Three Scruffy Men

Three Scruffy Men

“We three Kings of Orient are _________?”

Are what?

……trying to smoke a rubber cigar?

Well, that’s one version of the story and I expect that if we gave you a few moments to toss your two-bits in, you’d be able to come up with some other very “colourful” variations on the old song: any, or even all of which might be very amusing, but none of which, in fact, really add anything to the historicity of the story that’s before us this morning.

“We three kings of Orient are ____?”

Well- what do we really know about these people?

Truth is, not much! Not much at all…

There were three of them, you say, but look again at your Bible. There’s nothing there to suggest how many there actually were. The old church father, Tertullian, suggested, in the second century that there must have been three because, after all, there were three gifts specifically mentioned in the Bible- hence, three givers.

They were kings, you tell me, but the old saint, Martin Luther argues that that assumption is just plain foolishness. He says of these men:

The three wise men were not kings or princes, but merely honourable men- like our professors and teachers. Notice that Herod treated them as subjects when he “commanded” them to go to Bethlehem and bring him word of the Messiah’s birth. He would not have done this if they had been kings or lords. He would have invited them to dine and would have accompanied them on their way with royal treatment, for all the historians agree that King Herod was a smooth man who observed the etiquette of the courts… Since, it says, he instead summoned them secretly, they must have been, he concluded, of much lower estate.

In the 6th century, probably for the sake of making some play script work better -drama having been a primary teaching tool of the church- someone, arbitrarily assigned these “three” kings names: Melchior, Baltazar and Gasper. There’s nothing Biblical about this, but the drama caught on and the names, and the other colourful details added over time, stuck, to give us, even today, the very beautiful image that we see so often on Christmas cards: three very honourable, distinguished looking men of wealth, power and influence who would make very respectable guests not only at a manger scene but at your house or mine for dinner!

Ronald Horgan,1 of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Huston, Texas paints a very different picture. He suggests that “in the original Biblical manuscripts these guys are referred to as “magi.” This title “magi” comes from an Iranian word “magoi” which was used to describe people who acted in very “strange” ways; people often captivated by spells, magic and incantations; people who often dressed in a very bizzare manner (rather like something out of a Harry Potter movie.)” Horgan’s view of these magi leads me to suggest that they may well have been commercial charlatans seeking to add weight of “authority” to their astrological predictions by living out, and then embellishing mightily, some story about seeing signs and portents in the heavens about a king, going on a journey to find him and having every kind of success… “And, my friends, if we can do THAT, imagine what we can do for you with a few tea leaves, a zodiac wheel and your money in our pockets!”

Horgan’s reconstruction is, of course, a fabrication but he shares it, and I share it, simply by way of pointing out that it has as much scriptural validity as does the more gentrified tale that we usually take to be the Gospel truth…. But, of course, we like the Christmas card version of the story much better- don’t we? …Well, you might, but I rather prefer what I’ve called, in our sermon title this morning, the tale of “Three Scruffy Men.”

Once upon a time, three scruffy men of means took to the road on a business/holiday journey: seeking both to have a real adventure and to enhance their reputation as purveyors of great magic and power. They said they were following a star but isn’t it amazing how that star just happened to take them to the very heart of the economic community of Palestine- a place called Jerusalem. Now although this star bit of the story was important -after all these guys had a reputation to build as great astrologers- when it came to actually trying to find the new king that they proclaimed, even they were quick to abandon the star scam, choosing instead to seek advice from their more customary kind of source- that is, “Hey, guys, this star thing is a bit vague, and it wouldn’t hurt to say that we had an audience with the mighty king Herod, so let’s go see if he’s got any wisdom to shed on our journey.” So, they went to the palace.