God Speaks Through the Magi

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When I was 12, I did something cool. I played a trumpet solo for my church’s Christmas Eve service. Of all the Christmas carols, what did I choose? Well, I had already learned a carol in middle school band – We Three Kings of Orient Are. That’s the one I played. I was nervous as heck. But I got through it okay, and it sounded, well, it sounded okay.

Knowing what I do now, I wonder if anyone, including my pastor, were glad I only played the tune and did not sing the words. Those three kings – many protestants, well, they protest!

Those three kings of orient were not!

It gets the story wrong, I can hear a Bible stickler say.

They were not kings from the orient, but Magi. As for three, the biblical text does not say how many there were. We guess three because there were three gifts – gold, frankincense and myrrh. But two people, or four or five, can give three gifts, right? And the Magi visit Jesus as a two year-old.

Did the author of the carol John Henry Hopkins, Jr. change the original story? Did the carol invent these kings?

Well, not exactly. Long before 1857 when Mr. Hopkins wrote the carol, these visitors from the East in Matthew 2 were deemed kings. There’s a long historical lineage of calling the Magi kings.

Where does this use of dramatic license come from? 

Well, beginning early in Christian history through the Middle Ages, the magi were interpreted as kings from the east. The idea persists.

Last night, Holly and I watched one of my Christmas gifts to her, a digital copy of the new movie The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It is a feature film version of a TV afternoon special I showed here a few years ago. Well, the movie is wonderful and moving – made me cry, in fact - but it too calls the Magi kings.

Where does this come from?

Old Testament prophecy is the simple answer. Here are 3 prophecies begging for an answer:

Isaiah 60:3:

The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising.

Psalm 68:29

Kings will bring presents to You.

Psalm 72:10

May the kings of… distant shores bring tribute to him.

Early Christian interpreters of the Old Testament read these verses and read them into Matthew 2’s narrative of magi coming from the east bearing gifts. These magi must be kings too.

Call it short term thinking. The prophecies would later come true beginning with Constantine and other kings who would bow before Christ.But those prophecies from Isaiah and the Psalms don’t apply to Matthew 2.

The Reformers, especially John Calvin, a forefather of the UCC traditions, were adamant about this. John Henry Hopkins was Episcopal, closer to Catholic than Congregational, and so went with three kings instead of a few magi, or wise men. So did the movie!

But that’s okay! It’s still a wonderful carol. Maybe the magi eventually became kings. Who knows?

This brings me to a point I hope you leave with this morning.

What we see as imperfection doesn’t have to preclude the human heart being touched, moved, softened. Something that is different and not preferred from my perspective, something I don’t agree with 100 percent -- it still can move me, even transform me.

Indeed, that’s a truth taught to us in this tale of the magi visiting from the east and returning home transformed.

The magi were Gentiles. Not Jewish priests or prophets or shepherds or from Nazareth. The Magi were from Persia and maybe even farther East. Scholars believe they were learned, priestly Zoroastrians trained in the art of alchemy, what Judaism called magic. Magi is right in the word “magic” for a reason. But alchemist is a better, less baggage-laden term.

These magi approached Jesus with gifts. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These were gifts that might typically be given to a new king. It could have been any king.

But something about this toddler king inspired them on a deep, deep level. They brought gifts, but it was the gift of this child gave to them, a gift to their spirits that outshone everything.

They couldn’t help but to drop to their knees and worship Jesus. That word worship means to humble oneself in reverence. The wonder and beauty they felt in the moment they saw Jesus – it moved them so deeply that reverence was the natural result.

Reverence wasn’t the only result. The magi, instead of returning to King Herod to give him Jesus’ whereabouts, return straight home, hiding and protecting the one they just adored.

The inspiration that the Magi experienced is alone telling.

First of all, the Magi were Gentiles! They were deemed unclean in the strict reading of the Jewish faith, as sinners just because they were not Jewish. But here they’re included and are the good guys in the story, the Jewish King Herod being the bad guy. It recalls John 10 which we read last week.

14 I am the good shepherd… 15 …I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 

As for the Magi personally,

The child Jesus was said to be the new king of Israel, the promised one every Jew was waiting for. But the magi didn’t share the Jewish faith or anticipation. They were Gentiles! The Jewish faith that birthed and gave significance to Jesus, it wasn’t true for them.  The magi saw the world differently, understood God differently, practiced a different religion. But that didn’t stop them from being moved by the experience of seeing Jesus.

Seeing the heart of the matter despite differences and disagreements – that’s the lesson for us this morning.

So, I included and sincerely sang along to We Three Kings of Orient Are. As a Congregationalist, I, like Calvin, see the identity of those visitors from the East differently, as Magi, as Gentile wise men from Persia, not kings. But the carol still moves me. It still brings me back to that Christmas Eve service when I, a 12 year-old, played the carol on my trumpet and meant it!

In this spirit, I’d like to close with this poem:

Not gold, but silver-plaited, that trumpet was,
The one I played that carol on, that Christmas
When I was twelve. I didn’t ponder theology,
The discursive mind dark-years away, waiting.
My discriminating bent later would see
Errors in the three kings’ interpretive conceit.
Not kings, but gentile sages, magi, they were.
That there were merely three isn’t clear either.
Such an adored carol, how could it be so amiss?
Thankfully, no one afterward asked me this.
I was pleased in the wake of my performance.
Some adults, wise elders, all praised my present.
Kings or not, it was the moment that mattered,
It’s joy, its imperfection, its youthful truth heard.

 

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