This is a strange story
about strange people.
First of all the
magi. That’s the word I use for them
because that is the Greek word used in the story. Who were these people and where did they come
from?
Despite the song we just
sang, they were not kings. That makes no
sense at all, or, rather, it makes too much sense of these strangers. To call them kings means that the notable and
powerful were seeking the notable and powerful and that is not what this story
is about.
We’ve tried so hard to
make sense of this story. We decided
there were three of them because there were three gifts. But the story doesn’t say how many there
were, only that they were plural, more than one. In the 7th century we even given them names, Caspar, Melchior
and Balthazar.
But the story is that
these strangers came from the east and they were perhaps religious figures of
some sort, but Matthew the Gospel writer doesn’t give us any details because
the only thing he wants to make clear is that these were foreigners, strangers,
aliens.
And they knew something,
saw something in the night sky that drew them to the land of the Jews. They went to Jerusalem, the capitol, and to
Herod, the king, which is really the only sensible thing that happens in the
story. Where else to go to look for a
new king of the Jews?
But in Jerusalem the
strangers found the even more strange.
Herod, a strange and evil tyrant who lived in the trappings of power but
really had none at all. He was a puppet
of the Roman occupiers. His court was
all pretense. The Romans let him build
great monuments to himself, and they looked the other way when he chose one of
his four sons to be his successor and just to make sure his choice was honored
murdered the other three.
Herod was a man who
believed his own press releases, and the strangers from the east, whoever they
were, were certainly smart enough to figure that out, but, at least, his
religious flunkies could give them a clue as to where they should take their
search.
So, no doubt with a
great deal of relief, they left the strange king behind and headed for
Bethlehem.
But what they found
there was nothing like they were looking for.
The strangers again found the strange.
Not a king, but a child, found in a common house, with two unimportant
parents. But the child more than the
child, the star in their eyes could see his strangeness, the strangeness of
God, as a vulnerable baby, a human being, destined to live, but also destined
to die, just like them and all the rest of us.
But in this meeting of
the strangers from the east with the stranger who gathered heaven and earth
into himself, a spiritual super nova.
Conventional religion
explodes. Conventional religion, which
seeks to divide the world between the godly and the ungodly, the sinner and the
righteous, the accepted and the unacceptable, the welcomed and the stranger—is
obliterated in this child.
In the centuries that
follow we have tried to make this religion conventional and we have,
unfortunately, succeeded, mostly, but no one can ever quite get rid of this
uncomfortable and amazing truth—that the strange is the blessed, the strangers
are welcomed, the unacceptable made acceptable, sinners declared righteous, and
all men and women drawn into the divine.
Whoever these wise guys
were, they knew that what they had encountered was the ultimate stranger
declaring himself to be more than a king—a friend, a friend to all who seek
him.
And they were smart
enough not to do the conventional thing, and return to the seat of power, check
in with the religious officials and the king, but to find a different way home.
And they left us with
this one question that we should carry like a star in our eyes all of our
days: Is there a different way home than
we thought? Is there a different way to see? Is there a different way to be
with one another, and, most importantly, with the stranger? Are we willing to live our days as blessed
stranger to blessed stranger?
To seek to answer these questions is to find a new way home.
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