They offered him gifts

They Offered Him Gifts

Welcome to the New Year. I pray that in it you will be healthy, wealthy and wise. I pray that this year will be filled with new opportunities – with growth for our church. I mean growth not only in attendance and membership, but also growth in a deeper understanding of God’s grace and love for us. I pray that God will set our hearts on fire with the power of the Holy Spirit. Watch out!

We are still in the Christmas Season until next Tuesday, which is The Feast of the Epiphany. Each year Epiphany falls on January 6th – twelve days after Christmas – and is not a moveable feast. We simply celebrate Epiphany when it comes. Epiphany was originally celebrated by the church in connection with the baptism of Jesus. Later it became more popular as a celebration of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.

At the Feast of the Epiphany we hear scriptures about the time that the wise men from the East saw the spectacular star at its rising and followed it all the way to Bethlehem. The church celebrates the Feast of the Epiphany because Jesus fulfilled God’s covenant with his people to give them as a light to the nations. Jesus was born not just for his own kith and kin among the Jewish people. Jesus was born to be the savior of the whole world. The nations.

The wise men who sought out the infant Jesus had an Epiphany. That is, a light went on over their heads and they had a sudden or maybe a gradual understanding that they needed to seek the One to whom the star was guiding them. I think they knew that Jesus’ birth was a birth of cosmic proportions. Otherwise, they in their far-off land would not have seen and followed his star. What would it take to get such people to embark upon such a long and hazardous journey? They were obviously wealthy and were probably a target for robbers. It is a miracle that they arrived in the holy land.

It probably took the wise men about two years to get to Jerusalem for their meeting with King Herod. We calculate this time because the Gospels give us important pieces of information. Luke tells us that Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room for his family in the inn. Matthew’s Gospel says that the wise men visited Jesus and his mother in a house.

The text says that upon entering the house they “offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” They offered these gifts. They did not presume to think that the gifts would be accepted. But think for a moment of the contrast when east met west – when rich met poor. These wise men – Magi – from the east – these are the people we call the “Three Kings.” They probably did not mix and mingle with the poor people in their own kingdoms, but here, in Bethlehem, they joyfully paid homage to Jesus. To me that meant that they probably got down on their knees to him. In that shining moment in human history the Kingdom of God had truly come on earth. The peace on earth and goodwill to all that the Angels had proclaimed was present in that scene of kings bowing to a baby whose parents were so poor that they had to offer two pigeons at the temple when they named him.

Why do we call the Magi wise men? Maybe it’s because they knew they were bowing to a king – the King of kings, in fact. They had acted on their epiphany. They operated in all the light they had at the moment. They followed the right star. They knew the truth when they saw it. They found Jesus and worshipped him.

The wise men also had the good wisdom not to rat out Jesus’ location and tell King Herod where to find him. They went home by another way. This resulted in Herod ordering the murder of every child in and around Bethlehem who was two years old or younger. He was specific in his order about their age. Our Lord Jesus escaped the fate of the other children because the Holy Family fled south. As the wise men had been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, Joseph also had been warned in a dream by an Angel of the Lord to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt. They would be safer there. They had the gold, frankincense and myrrh given to Jesus by the Wise Men. They might have lived in Egypt relatively unnoticed. The Holy Family was safe in Egypt and did not return to Israel until after Herod’s death.

How can we be like those wise men? What would be so joyful for us that we would be driven to seek it regardless of the difficulty? For Saint Paul, one of the wisest writers of the New Testament, it was the church. We now live in the light of the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ so that Saint Paul could say in our Ephesians reading today that he prayed for Christians that God may give us a “spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him . . .” so that we may know the hope to which we have been called, and what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints . . .”. That’s because the church welcomes all manner and conditions of people to worship God together. We all stand on level ground before God. We all receive the same bread and wine of communion. Only the wisdom of God could make that happen. Only God can make us wise so that like the Magi, we, too, will seek Jesus and live in all the light we have. Amen.


In peace,
Linda+
The Rev. Linda McCloud
Vicar, Holy Cross Church Episcopal
Billings, Montana
406-208-7314
http://www.holycrosschurchbillings.org/

photo: the three wise men

carvings by monks at

Mepkin Abbey

Monck's Corner, South Carolina

January 2008