The Wise Guys

The Wise Guys

January 3, 2020

Last week, we spent a little time thinking about how people tell great truths.  There are thousands of different ways to tell a story.  Poems and novels and short stories and paintings and songs and historical treatises all can lead us to great truths.  What matters, though, is do they speak to us?  Do they bring the truth to life?  In the words of last week’s text, do they make the “word flesh?”  In the words of one of my favorite post-resurrection stories, do they make our “hearts burn?”

One of the things that matters a lot in that equation is how well we listen.  In particular, when it comes to experiencing a truth that someone wants to bring to life and they are from a different era and from a different culture, we have to listen very carefully.  Truth tellers are always speaking to their own culture and their own time.  As a result, there are things that we have to learn, things we aren’t just going to know because we are not from that time or that place. 

The other thing that is true of a truth-telling piece of art or literature that has existed for centuries is that people will reshape the story, itself, each time they retell it.  For example, you may love the musical, “West Side Story,” which is really a retelling of the story of “Romeo and Juliet,” only it is set in New York City as a battle between competing gangs.  Even if you’ve never read “Romeo and Juliet,” you may feel like you have because you know “West Side Story” so well.  Here’s the thing, though:  not only do you not know “Romeo and Juliet” until you read it and learn to love it, you are going to have a hard time reading “Romeo and Juliet’ because part of you is going to be thinking, “That’s not how it worked in ‘West Side Story!’”     

In order to really hear the original version of anything, we have to strip away what we think we know, recognize when we don’t know something, and listen very, very carefully to what is actually said.  That’s hard work!  It is challenging to let go of what we are sure that we already know.  However, the payoff is that we might actually learn something new.  That payoff can be huge.

Let’s start here.  Everyone knows Jesus’ birthday, right?  December 25th.  (Ding!  “First right answer,” you think to yourself.) Wrong!  We celebrate Jesus’ birth on December 25th because that is the day that Christians picked to celebrate Jesus’ birth.  Why did they pick that day?  Scholars agree that it was because there were already lots of celebrations around the winter solstice among the pagan religions.  If Jesus’ birthday was celebrated in the middle of those other celebrations, no one would notice the Christians.  This mattered because Christians were being persecuted.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love Christmas!  I intend to celebrate it on December 25th for the rest of my life.  However, we shouldn’t act like we’ve seen the birth certificate.  The meaning rests not in a date on a calendar but on the conviction that even before Jesus was born, God’s relationship to the world was changing.  God was at work through the most unlikely of people and in the most unlikely of places.

If we read the story carefully, we see the shepherds and the barn and the feed trough that was Jesus’ bed.  We see Mary and Joseph and all the animals.  What we don’t see are the wise men—not anywhere near that barn.  We think we know what we know because we’ve been told the “West Side Story” version for so long.  However, that pageant embodied, culturally embraced tale is not actually part of Matthew’s original story.

So, let’s challenge what we think we know.  We know for sure that there were wise men who came from the East, right?  What does that mean, though? Some people think the wise men were scholars from a king’s court.  (Sort of like professors, right?)  Some people think that they were kings, themselves.  (After all, we sing, “We Three Kings” every year!)  Wouldn’t that be weird, though, if a bunch of kings were traveling together? Some people think they were magi, which is the root of the word “magician” and would make them some mix of astrologers and soothsayers.  Let’s pause for a moment, though, and agree to compromise.  Let’s say that they were distinguished foreigners representing a king from another land.  (When I was little, I got in trouble for stealing the wise men from our family creche.  I called them the “wise guys.”)

So, where were they from?  Most scholars think that they were Persians, from either modern day Iran or Syria.  Why does this matter?  Well, if they were from there, then we lose another dearly held belief.  People from that land would not have ridden camels (which we all know are one of the other coolest parts of any creche!).  They rode horses.  Camels were pack animals.  Horses were way more comfortable and way faster. 

Forget the camels, though.  (Much as I hate to say that!)  Why does it matter that these wise men were foreigners?  It matters because foreigners as a group were suspects and despised.  These “outsiders,” though, recognize something that no one else has recognized.  They know that the new king, the Messiah, has been born.  So, Matthew has wise men and Luke has shepherds but they both are presenting equally unlikely people to visit the baby Jesus: the poor shepherds or the people from another land.

