Matthew 2:1-12

Who Are These Guys?

Well, its the end of the Christmas season. The twelve days of Christmas are over for another year. The presents have been opened and for some the tree has been put back in storage to wait for next year.

Or that tree that was purchased less than a month ago has been taken outside to the curb to be taken to the dump (or if you waited until just a few days ago, it could be blown all over town by now).

OR maybe it still sits in its corner with the ever popular needle shedding thing spreading throughout your living room.

The craziness of Christmas and all that goes with it is all but over. Most, if not all, of the stores have taken down the Christmas stuff ... and all the Christmas decorations have been packed up waiting for next September. The stores and secular culture are all about done with Christmas.

But here in the Church we still have some of the Christmas story to finish.  Christmas for us does not end with Christmas morning  ... or even New Years ... We have much more of the story to tell.

On Christmas Eve we listened again to the Nativity story. Smelly shepherds caring for even smellier sheep were trying to bed-down for the night; their daily routine interrupted by an angel with a message and an angelic glee club with a hallelujah chorus to be sung.

The shepherds decide to go into town to see for themselves what is going on. And they discover a young family from Nazareth, an unmarried couple, far from home with a newborn baby.

The shepherds were not all together clear about what they had seen and heard that night, but their hearts are filled with joy.

They seem to know down deep inside that their lives would forever be changed, that their world is now a different place, that somehow, something new is taking place right before their eyes.

As this story is unfolding on the slopes of Palestine, another story is developing, many, many miles away. It is contained in the scripture text I just read a few minutes ago … about wise men from the East. 

I like the story ... I remember singing “We three kings of Orientar ...”  And I’m sure some of you remember the fun version of this one:

“We three kings of orientar ... tried to smoke a rubber cigar, it exploded and ...” I forget the rest of it. But I love that carol ... even after I learned that in the story they weren’t kings but were wise men, I still loved that story. 

But as I got older and re-read this story ... I came to realize that this is a really strange story.

A very weird story. Perhaps it is because we have heard it so often that it loses it’s weirdness, but it is certainly weird, none-the-less.

I mean, who are these guys?  We know about them at the very least from the Nativity scenes that dot the landscape of our homes and churches during the season of Advent. 

There’s Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, a sheep and a couple of cows, and then always the three Wise Men, accompanied, of course, by their gifts and their camels.

It’s a scene with which we have all become familiar. And, as you know, there’s always that star over the manger.

Who are these guys?  These Wise Men, as we have come to know them, are referred to in the Greek as Magi. The Magi were a priestly class among the Persians.

And here in Matthew, the term most likely designates astrologers, probably from Babylonia, perhaps, some suggest, from Egypt or Arabia.

But like astrologers do, they have noticed an important sign in the heavens – a new star, and they have followed that star to the place where they find the newborn king.

And speaking of kings, let me point out, there’s nothing to indicate that the Magi were kings. Later Christian tradition, under the influence of Psalm 72 and Isaiah 49 and 60 (our Old Testament text), comes to refer to them as kings, which is why these three wise guys in most Nativity sets are all wearing crowns.

Oops … I guess you noticed that Matthew never tells us how many there were. But since Matthew mentions three gifts, later Christian tradition came to identify three kings; and in the late sixth century Armenian Infancy Gospel, the Magi are even given names -- Melchior, Balthasar, and Gaspar.

So these men see a star. By the way, in the ancient world, the occurrence of a star or a constellation of stars was often associated with the birth of a notable person.

So having seen the star that Matthew says heralds the arrival of Messiah, having interpreted that star as astrologers do, the Magi go to worship, to pay homage to the child they refer to as the king of the Jews.

One more thing:  They didn’t start out on their journey until that star appeared – signaling the Messiah’s birth.  It took them some time to get to Jerusalem, then Bethlehem – so the whole manger scene with the wise men … never happened. 

As a matter of fact, if you read the text closely, you’ll notice that they went to the house, not the manger to see the child.

Anyway, they get on their camels and set off for Jerusalem.  When they get there, they start asking all sorts of questions.  They must have created quite a stir!

When outsiders from a foreign place show up asking questions about things the locals are not sure about themselves, you can imagine what the reaction of the authorities might have been!

No big shocker that Herod is not pleased. Herod knew of the prophecy that read: “a ruler to govern Israel will come from Bethlehem.”  And now that these wise guys were asking about the new born king … Herod was quaking in his boots. 

He was determined to nip the potential competition in the bud.  And so like a roach scurrying for a dark place when the light is turned on, Herod frantically plots to destroy the babe who threatens his throne.

