Epiphany Sunday, Year B | Matthew 2:1-12
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
January 7, 2024
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
I was not expecting to preach today, particularly as I’m still technically on vacation until Tuesday. I was planning to be here to celebrate the services this morning, but Deacon Phil had agreed to cover the sermon. Unfortunately, his whole family ended up coming down with what sounds like an extremely nasty flu. So with my backup out, we’re going to hear a light remix of my Epiphany sermon from a few years ago,[1] one I hope is still relevant to us today. That being said,
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Happy Epiphany, and welcome to the third of the six seasons of our Church Year. In Western tradition, the formal celebration of Epiphany falls on January 6 and marks the commemoration of the Wise Men coming to worship baby Jesus. We often associate the Three Kings with our nativity scenes, the richly dressed Melchior, Balthasar, and Caspar side-by-side with the rough and nameless shepherds bowing before a hay-filled manger as an angel looks down that idyllic night. The kings traditionally represent three different regions (Arabia, Ethiopia, and Asia Minor[2]) and the gifts are understood to be symbolic of the Christ’s three roles: gold for a King, frankincense for a High Priest, and myrrh for the Great Physician.[3]
If you’ve been watching carefully, you may have noticed that today is the first time this winter you’ll have seen the wise men at our nativity scene [at least, I assume that tradition continued while I was out!]. That’s meant to be a quiet reminder that, most likely, they weren’t present for Jesus’ birth: their attendance at the manger is technically a conflation of Matthew and Luke’s very different Christmas stories. A lot of Episcopal Churches, including St. Andrew’s, tend to put the kings somewhere in the building on Christmas Eve and then slowly advance them and their camels toward Bethlehem over the two weeks of Christmas, finally allowing them to arrive at the manger on Epiphany.
It can be easy to get caught up in the worry of exact details regarding when or how things in the Bible happened, but it isn’t really worth fussing about a precise representation of this scene. Frankly, our imagination of the kings often has more to do with centuries of theological speculation and accrued mythology than with what little Matthew actually tells us. None of those traditions or stories are necessarily bad or wrong—most of those kinds of imaginative developments begin with the intention of helping people better connect with the Bible. But sometimes it’s helpful to strip off the layers of embellishment cemented by generations of pageants and songs and briefly reestablish the basics behind our modern traditions.
So we honestly have no idea about this story’s timing other than that it’s unlikely to have occurred the same evening the shepherds heard the angels sing. Based on other details in Matthew,[4] scholars speculate that it may have taken place up to two years after Jesus was born.
Also, we should note that there weren’t necessarily three kings. There may have been, but once again, no one really knows. The number three became associated with this story because of the three gifts. Eventually, three gifts led to the assumption of three givers. Then people felt the need to provide those givers with names and backstories, and over the centuries the original visitors morphed into the three kings we imagine today.
Also, there are only two actual “kings” mentioned in this story: Herod and Jesus. Technically, there aren’t even any “wise men.” Matthew refers to the visitors as “magoi,” which is the root behind our word “magic.” At its broadest, what we English speakers pronounce as “magi” was a slightly derogatory term for anything from a street illusionist to what we would consider to be a genuine sorcerer—someone who practices actual, supernatural magic. However, “magi” was also a formal title associated with priests of the Zoroastrian religion practiced in the eastern region of the known world of that time, roughly where Iran sits today.
Dating to at least 500 BCE—and possibly much, much earlier—Zoroastrianism is among the oldest world religions still actively practiced today. Vastly oversimplifying, its core thought focuses on the ongoing dualistic battle between good and evil, with good ultimately destined to win. Regarding Zoroaster himself, we have more legend than fact. He seems to have been a reformer of earlier Persian religious traditions, moving them in a monotheistic direction.
The Greco-Roman culture leading up to Jesus’ time had quite the fascination with this exotic teacher. Many mystical and gnostic texts from the centuries surrounding the New Testament liked to associate themselves with his name, similarly to how modern memes will falsely attribute wise-sounding quotes to Confucius, Lao Tzu, or the Buddha.
People in Jesus’ day thought of Zoroaster as the inventor of astrology, likely through a coincidence of sounds: the “aster” part at the end of his name sounded like their word for “star” while they took the opening “zo” syllable to be related to “zoe”—often translated in English as “life” or “living.” Part of Zoroaster’s lure in Greek culture, therefore, was as an imagined prophet of the “Living Star.”
Possibly with that star connection in mind, the earliest Christian writers seem to have understood these Magi to be either foreign priests or sorcerers. They likely became “kings” through their long association with today’s Isaiah reading where “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn,”[5] and “shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”[6] I suspect the euphemistic “wise men” probably came from our longstanding assumption that someone who follows a non-Abrahamic religion might receive positive representation in the Bible.
And that’s what still intrigues me about this story: the contrast between actual King Herod and the not-necessarily-three probably-not-kings Magi. Herod was in a uniquely privileged position. Although not ethnically Jewish, Herod held the position of the Judean king. Like David, he possessed the seat of highest authority in a city set aside as the home of the One True God. He had instant access to the Hebraic tradition’s best religious scholars and most experienced priests. His moral track record wasn’t great, but as the one who had ordered the expansion and reconstruction of the Temple, he was at least putting some sort of effort into serving God. He had all the advantages and all the opportunities associated with being the political leader of God’s people. But when faced with evidence of God actively working in his day, he responded with fear and, eventually, violence. Hearing this news as more threat than promise, he ends up attempting to manipulate and mislead in order to maintain the stability and certainty of the world as he already knew it.
Then you have the Magi, a group of foreigners practicing a “pagan” religion, people who actively worship a deity the people of Jerusalem would have considered a false god. Yet these people have somehow sought and honored the God of Heaven and Earth despite their presumed theological errors and heresies. Likely having little to no knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, these people faithfully used what knowledge and skill they had to recognize and celebrate the dawning of a new world in the birth of Jesus. Even without being “chosen people” or having the “right” scriptures and traditions, these outsiders are the ones who see reality most clearly and end up bringing truth to God’s own people.
I wonder how often we might find that same reality reflected in our own lives today—how often we, even as Christians, reject or fight against the movement of the Holy Spirit as Christ continues to remake our world, restoring and revealing the full promise of the Reign of the Heavens. How often do we respond to God’s activity in our world with fear and desperation rather than loosening our grip on supposed certainties in order to embrace a humble new hope rising right in front of us?
Today, as we open this season of Epiphany, we catch a glimpse of the Way of the Lord’s true purpose. The Royal Road we prepared throughout Advent was never restricted to kings or aristocracy, nor was it designed exclusively for the convenience and use of locals. On Epiphany, a mysterious “Living Star” and its followers reveal the first hint of just how expansive this Highway for our God may actually be, how it can provide a foundation and pathway even for those we would least expect: for foreigners, for pagan priests—for any and all who continue to seek and celebrate the presence of God.
[1] https://www.slouchingdog.com/sermons/year-c-january-09-2022-epiphanysunday
[2] I’m guessing as the Medieval representation of the descendants of Ham, Shem, and Japheth.
[3] The idea of the swaddling clothes and the two embalming spices foreshadowing Christ as sacrifice appear to be later theological proof-texting.
[4] The mention of the Magi going to a “house” and Herod’s command to kill all the children under two years old
[5] Isaiah 60:3 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[6] Isaiah 60:6b