Epiphany Sunday, Year C | Matthew 2:1-12
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
January 9, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
“Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” – Isaiah 60:3[1]
Happy Epiphany, and welcome to the third season 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 the angel looks down upon that silent night. The kings traditionally represent three different regions (Arabia, Ethiopia, and Asia Minor[2]) and the gifts are understood to be symbolic of 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. That’s intended as a quiet reminder that they most likely weren’t there for Jesus’ birth: their presence is technically a conflation of Matthew and Luke’s 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 honestly, I’m not too concerned about precisely representing this scene. Frankly, our imagination of the kings often has more to do with centuries of theological speculation and accrued mythology than with what the Gospel tells us in the first place. None of those ideas are necessarily bad or wrong—most of those kinds of developments begin with the intention of helping people become more faithful by better connecting with the Bible—but sometimes it’s helpful to strip off the layers of embellishment solidified by generations of story and song and briefly reestablish the basics behind our modern traditions.
As I mentioned, we have no idea about this story’s timing. 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 the truth is, no one 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 give them names and backstories, and over time they morphed into the three kings with think about 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 “magi,” which is the root behind our word “magic.” At its broadest, “magi” was a slightly derogatory term for anything from a street illusionist to what we would call a 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.
Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s older continually-practiced religions, dating to at least 500 BCE—and possibly much, much older. Vastly oversimplifying, its core message is about 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 era liked to associate themselves with his name, not unlike how modern memes will falsely attribute wise-sounding[5] quotes to Confucius, Lao Tzu, or Buddha. The Greeks 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.”[6] Part of Zoroaster’s lure in Greek culture, therefore, was as an imagined prophet of the “Living Star.”
The earliest Christian writers seem to understand 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,”[7] and “They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”[8] I suspect the euphemistic “wise men” probably came from our longstanding cultural distaste for the idea of someone who follows a non-Abrahamic religion receiving positive representation in the Bible.
And that’s what really grabbed my interest today: the contrast between actual King Herod and the not-necessarily-three not-really-kings Magi. Herod was in a uniquely privileged position. Although not ethnically Jewish, Herod held the position of the Judean king. Like David, he lived in the seat of highest authority in a city set aside as the home of the One True God. He had instant access to the high priests and the best religious scholars. 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 making an attempt at active service to God. He had all the advantages and all the opportunities associated with the political leader of God’s people. But when faced with evidence of God actively working in his day, he responds with fear. He attempts to manipulate and mislead and maintain the world as he already knew it.
Then you have the Magi, a group of foreign priests (and possible magic users), people who actively worship a deity the people of Jerusalem would have recognized as a false god, yet they’ve somehow sought and honored the God of Heaven and Earth despite their assumed errors and heresies. Without access to revealed truth from the Hebrew Bible, these pagan religious leaders 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, they’re the ones who see reality most clearly and end up bringing truth to God’s own people.
As so frequently happens among us, those who taught themselves that they see clearly turn out to be blind, while the ones they would reject—“people walking in darkness”—have seen a great light.
Late last fall we began our preparation for the end of the world. We secured the infrastructure of the Royal Road throughout Advent, filling potholes, smoothing buckles in the pavement, and even rebuilding sections worn beyond repair. We cleared the pathway of overt danger, making the Way of the Lord as open and accessible as possible. But even realizing this highway has been established to enable common people like us to seek the King, how often do we find ourselves adding unnecessary border checks or toll booths to the route, making assumptions about who exactly can—or should—be allowed to use it?
The King has come. We spent the 12 days of Christmas rejoicing in that truth. But today, as we begin Epiphany, we start to see God’s highway embracing its true purpose. The Way of the Lord was never restricted to royalty, nor was it designed for the exclusive privilege of people we deem to be locals or citizens. The Way of the Lord is open to even those we would least expect: to foreigners, to pagan priests—to all who might seek the presence of God.
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[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] Sometimes just vague or confusing
[6] I argue that “zoe” is more in line with the Chinese and Japanese concept of “qi” or “ki,” which is closer in meaning to our word “vitality”—the pervasive energy that most obviously directs and expresses itself through the actions of living things. “Zoe” is therefore “life energy” whereas contemporary Greek “psuche”—also frequently translated as “life” refers to the individual or personality animated by the “zoe.”
[7] Isaiah 60:3
[8] Isaiah 60:6b