Thought for the Week

6 January 2008 – Epiphany

Collect:	O God, by the leading of a star You manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: mercifully grant that we, who know You now by faith may at last behold you glory face to face; through you Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen.
Readings	Isaiah 60, 1 - 6
	Psalm 72, 10 - 15
	Ephesians 3, 1 - 12
	Matthew 2, 1 - 12

As you might expect, at least if you know him personally, your Chaplain is a great fan of Monty Python, and in particular of “The Life of Brian.” A particular favourite is the birth scene (“It’s a girl!”), and the gifts of the wise men, and the reaction of Brian’s mother. She is quite keen on the gold, but has little use for either Frankincense or Myrrh. Understandable today, but in fact both Frankincense and Myrrh were recognisable and highly valuable in the ancient world

Of course, Matthew is the only Evangelist one who mentions the wise men. As our Archbishop pointed out recently in a front-page article in the Times, we don’t know how many wise men there were. We assume three, because Matthew mentions three gifts, but it could have been two, or any greater number. Nor whether they were Kings – Matthew does not use the word “King”, he calls them Magi, a term which we could probably best translate as “astrologers”. In fact we don’t even know where they came from – Persia, Arabia or Babylon are the usual guesses. Nor even do we know to what religion they belonged – there were Zoroastrians all over the place, and many who were not Zoroastrians also studied the stars.

Perhaps the key to this mystery lies in the fact that it is only Matthew who mentions the Magi at all. Mark and John tell us nothing at all of the details of Jesus’ birth and childhood. John starts the story at Bethany on the east side of the River Jordan, just north of the Dead Sea, where John was baptising, and just tells us that Jesus is “of Nazareth”. Jesus is already a mature adult when John first introduces Him. Mark too starts with John the Baptist, and Jesus coming from Nazareth of Galilee to be baptised, right at the start of his ministry, when, again, He was already an adult.

Ordinary people did not celebrate their birthdays at that time. Only royalty had their birth dates recorded for history. Boys became men when their voices broke, and girls became women when they had their first period.

By the time the Gospels came to be written down, the early Christians were being persecuted by first their own people, the Jews, and then by the Romans. In the great disruption of the Roman/Jewish war, Israel and much of the surrounding region were disintegrating. It was no easy task to get the story from the people who knew the boy Jesus in Nazareth, who may well have been hostile to Christians anyway. Nor was it easy to find any of his family who might know the details of his birth. So where could Luke and Matthew go for information about Jesus’ birth but to the Old Testament?

The Prophet Micah (Micah 5, 1 – 3), was clear that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, though all four Gospels agree that Jesus came from Nazareth. Luke gets round the problem with the Census, for which Joseph had to go from Nazareth, his home, to Bethlehem, his ancestral city, where Jesus was born.

Matthew solves the problem another way – Joseph and Mary come from Bethlehem, but have to flee with the infant Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod the Great’s massacre of all the boys of Bethlehem under the age of two. When Herod dies, about two years later, his son Herod Archelaus is ruling in Jerusalem, so Joseph decides to go to Nazareth in Galilee, where they are not known, and settles there.

There is very little evidence outside the New Testament for either a massacre, or a census, but both are entirely possible. But that misses the point – if you really want to know who Jesus is, say both Matthew and Luke, look in the Old Testament.

For Matthew, Jesus is both the new Moses, and the new King David the Great, while John the Baptist is the new Prophet Elijah.

The Kings come from the same direction as Balaam, (Numbers 22,5) who is near the River Euphrates. Balaam is a sorcerer, or Magi. There is an evil king in the story of Balaam too, Balak, who is a Moabite, a tribe closely related to Edom, the tribe from which Herod comes. Three times, Balak tries to buy Balaam with much gold (though no Frankincense nor Myrrh is mentioned), and make him persuade God to curse Israel. But the curse rebounds on Balak and the Moabites, a more terrible curse each time. So impressed is Balaam by the power of God, that he leaves his sorcery, and follows God instead.

In Matthew’s story the God of Israel is more powerful than any foreign God, and the cream of the gentile spiritual leaders come to bow down and worship the infant Jesus. The evil king Herod, like Balak, tries to buy foreign Magi to help him destroy the King of Israel, but God thwarts the plans of both Balak and Herod.

Then there is the star. Balaam prophecies that “a star will come out of Jacob, and a sceptre arise out of Israel”. To the ancient Jews, this was a reference either to the Messiah himself, the successor to the great king David, or to a star, which would herald his arrival. For Matthew, Jesus fulfils the prophecy of Balaam. But this one is no ordinary star, and any attempt to interpret it as a conjunction of planets or a comet missed the point. This star guides people, and stops where Jesus is.

In the ancient world, it was thought that stars were animate beings, and they were often regarded as angels, messengers of God. Thus it was that the column of fire by night, and the pillar of smoke by day, which guided Moses and the Children of Israel during the Exodus from Egypt were the guiding Angel of God. For Jesus, the new Moses, we should not be surprised to find a similar guiding fire/light/star.

The three gifts are of course significant too. Gold symbolises worldly power; it denotes that Jesus is a King. Frankincense was offered every day in the Temple at Jerusalem on the great glowing brass dish of charcoal. The smoke of it indicated the presence of God with his Chosen People, Israel, just as the column of smoke indicated his presence with them at the Exodus. It also symbolised the prayers of Israel rising to the throne of God in heaven. Frankincense is a potent symbol of the Holiness of Jesus. Myrrh symbolises death. Mary Magdalene would anoint Jesus feet with Myrrh, and then early on the first day of the week, after Jesus’ death, she and the other Mary would take Myrrh to anoint Jesus’ broken, dead body.

For Matthew, the beginning of the story of Jesus mirrors its end. Foreigners call him “The King of the Jews” – here it is the Magi, later it will be Pilate. The Jewish leaders plot secretly to take Jesus’ life – here it is Herod, later it will be Caiaphas and his cronies on the Sanhedrin. Here there is light during the night to signal Jesus birth – later there will be darkness during the daytime to signal his death.

There is no escaping the uncomfortable fact that the Holy Baby in the stable is the man of sorrows tortured to death on the cross. God sends his incarnate royal message of peace on earth, goodwill towards mankind, but mankind shouts back “Crucify! We have no King but Caesar”.

He brings us love, joy, hope and salvation. But what do we bring to Jesus? Do we give our gold in his service? Do we fill our lives with aroma of Holiness for his sake? Do we give ourselves completely in his service, not just unto death, but actually living for him and for others of his children?

Be sure that God loves you so much that He sent his Son into the world for you, and will bless you whatever you give Him, be it much or little, for “all that we have is His, and of his own do we give Him”.

Fr. Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude

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