Fine…but at least we know how many wise men there were, right?  Three!  Everyone knows that!  Except…Matthew never tells us a number.  In the earliest days of the church, the belief was that there were twelve—probably as a mirror of the twelve disciples and the twelve tribes.  By the eighth century, those who retell the story assign names (Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar) and even add that Balthazar was black and from Africa to emphasize how Jesus had come for all people.   The details added to the story may add meaning but they aren’t the original story.  In the original, we have no idea how many wise men are involved.  Maybe we assume that there were three because there were three gifts and who shows up empty handed to honor a new king?

Well, at least we know that the wise men were wise, right?  Well, it turns out they weren’t that savvy.  If they had asked anyone, they would have quickly learned that Herod was unhinged.  He was paranoid to the point of killing his own son out of fear that he might try to seize the throne.  Wise people don’t strut into the court of a king like that and say, “Hey, we hear your successor has been born.  Where can we find him?”  They are lucky that he didn’t kill them which he likely only resisted doing because he wanted to pump them for information, first.

When Herod hears their question, bells would have been ringing in the ears of Matthew’s audience.  Why? This would have pushed their buttons because in the story of Joseph in Hebrew Scriptures, Pharaoh consults with his magi for advice—a role that Joseph ultimately fulfills.  They would be thinking to themselves, “Something familiar is happening here…but in reverse!” After all, this time, the magi are consulting with Herod.  Herod then consults with his religious experts who suggest that the place to visit might just be Bethlehem.  Then, after sharing that information with the wise men, Herod whispers into their ear, “Stop back and let me know once you’ve found him!” Of course, this is simply because he wants to pay this newborn king a little “homage” of his own, right?

So, the wise men, however many of them there were, wherever they were from, whatever they rode, however naive they were, head to Bethlehem, still following the star.  This is where we can pause for a moment.  We are catching a glimpse of the wisdom of these people here.  They saw a star and thought something might be happening and decided to go find out.  Something inside them said, “We have to go!”  Wise people are willing to follow, willing to have their plans interrupted, paying enough attention to what’s going on around themselves that they wonder, “Is that a sign?  Is that an invitation?”  They are brave enough and curious enough to run the risk of being ridiculed for being the people who dared to go find out for themselves.  That’s a part of the original meaning.

So, they go find out and end up at the barn outside the inn, right?  Nope!  The text tells us that they are led to a house where they find Mary and the child.  Scholars think this could have been as long as a year or two after Jesus’ birth.  None of this matters to Matthew nearly as much as it matters to the rest of us who have spent our lives envisioning three wise men and three camels, jammed into that barn. Instead, they enter the house and see Mary, holding the baby, Jesus, in her arms.  This vision is what matters.

This is when we see the second bit of evidence of the wisdom of these men.  In the most unassuming of circumstances, the least likely of royal settings, these men are wise enough to recognize what is sacred.  They humble themselves and drop to their knees.  They worship this child.  They pry open their luggage and start pulling out the gifts.  Unwise but smart people spend a lot of time telling everyone within earshot just how smart they are.  Wise people know when to kneel.  This is the second part of the original meaning of this story.

Here’s the thing though…Who gives a baby gold, frankincense and myrrh?  Seriously, do you visit an infant and toss them a five dollar bill?  I don’t think so!  However, there is an underlying meaning and wisdom to these strange gifts.  The gold?  That would have been something one gave to a king.  The frankincense?  That would have been the precious scent that was burned in the sacred spaces at the temple.  And the myrrh?  Well, things take a turn here.  The frankincense also would could have been used to make a burial more “fragrant.”  However, creating a fragrant burial would have been the precise use for myrrh.  Weird baby shower, right?

Here’s the thing though… The man who would receive some gold as a child would be betrayed for a bag of silver coins at the end of his life.  The man who would be given the scent of the sacred as a baby would years later be arrested and tried by the religious authorities who burned that same scent.  The man who would be given burial spices as a child would one day be visited by women who came to his tomb, bearing those same spices.  Foreshadowing!  That’s another part of Matthew’s original meaning.

Finally, the wise men are warned in a dream to stay away from Herod…and they are actually wise enough to listen!  How many times have we seen something unusual and refused to follow up?  How many times have we stood in a moment of wonder and awe and refused to get down on our knees and humble ourselves?  How many times have we had one of those dreams that felt like a warning or an invitation and we discounted it or explained it away or just shook our heads until the dream disappeared?

In Matthew’s gospel, the first visitors to Jesus are distinguished royal foreigners, representatives from a strange land, servants of some unknown king.  They risk everything to follow a star. When they see something amazing, they drop to their knees.  They listen to a dream.  However many there were, wherever they were from, these were wise and faithful men.