Hey, Church fans! Merry Christmas, Day 13! We had lots of fun this weekend with the Magi. The vid and the text are below. As always, if you want to hear the joke, it is in the vid, not the text.
The magi are interesting characters in Matthew’s infancy narrative. For one, we don’t really know how many of them there were. The sacred text simply doesn’t say. But based on the number of gifts, pious tradition holds that there were three of them. Three is a complete number, so it fits nicely.
The thing I want to concentrate on is the significance of the gifts themselves. Remember that Matthew was a pious Jew writing his gospel for other Jews to proclaim to them, “This is the guy! This the Messiah!” True to form, he uses the gifts to of the magi to reinforce his point.
Most pious Jews would have been familiar with the text from Isaiah 60, that says all the gentile nations would come to pay homage to the Messiah in Israel. One of the signs of the coming of the messiah would be gifts of gold and incense.
It helps to remember that in the minds of the people, the Messiah would be a great priest-king who would re-establish true worship in Israel as well as the very political Kingdom of Israel. Gold was the traditional gift given to a king as acknowledgment of his sovereignty and as tribute signifying one’s fealty to him. Incense was proper to the priesthood. Offered by the priest on behalf of the people, it was burned before the Holy of Holies, it represented the prayers of the people rising up to Almighty God as a pleasing fragrance.
The addition of the myrrh seems a bit out of place at first. Myrrh was an aromatic spice used to prepare bodies for burial. Matthew emphasizes the presence of the myrrh to signify the saving passion and death of Jesus on the Cross.
Matthew’s points is at once subtle, but very clear. Jesus is in fact the long awaited Messiah…but his mission and message are far beyond the people’s expectations. He is the great high priest, who offers himself as the acceptable sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. His is not a single, political earthly kingdom. Rather, as sovereign lord of heaven and earth, Jesus brings into the being the Kingdom of God. The twist is that he did not just conquer the enemies of Israel. But by his own death, he conquered sin and the price of sin, which is Death itself.
The fact that these gifts are brought by Gentiles shows that like all previous prophecies, the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the great priest-king who brings salvation to all the world.
Let us pay him homage by the gifts we bring before him. Let us lay before him the most precious gifts; a broken heart, a contrite spirit, an ear that listens to his voice, a hand that gives generously to those in need.
Great homily.. love the Kings from (fire)far. 😁