Kings, Magi, Diviners, Herod - what is it all about?

After we finish our celebrations at Christmas and make our new year promises and plans there is a time called Epiphany where we celebrate the visit of the Kings to the babe.  We all know there were three of them don’t we. There must be because I have been to Cologne Cathedral and seen their relics. It’s obvious isn’t it?

Except of course it isn’t. They are only mentioned in Matthew and don’t seem to be present in Luke at all, not to mention Mark or John who don’t actually mention the birth narrative.  Matthew doesn’t refer to them as Kings. He doesn’t even say how many there were. Actually, they appear to be magi, from which we get the modern word magicians. In Jesus’ time then there were court officials from another country who would have used the art of divination and astrology to determine the influence of the stars and thus look for political portents.  How does that sit with some of the more contemporary evangelical Christian discourses that seem all powerful at times.

So, we don’t know if they were Kings, (they probably weren’t), we don’t know how many of there were, their names come from later tradition, the relics were allegedly discovered 1000 years after the events, and have made a lot of money for the Cathedral in which they are stored.  They didn’t even make it to the birth, possibly in fact, they arrived any time up to 2 years after.

What then is it all about?

The lectionary readings for 6 January include Matthew 2: 1-12, however I have included two other sections of scripture; Exodus 1:  8-22, and Matthew 2 13-18 that I think are important to shed light on a darker side of the visit of the magi and that talks into the risk of welcoming Jesus as King.

Matthew’s Gospel was probably not written by the Apostle; It is likely that Matthew the Apostle’s writings form part of a collection of texts known to theologians as Q.  These have been mostly lost to history, and the Gospel we have known as Matthew was written later probably by a disciple in Antioch who was part of a Jewish Christian Community.  The thinking behind this is that Matthew is based so much on Mark which was a Greek epistle, and contains minimal personal knowledge of Jesus unlike the work of John, which although written later contains details that suggest it was indeed written by someone who had direct contact with the events written about.

The Gospel then is written for a Jewish Christian possibly a group who called themselves Nazoreans, who would have been facing increasing antagonism at the time from a revitalised pharisaic movement looking to unify Judaism and who saw the newly growing movement of the Christian group as a significant threat.

The biography of Jesus contains significant echoes to Moses, Jesus is being presented to the audience as a new Moses, and this is reflected in the narrative surrounding his birth.  Indeed, there is even a tradition that alludes to a virgin birth for Moses as well.  In Exodus, the new Pharaoh learns of Moses via his chief Magicians (the sons of Balaam) – the same Balaam who prophesied regarding Jesus as a star who shall come out of Jacob where in Matthew Herod learns of Jesus from the magi and his chief priests and scribes.

In Exodus Pharoah calls for the killing of new born Hebrew boys, in Matthew, Herod in a fit of rage calls for the killing of boys under 2 years of age.

Can you see the parallels here? Matthew is making a case for the audience that Jesus is the new Moses, and what we have here is a new Exodus.  However, unlike the first exodus, this new Exodus will result in the beginning of a new age. 

Who cares about all this?  What does it matter? 

Perhaps it matters because if Jesus did announce the Kingdom of God on Earth then in his crucifixion then Judgement was served and, in his resurrection, he brought into place the new age, the first fruits of the new Kingdom. The one we pray for in the Lord’s prayer when we call “that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.

The story of the magi then and the story of the Angels in the air above Bethlehem and the moving star, perhaps then allude to language that what happened with the birth of this child was in our modern use of language would be something that we could call Earth shattering.  I use that term purposefully, and with due sensitivity to recent events in Indonesia, because Matthew was a big fan of using earthquakes and tumult. When we say that an idea was Earth shattering we don’t mean that it caused a fracture in a fault line, we mean that the idea has the power of changing the way we do things. 

We then need to look at the nativity story in a new light. Perhaps there was no innkeeper, Perhaps Jesus was born in a house with Joseph’s relatives and there wasn’t room enough in the upper room so Jesus was placed in a manger downstairs with the animals who would have helped keep him warm. If there was a massacre of infants, then it would have been suffered by the very people who welcomed and accepted the new baby; a signpost of the cost of discipleship that we have often so forgotten. All too often Christian thinking is portrayed act as overly victorious, rather than working towards an ultimate victory that is assured through the judgement at Calvary.

 If Herod was warned, then given his state of mania, it would have been nothing for him to remove the problem as so many dictators do. Bethlehem would have been a small village, we are talking of at most about 20 boy children here. Not enough to be noted in the history books; just another day in a dictator’s manic world view. 

Either way Jesus is moved to Egypt showing the status of risk and darkness already associated with his mission as Messiah, and then needs to return from Egypt thus echoing the first Exodus

As we leave Christmas behind and are urged forwards to the next big retail event, as we follow the New Years honours list and consider ourselves to be less than worthy if we are not honoured.   I challenge you to think again, to consider that Judgement has already been served on Evil and that you have been found worthy. It is now our role to continue what Jesus began and with the help of God we can work towards the completing of the fusion of Heaven and Earth.

Go out into the world, and take the light of Christ with you.  Share it with everyone you meet by being Jesus to them, you don’t have to preach, just be.  Be prepared for struggle and potentially suffering, it is the way of the cross that we follow and not the way of the conqueror.