This week we celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord. Most notably, we celebrate the adoration of the child Jesus by the Magi. These magi are interesting characters? Who are they, what do they represent, and what did that mean for folks in Jesus’s day and for us?
Check out the video here. You can watch the whole Mass on our Facebook page here.
Magi – Who are they?
Well, they are not kings, per se. They did not become so in our culture until John Henry Hopkins Jr., Rector of Christ Episcopal, wrote the carol we all know for a Christmas pageant in New York City in 1857. It was the first widely popular Christmas carol written in America.
(Now, here is an idea. Why don’t we write some carols for our own Christmas pageant next year? Wouldn’t that be something!)
Hopkins based his designation on earlier Christian tradition, which I’ll speak to a bit later.
No, they are Magi,
The word comes to us from Latin, which borrowed it from the Greek, which got it from the Persians.
The term refers to the Persian priestly caste of Zoroastrianism. As part of their religion, these priests paid particular attention to the stars and gained an international reputation for astrology, which was at that time highly regarded as a science.
Interestingly enough, there was a celestial event at that time that would have caught their attention. Apparently, about the time of the birth of Christ, Jupiter, the celestial body associated with kings, moved into the constellation Aries, which was associated with Israel. While probably unnoticed by most of the population, those who were paying attention to such things, such as the Magi, would have interpreted this phenomenon to mean that a king had been born in Israel. Pretty cool.
What do they represent?
For Matthew and certainly for the early Church fathers, the magi represent to the fulfillment of the prophecies of Isaiah 60:6ff, who we heard this morning, and other prophecies. Most notably:
Psalm 72:10: “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute, and the kings of Arabia and Saba offer gifts“
Psalm 72:15: “…and may there be given to him gold from Arabia“,
Given these references, it is not long before early Christians began to see them as kings, even giving them names: Balthasar is often represented as a king of Arabia or sometimes Ethiopia, Melchior as a king of Persia, and Gaspar as a king of India. By the 6th century all Christian commentators, both east and west referred to them as kings. This did not change until the movement of modern biblical scholarship in the first half of the 20th century. So, we can give Hopkins some slack. Besides, it’s a fun song. (Although I still don’t know where the rubber cigar came from in the version we sang in 3rd grade…)
What does it mean?
For the magi, it meant that a new king was born in Israel. I still can’t figure out why they felt compelled to make the journey and give him the gifts. Perhaps it was because they recognized that there was something going on in Israel that would have universal impact. Perhaps it was simply to fulfill the prophecies.
For Herod, it was a direct threat to his reign. Herod the Great was an incredible builder and administrator, but he was also a ruthless despot. Propped up by the Roman occupiers and insecure in on his throne, he held onto power with an iron fist and a sophisticated network of spies. This is a man who, days before his own death, had his two eldest sons executed because he suspected they were trying to usurp his throne. He was a bad dude. On Tuesday, we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorating all the boys in Bethlehem under two years of age, whom he had killed in hopes of eliminating the threat that Jesus posed to his reign.
He need not have worried, however. Jesus came preaching a very different kingdom that the one that Herod clung to.
For us, the Visit of the Magi is the confirmation of what St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, “that the Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body,
and copartners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”
I don’t know about you, but for me, this is good news. When all these things were going on, my ancestors, the Danes and the Celts, were still painting themselves blue and worshiping thunder and trees and whatnot. But in the providence of God and the kindness of history, the gospel reached those hallowed shores, and through the work of missionaries, especially he Jesuits, it moved from there to here. Christianity also went out from the east with Orthodox missionaries and worked its way across Asia, and eventually across the Bering Streit.
We live in a very privileged place in Christian geography. It was here in Alaska, probably in the lower Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta that the gospel circled the globe. Now the whole world is wrapped in the arms of the good news of Jesus Christ.
It also means that we have work to do. The legacy that we have received is no small heritage. The mission continues, not so much geographically, but certainly demographically, and sociologically.
First, in our families, such as they are.
Then in our parish family of St. Patrick.
Then beyond these walls into our neighborhoods, our schools, our workplaces, our state, our country, our world.
The Magi followed the star, carried gifts, and found Christ,
We have found Christ, we follow Him, and carry the joy of the Gospel as our gift to the world.