Cubed
Matthew 2:1-12

January 8, 2006

Epiphany means the sudden appearance of a god. A god, by the way, always appears suddenly.

Epiphany in the Eastern Church is the baptism of Jesus and in the West marks the arrival of the Magi. Today is an ambiguous Sunday on which we attempt to pull both together, but the Magi or the Wise Men are enough of a challenge.

Some Biblical translations have missed the point by rendering them as “astrologers.” While part of their science and wisdom was what we would call today astrology, it was not the messy sentimental practice of today. These were a caste or vocation of people who passionately sought for knowledge and truth, but never dispassionate truth. The Magi are the root of the word “magic,” yet their intent was to discover how the universe could be manipulated for the good of humanity. Wisdom was their aim, so the appellation “Wise Men” is more fitting than any others, including kings.

The Magi play a more important theological role in Matthew’s Gospel than we usually imagine. That’s because their “theology” does not fit with ours at all. They were not Jewish, they never became Christian, probably a strong dose of Zoroastrianism. Conservative Christians would undoubtedly label them pagan or heathens today. These Magi were strangers in and from a strange land, and bluntly they don’t belong in the Bible, especially as good guys.

The Bible has a habit of pushing the wrong people into the hero’s role. Na’aman the Syrian, Cyrus the Great of Persia, the Good Samaritan, the Syro-Phoenician woman, the widow of Zarephath - all were not part of the people of Israel, God’s chosen. God chose instead incorrect people, people who did not even believe that our God existed, to demonstrate how God’s people should act. We make a big fuss of the Magi, dress them up in elegant robes and crowns, make them powerful people, but they are the wrong people to be bearing gifts. How did we ever get suckered into listening to the Magi and end up honouring them?

Growing up in Baltimore, there was a grand model of the integrity and style of a politician. Theodore R(oosevelt) McKeldin was the mayor of Baltimore twice and in between served for two terms as the Governor of Maryland. He was quite an orator and loved to recite poetry and do dramatic readings. I have read recently comments on his life and career by leading black citizens and they all point to McKeldin’s magnanimity and his lack of prejudice. My home downtown Methodist Church had a few events similar to our Rotary Carol Festival and we could always get Theodore to lead the singing, read the Christmas story, or even offer a prayer. When I graduated from high school, he handed me my diploma.

There was a problem with Theodore. Maryland in those days was solidly Democratic. Republicans were those strange creatures you only got to see on television in some far away place, thank God. My father uttered an earthy liturgical expression whenever the image of Richard Nixon appeared in view. And my father loved Theodore McKeldin. You’ve probably guessed it by now - Theodore McKeldin was a Republican. The only Republican I ever could say I knew. I don’t know what he did wrong in his earlier life to become a Republican, but nevertheless we thought he was a wise man, maybe even a magi.

As a kind of leaven to the fury of the coming election, as a reminder that the coming of the Magi was a strange, yet wonderful event, I ask that you call to mind the wisest man or woman of public affairs you have known - who was from the “wrong” party. Is there anybody here who does not know a Wise Man/Woman from the wrong direction? How do you explain treating as wisdom the words from a person who made the mistake of joining the political party that so obviously cannot think straight? What hath God wrought here?

The Magi arrived in Bethlehem apparently well after the shepherds had flocked to the manger. The wise men from the East came to Jerusalem inquiring of the location after Jesus was born, and by the time they received the right information the family was living in a house. What difference a king of the Jews made to these sages outside the loop of the monotheistic faith of Judaism, the singularity in that age of the Roman Empire, is mystifying. No one today is interested in the minutiae of other religions. Even among other Christian denominations and wings of the church we find devotion to the appearances of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, Fatima, Medjugorje, and so on, curious but not edifying. Are there some devotional practices, doctrinal truths, holy sites of epiphany that are universally recognizable and accepted as valid universally?

If there is an answer that is comprehensible, it is that there are epiphanies that some people understand all of the time, and there are epiphanies that all people understand some of the time, but humanly speaking, we resist those epiphanies that we can all understand all of the time. That’s why the Magi are not just romantic characters at the climactic moment of a Christmas pageant. They announce without announcing that God breaks into and interrupts the life of all humanity, of the whole universe. The medium is the message -- how Canadian!

These Magi, enroute their magical mystery tour, tell us that God does not feel inhibited in using people who don’t really believe in God to tell us what we need to believe. The Magi remind us that wisdom is not partitioned out to the politically correct parties or to the superior religions, but to people God only chooses to make wise. The Magi have entered our consciousness via the back doors of our minds, not to tell us that Christianity alone is the true faith, but to emphasize with reverence and a sly smile that God bestows truth and faith and love on all human beings, regardless how humans divide themselves from one another in religions, nations, and political loyalties.

The Magi make Christianity a lot harder. It is easier to insist upon living and eating and talking only with Christians, going to school only with Christians, working in a Christian-only environment, only reading the Christian Bible and good Christian literature, listening only to Christian music. By who they were and weren’t, the Magi innocently infiltrate our pure Christian world, insisting that we have to listen for God’s Word everywhere, from every body. There is no voice you and I can rule out unequivocally as heretical and foreign and irrelevant. Truth recognizes nothing as pagan, and wisdom has never heard of a heathen. Has this Christian-segregation party ever really read the Bible? Don’t they understand what those Magi were meant to do? God speaks to every body, and as God’s people we’ve got to listen for God’s still small voice in strangers and strange people. What a God we have. What a God who has us!

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan