Μάγοι. That’s what Matthew calls them. Magicians. How many? He doesn’t say. He speaks only of three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. But what a weird addition to that homely group at the manger! Μάγοι like this would be not just surprising. They’d be seriously frightening.
They came from the East: Persia, Babylonia, Assyria – super-powers of the ancient world. These aren’t vague, professorial types. They’re priestly wizards, seers who advise kings whether or not to go to war, or slaughter whole populations. These are seriously powerful figures. Matthew says that Herod ‘was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.’ I should think so!
These spooky figures proceed to Bethlehem. What can Mary and Joseph have thought? They would certainly not receive the gifts murmuring, ‘Oh, some gold! How nice!’ When the Magi had gone, Matthew says Joseph was warned in a dream to flee. After meeting those wizards, a dream was hardly needed!
Early in the third century, Tertullian called them FERE REGES – ‘almost kings’. The idea stuck. A little later, Origen suggested that there were three of them – to go with the gifts. By the sixth century, they had been given names: Gaspar, Mechior and Balthasar. One was thought to be black.
By the early Middle Ages, the μάγοι were treated as saints. Milan claimed to have their relics! Bones? Hair? Whatever they were, Frederick Barbarosa stole them in 1162, and took them to Cologne Cathedral. They’re still there today, housed in a gorgeous medieval reliquary.
Matthew is the only New Testament writer who mentions the Magi. There are no other references anywhere, even oblique. Were these real figures? Were they always symbolical? It doesn’t matter. By the second century, they’d already caught the imagination of the Church.
Part of the reason was that picture of earthly power on its knees before a helpless Baby. Men who advise rulers are not notoriously humble. They’re used to being feared. People get uneasy if they come too close, and back away. Yet here, in the stable, the roles are reversed. ‘Warlike Power Kneels to Human Weakness’. The Magi represent every nation on earth, come to honour the Son of God. They’re a sign of what God’s Kingdom will be like.
Whoever they were, wherever they came from, they took a gigantic risk. They might well lose all their power and influence at home, just by making this journey. Travel was slow. They didn’t know how long they’d be away, or if they’d ever come back at all. If they did, other wizards could have usurped their places. Just by setting out, our μάγοι risked losing everything.
And they can’t have had much idea of what they’d find. That new star might herald the birth of a king – but what kind of king? Jesus’ own disciples found it hard enough to understand. How could these Magi, from quite alien cultures, have the slightest idea who this King might be?
Still, they took the risk. They followed the star, showing both courage – and humility. For their journey itself was an acknowledgment: they knew there were things they didn’t know – things that might turn out to be more important than all they did know. It was worth the risk to find out.
Humility is essential for growth in understanding. We all learn, both by experience, and by what we’re taught. We try to link our taught knowledge and our experience; but, sooner or later, we find they don’t always quite fit. They ought to – but sometimes they just don’t.
It’s very easy to back off and say, ‘Oh well, it’s all too hard for the likes of me. I’ll leave it to the experts.’ We can just go on repeating the familiar formulas of conventional wisdom, and not wrestle with the puzzles life throws at us. But, if we can find courage and humility to travel into the unknown, we might make connections that lead to a new and deeper understanding. In doing this, we imitate Matthew’s Magi.
Staying at home always feels safer. But if you don’t set off, you’re unlikely ever to get anywhere else! That’s as true for journeys of faith as for any other kind.
God doesn’t change. God’s reality doesn’t change. What we understand won’t affect God or reality one iota. But we change! The explanations that once made sense start to feel inadequate. New questions and problems nag at us. To deepen our understanding, we’ve got to travel.
The Church should encourage us to travel fearlessly – not urge us to stay at home (metaphorically) so we can feel safe. Christian faith is an adventure, not an insurance policy. It’s a journey of discovery, along which we keep finding out more about God – and about ourselves. The Church itself needs to travel, as it seeks both God, and the fulfilment of his kingdom.
The time-honoured formulas by which we try to express truth are not themselves the truth they try to express. A love-poem is not the same as the love it celebrates. That’s obvious; but it’s sometimes less obvious that theological formulas are not themselves the truths about God they try to express. God is bigger than all our attempts to comprehend him.
The Christian life is a bit like learning to walk. God, like any human parent, stands on the other side of the room, urging us to come to him. He knows that, if we’re going to learn to walk, he can’t always carry us. We have to take the risk, and totter forward.
The long history of Christian thought is full of contradictions and loose ends. The clash between inherited wisdom and the way we experience reality keeps throwing up new challenges. Our challenge is not to pretend that experience always fits the formulas of inherited wisdom, even when it clearly doesn’t, but to explore those disconnections, to do our best to move forward to better understanding. Our efforts may not stand the test of time: the history of Christian theology contains lots of ideas that didn’t quite work! But that’s no reason to draw back when adventure beckons – to be like children who never find the courage to take those first steps.
As we seek to understand God, and God’s reality, we will always struggle to find words. We grasp at ideas; we try them out. Our words and ideas must, of necessity, always be provisional. If we don’t remember that, the time-honoured formulas of faith become barriers to our own understanding, rather than clues to the living God. Their usefulness comes, not from merely repeating them, but by wrestling to relate them to what we actually experience – even if the struggle seems to call familiar truths into question.
The μάγοι in Matthew’s Gospel took a huge risk. They left behind their power and influence, and even more, their intellectual security, to follow that star. At journey’s end, they found far more than they’d ever dared to expect. They found, not a king, but the Son of God. Even if they got home again, their lives could never be the same.
If we, travelling together at Christ’s pilgrim people, can take the risks inseparable from seeking deeper knowledge of God, a closer relationship with him, then we, too, will find more than we can possibly guess. But we won’t arrive anywhere, or find anything, by staying safely at home.