He begins by inviting the Magi to a secret meeting. “Go and search for the child,” Herod tells the Magi. “I want to worship him, too.”

Herod, of course, is not telling the truth. He intends no worship. He intends to pay no homage. He has no gifts to offer. He intends only to exploit the Magi, to use them as pawns in the hidden agenda he secretly and darkly wishes to advance.

“When you find him,” he says to them, “get back to me so that I can worship him too.”

And so the Magi leave Herod and they follow the star until it stops over the place where the child is.

Indeed, the three strange foreigners find the child and are so overwhelmed by what they find that they fall upon their knees in worship and praise and adoration.

Like the shepherds on the hillside, they begin to realize that something is changing in their world, too; that a new thing is happening, that a new world is being born.

In a dream they receive a warning and escape from King Herod instead of giving him the information he so desperately desires.

And later still another angel warns Mary and Joseph to take the baby and escape south to Egypt until Herod is dead and their return home is safe. And there ends the tale.

I wondered why Matthew would include this story in his Gospel ... No one else did. Luke has the Shepherds.  Mark and John have neither story.  So why did Matthew choose to include this odd story of the wise men from the east?

I wonder if it was the oddness of Matthew’s own life that made him include the strange wise men from the east in his gospel?

Do you remember the story of Matthew? Matthew the tax collector turned disciple and gospel writer. Matthew ... former tax collector goon for the Emperor. If you don’t like paying taxes today ... things were a lot worse in Jesus’ time. 

You paid your regular taxes to the emperor ... then you paid “the special tax” to the tax collector.  You paid the tax or you got beat up ... or worse.  That is who Matthew was ... a tax collector.

But then Matthew heard the call of Jesus and changed from being a thug for the Roman government ... into Jesus’ disciple … into an evangelist and gospel writer. 

Perhaps that is why Matthew included this story of the strange ones who find Jesus ... of the foreigners who answer the call of God to journey from what they know ... to what they don’t know ... following the new star and finding a new way in Christ.

Perhaps Matthew includes this story to shake up his readers.

Truth is, Matthew shocks his readers’ right from the first verse of his gospel by recounting the genealogy of Jesus. He does so in a way that must have confounded those who first read it.

A genealogy in those days was traced through the male lineage, but Matthew breaks from tradition and includes four women in his list of the ancestors of Jesus.

And they were not just any four women. They were women whose lives bore the scars of prostitution and incest, of adultery and murder.

Matthew is laying the groundwork, even in his seemingly boring list of names of folks long dead, that the new day that is dawning is quite different from anything one might be expecting.

Matthew’s inclusion of the wise men in the heart of his Christmas story, as he also did the inclusion of the women in the heart of his genealogy of Jesus, shows a new way.

Both demonstrate God’s way of breaking down barriers that the world had built and to reach out to all.

And though we often call them wise men, that is almost surely to assign them a status that would have been unrecognized by Matthew’s readers.

Some have suggested they were philosophers; others have called them astrologers, as I mentioned before, because of their fascination with the stars.

But whoever they were and wherever they were from, Matthew’s point is that they are not from here; these are not hometown folks, with hometown values, and hometown upbringing.

These were odd fellows from some foreign land, the kind of folks that the Scriptures warn good religious people to stay away from.

The first hearers of Matthew’s story of Jesus would not have had such warm, fuzzy feelings when the Magi fell to their knees before the manger-throne of the King of Kings.

Quite the opposite! Matthew’s readers would have been scandalized by the audacity of three strangers from a foreign land who would dare to show up in their hometown to worship and adore their newborn king.

“We can’t have this!” would have been their first response, and it was precisely the response that Matthew was hoping for.

Matthew had them right where he wanted them, and now he could begin to unfold the rest of the story of Jesus. He could now remind his readers -- as he continues to remind us -- that the saving word of God, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is not for some, but for all.

Not for men only, but also for women. Not for the perfect only, but for those whose lives bear the scars of unmentionable human pain.

Not for the hometown crowd only, but for those on the other side of the tracks, the next town over or halfway around the world.

Not for those who believe just like we do, but also for those who are struggling to believe anything at all, or those who have lost their faith.

Some years ago, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York plastered the city with posters of the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral lavishly decorated for Christmas. It was a warm and inviting sight.

The poster’s caption was simple: “Come home.” No matter where you’ve been or who you have been with, no matter what you’ve been up to, or how long you have been away, “Come home.”

That is the invitation implicit in today’s gospel: “Come home.” Home is for everybody. Even for wise guys from the east who stumble upon the Lord of Lords, and the King of Kings. And the home for the Christ Child is in every heart that will have him.

Amen.