdom, perhaps rather too worldly wisdom relying on sensationalism and trickery; wise men who bring fantastically precious gifts (rather strange gifts unlikely to impress a less that two year old, you may think) but gifts loaded with portentous meaning (or so it has been thought) and gifts given by kings for all sorts of exotic and faraway places, in homage to a baby born to a poor family in a fairly obscure town.
Matthew was writing about the birth of Jesus a long time after the event; long enough for memories to have faded and, anyway, it was not, apparently, very spectacular event. Just a baby born in poverty like many others. He needed to make it clear at the beginning of his Gospel that, contrary to appearances, this was a momentous event for the world, an event that provoked even the stars to pay attention and on earth the powerful, the
rich, the respected and the worldly wise to recognise a simpler truth than they had previously understood.
How should we respond to this story? One way would be to recognise our own faith, and our response to the Gospel as something bigger that ourselves. The temptation is to see faith as something comforting and even cosy- like the typical crib. Faith is, of course personally healing and restoring, but it should also be inspiring. It should be something we take out into the world in which we live, something to express in words sometimes but much more in action, in how we live. I suggest that we should see ourselves as the wise men and the kings and I suggest what we take away, and bring back from our encounter with Jesus matters just as much, if not more, than the seeking and the giving.
Amen