We Three Kings
II Christmas
January 2, 2011

There was a lunar eclipse a couple of weeks ago. We couldn’t see it because the skies over Madison were overcast, but it generated considerable buzz in the streets and certainly on the Internet. Such celestial phenomena are little more than curiosities to us. To people in the ancient world, they were much more than that. It wasn’t just the fear many people had during an eclipse of the sun that the sun might be going dark forever. Ancients, and not so Ancients saw a close connection between their own lives and the movements of the planets and stars. Most believed that in some way, the movements of the planets shaped the fates of humans. Hence the zodiac and horoscopes. That’s still with us, of course. When I logged on to yahoo yesterday, the lead story was “What’s in store for you in 2011? Find out what the stars have planned for your career and your romantic relationships.”

Even more powerful and significant than the normal cycle of the constellations were unexpected movements in the skies—comets, novae and supernovae—all of these seemed to be foretelling some event of great importance that would soon take place. Such beliefs are not so distant from our own day. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example, every comet was accompanied by a rash of popular speculation about what great event it might portend. The ancients told stories about how the births of famous people were accompanied by heavenly apparitions like stars—Alexander the Great and Abraham, for example both had such stories told about them.

In fact, however, although there was deep popular belief in the power of the stars, the Hebrew Bible offered a profound critique of the belief in astrology, beginning with the first verses of Genesis. When God created the sun, moon and stars, Genesis reads that they were for “signs and seasons, days and years” and that they ruled over day and night, but explicitly not over the lives of human beings.

Few of us take horoscopes seriously these days, so when we read the story of the magi and the star we have no sense of the cosmic context of the tale. Matthew tells the beloved story of the wise men and the star of Bethlehem but popular devotion has rid the story of its dramatic power. For most, it has become a sentimental tale of gentiles who are looking for the Son of God, and Jews like Herod who can’t see the truth in front of their faces.

The sentimentalization came very early. The magi have been a focus of devotion since the earliest church. It was in the earliest centuries of Christianity that the idea there were three wise men became fixed—Matthew gives no number, but does say they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It was also very early that the three kings were given names: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. It was also centuries ago that the convention developed one of three was black.

In fact, the story of the magi is much more than a story of three kings following a star to Bethlehem. Matthew constructs the story in such a way to highlight his understanding of the importance of the birth of Jesus. Like Luke’s nativity story, Matthew juxtaposes two kings and two empires—Jesus King of the Jews, and the Roman Emperor. He does it perhaps more subtly than Luke did, but the end result is the same.

One of the most interesting connections between Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus and the story of the Roman empire is that in the legend of Rome, it was the planet Venus that guided Aeneas and the other Trojans from the destruction of Troy to Italy. Aeneas himself was said to be the child of the Goddess Venus, and through his descendants, the direct ancestor of Caesar Augustus.

Rome and Caesar Augustus lurk in the background of Matthew’s story. More directly relevant to Matthew was Rome’s client ruler—Herod. Although a convert to Judaism, Herod was hated by most Jews as the king of Judea, in part because they thought he was Jew in name only and in part because of his pro-Roman leanings. He became king by submitting to Roman authority. He lavished his territory with building projects, including a renovation and expansion of the temple in Jerusalem. Known for his ruthlessness, Herod executed at least three of his sons for conspiring against him. The slaughter of the innocents, which Matthew recounts immediately after his story of the magi is not recorded in any history of the period, but is entirely consistent with Herod’s personality.

The exchange between the magi and Herod borders on the absurd. Who in their right mind would approach a king who has killed his own sons because of their designs on his throne, and ask him where the next “King of the Jews” would be born? But Matthew uses it to heighten the contrast between the reign of Rome through Herod, and the reign of Jesus Christ. The same is echoed at the end of Matthew’s gospel, when Pilate sarcastically asks Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

There is irony here for Matthew as well. Part of his point in telling the story of the magi is to emphasize that these gentiles, these foreigners, can recognize Jesus’ divinity, and worship him, even if his own people cannot.

In Matthew’s story of the magi, there are powers lurking all around. There is the power of the stars that attracted the magi, astrologers from the east, to Bethlehem. There is also the brute power of military force and repression, represented both by Herod and by Rome. Both of these forms of power are as seductive today as they were when Matthew wrote his gospel. We seek ways to control our lives and fates, and those of others. We look to explanations outside ourselves to account for who we are and whether we succeed or fail. We also look to the power of nations to give us a sense of security in a troubled world.

None of those efforts are biblical; none of them come from a life of faith in God. The prophet describes a vision of a world transformed by that faith in God, people coming from everywhere to Jerusalem, to worship God. Matthew shares that vision, a vision embodied by Jesus’ last words to his disciples, “Go into all the world, and make disciples.”

In two days, we will enter the season of Epiphany. It is a time to explore and reflect on the ways in which God shows godself to us in Christ. Our gospel lessons will focus on those manifestations, in Jesus’ baptism, in the wedding at Cana. The glory of God comes to us in many ways in Epiphany and it is right to celebrate that glory.

But it’s also important to remember that for Matthew, the simple act of the magi’s devotion unleashed powerful forces. Herod killed hundreds of children in his desire to protect his power, and Jesus’ family became political refugees in Egypt for a time. And in the end, Jesus died on the cross, a victim of Roman imperial power.

For the New Testament, and especially for the author of the Gospel of John, in the end the cross was where Christ most clearly made the glory of God manifest. As we celebrate the incarnation, and in the coming weeks as celebrate the glory of God made manifest in Jesus Christ, let us not forget that however brightly the light of Epiphany shines, however glorious Christ’s presence in the world may be, that glory is revealed as well in the cross, in the love Christ shows us and the world.