[Today is the feast of the Epiphany, which means "manifestation." It is also known as Twelfth Night (the last of the twelve days of Christmas runs from sundown yesterday to sundown today) or Feast of the Three Kings -- Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior. The season which begins today, which we call Epiphanytide, runs to Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent. Our joy and celebration continue!]
Long before there were telescopes and computers, people named the stars and the constellations, and they charted their journeys through the heavens. The early stargazers looked for patterns and consistencies. They believed that these heavenly bodies could influence human affairs or portend future events on earth. Today's story [Mt. 2: 1-12] stars Persian priests, who would also have been astrologers. These "wise men" are described as observing the movement of a star, which literalists opine to be a comet or meteor. From their observations, the priests deduce that the birth of a future Jewish king will be revealed far away in Jewish territory. They set out towards the west and, sure enough, the heavenly body stops moving when it reaches Bethlehem and their divine GPS brings them exactly to the cave where Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are holed up. There these three visitors worship Jesus, who is lying in an animal feeding trough, and they present to the infant gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Our story has been described as the most symbolic in all of Scripture. Let's look at why. First of all, the tale contrasts the pagan priests' devotion with the fear of Herod and all the Jews in Jerusalem (!) that Jesus might have arrived. That clearly signals that gentiles will "get"Jesus, and Jews will miss him. That represents what was generally going on by the time Matthew's gospel was released around the year 71 CE, namely that mainstream Jews had not bought into the Jesus Movement, but outsiders had. The reason, in simple terms, involved the four-fold Jewish expectation for the Messiah. First, this Messiah would lead a violent military revolution to overthrown Roman domination of Jews and establish an independent Jewish nation again, with its capital in Jerusalem. Second, his ascendancy would cause the Kingdom of God to arrive in its fullness -- no death, pain, or evil would then exist anywhere in the world. Third, having witnessed this, all the nations of the world would convert to worship Israel's God. Fourth, with the whole world in full communion with God, all the righteous dead would rise to join the party and dwell in God's bliss on the renewed earth forever. Jesus did not fulfill any of these expectations.
The other principal way in which the story is symbolic is the significance of the magis' gifts. Gold is a gift to give to royalty. Jesus is King. Frankincense is a gift reserved for priests. Jesus is our High Priest. Myrrh is a substance for embalming. Jesus will be a Martyr. Any reasonable person should understand that people don't go around giving embalming fluid or incense or gold to a poor baby in a manger. The depicted gifts, rather, announce the key elements of the life and ministry of Jesus.
Jesus will be a different kind of Messiah, the one we awaited, a devout pacifist who brings us true spiritual enlightenment and freedom --not from political domination -- but from ourselves. He is a harbinger, not of a restored Israel, but of the Kingdom of God, a new kind of world where all are valued and loved, where everyone counts, and everyone's needs are met. He offers a crazy, topsy-turvy vision of human possibility. He calls people of every nature, race, and culture, to a new way of being human and living with one another in community. His Kingdom agenda calls us into a costly partnership with God to struggle for that divine reign. The star is still shining for us, let us follow!
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