It’s a familiar story. Wise men, kings(?), Magi, astrologers, come from the east to find a child that’s born to be a great King. A new star has appeared in the eastern sky heralding the birth of someone destined for greatness and they’ve come to worship him. This is no ordinary child, this is someone who has the marks of deity.
You can imagine these magi, with their entourage, their camel train and servants and all the rest. They’ve been travelling for months and as they get closer and closer it begins to dawn on them that the star appears to be stopping over Israel. How strange! Well, they do have a King, but he’s a fairly minor player on the world stage. They certainly wouldn’t warrant the sort of star they’ve been following. Rome hadn’t had much trouble knocking them over not so many years back. How could such a great King be born in a place like Israel? Surely this God-king couldn’t be a Jew? But that’s what it looks like.
So naturally enough, they head for the palace of King Herod. That’s where you’d expect a King to be born. But no. It’s all a bit of a surprise for King Herod, isn’t it? And a nasty one at that! The last thing King Herod wants to hear about is a usurper to the throne. There’s only room in this town for one King. No, this is very disturbing news, really. Though, diplomat that he is, Herod doesn’t let his upset show too much. He’s seen enough court intrigue to know how to handle a situation like this.
Herod has a bit of a bad name over what happened in this story, doesn’t he? I mean, sending your soldiers out to kill all the boys in the area under the age of 2, doesn’t look too good on your CV does it? But you know, he wasn’t all that different from lots of people today. Not that they go around killing anyone who gets in their way, but there are lots of people who’ll do just about anything to avoid the possibility that they might lose control, that someone else might have sovereignty over their lives. Most people in fact want to run their own lives the way they like and they don’t want to have to worry about what someone else thinks. They certainly don’t want Jesus Christ coming along and upsetting their equilibrium with demands for godly living, let alone giving up their Sunday mornings to worship him!
But also, like Herod, many of them are well versed in how to sidestep the issue. Say the right words. Express the right sentiments. But never commit themselves to doing anything about following this King.
You see, that’s what Herod does. He plays along. He calls in his advisors. From the description that the magi have given it’s clear that this isn’t just a rival king. This isn’t a child of the resistance. There’s a spiritual dimension to their description. This is a king who should be worshipped, according to the magi. So he calls in all the chief priests and scribes of the people. Notice that, by the way. These weren’t his chief priests and scribes. I guess he had too many practical concerns on his mind to worry about something as ephemeral as religion. Leave that to the people! It’s good for them anyway. It keeps them happy. Let them dream of a golden age when God will send a deliverer to rescue them from slavery and set them free. It never hurts to have a dream. But we men of the world know that it’ll never happen.
So the chief priests and scribes come in and are asked where the Messiah will be born. Well, it doesn’t take them long to find the answer. The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem, or so the prophet Micah had said some 700 years before. Yep, that’s the place to look. You see, these priests and scribes, these teachers of the law, knew their scriptures. They knew all the stories, all the predictions of the coming Messiah. But again, that wasn’t enough was it? It wasn’t enough to know the prophecies. It’s not enough to just know the Christmas stories. Thomas Merton once wrote this: "there were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the ass understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today." Well he was right. There are plenty of people around today who know the stories about the baby Jesus. I mean they’ve been hearing them since they were in pre-school, unless they went to one of those progressive kinders where the Christmas story is banned. But knowing the story doesn’t help if it doesn’t lead to us worship and follow the one the stories tell of.
You see, the scribes and priests knew all the prophecies about the Messiah, but when he appeared among them, and began to teach what it meant to be a true child of God, they didn’t want to know about it. The sorts of things that Jesus taught threatened their position in the community. What he said undermined their importance in the religious life of the nation. He suggested that people could have a direct relationship with the father, without needing to go through a priestly intermediary. Well if that were the case what role did the priests have? And so, despite knowing the prophecies, despite seeing so many of those prophecies coming true, they failed to recognise him; and they refused to accept him for who he was.
Well, they tell Herod where the Messiah would be born and he tells the magi. First, though, he finds out when the star appeared, then he tells them to go and find the child and when he’s found, let him know, so he too can go and pay him homage. Of course we know from what happens later that the only thing he has planned for this baby is a funeral. If only the magi knew!
The magi continue on their way to Bethlehem until finally the star stops overhead and they realise they’ve reached their destination and are overwhelmed with joy. There in Bethlehem they enter a house and find the child with his mother and they kneel down and worship him. Then they open their treasure chests and offer him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Now I want you to think about these gifts. We all know, I guess, the significance of each of them. Gold for a king, incense for worshipping a god, myrrh for burial, but that’s not what I want to think about right now. What I want us to think about is the fact that these magi seem to have been able to see into the future to what Jesus would become. You see, it’s all very well for us to sit here looking back and say, ’Oh yes. That’s what these gifts signified.’ But it must have been something completely different for the magi. They would have been like some of the Old Testament Prophets who spoke about things that were to come, without having any real idea what they were.
Yet they were spot on weren’t they? By the end of his time on earth it was clear what the significance of these gifts was. He had gathered a band of followers around him who would form the beginnings of his new kingdom, under his rule. He’d been put to death. He’d been pronounced God’s only Son, a title affirmed by his being raised from death once for all. And he’d had his disciples, down to earth types like fishermen and tax collectors, worshipping him as the Son of God.
What’s more, the magi, foreigners from the east, in coming to worship this Jewish King, were signalling the fact that Jesus’ coming into the world meant that people of every nation were to be brought into God’s Kingdom, irrespective of colour, or race, or language.
So even if the magi didn’t fully understand what they were doing, they’d got it right hadn’t they? This child, born to poor parents, in an out of the way place, in this insignificant nation, deserved to be worshipped as God and King. This child had come as the means to bring all people everywhere into God’s Kingdom, to worship Him.
All the efforts of his opponents to get rid of him failed. Herod tried to have him killed, but he escaped to Egypt. The religious leaders of his day plotted against him throughout his life and eventually succeeded in having him put to death, only to have him rise again. And that opposition has continued throughout the history of the Church, as people have tried to stop the spread of the gospel, but without success. Why? Because Jesus is King, and nothing, no-one, can stand against him or his kingdom.
But what about you? Which of the people in this story are you most like? Are you like Herod? Happy to play along with the Christmas celebrations as long as you can continue to rule in your own world. As long as no-one expects you to change the way you are?
Or are you like the chief priests and scribes? Knowing the Christmas stories backwards, but never letting them touch your life? Happy to go through the religious motions, buy the cards with the manger scene and the angels, sing Christmas carols, give a generous gift to World Vision, but never actually getting around to giving God your whole life in worship?
Or are you like the magi, not knowing all the answers but wise enough to recognise that here is one who deserves our homage, our worship. Are you one who’d be willing, like them, to give up your life of comfort to travel through the wilderness to come and worship this great King? Are you one who’s recognised that in Jesus Christ is to be found the one and only way to be right with God, to enter freely into his presence, his kingdom, without fear? Are you one who’s willing to lay before his feet your treasure chest; to give your whole life in homage to the one whom God has designated Lord of all the earth. To serve him willingly for the rest of your life? That’s the path of wisdom.
If you take nothing else from this service today, I pray that it’ll be this: the conviction that Jesus Christ is King and deserves our allegiance, and the decision to take the path of wisdom, to serve him and worship him for the rest of your life.
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