There’s an old and rather sexist joke which often circulates around this time of year, saying that if only it had been wise women rather than wise men who came to see the baby Jesus, they would have googled the directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, swept the stable, and brought nappies, a casserole and some formula milk…
As I say, it’s rather sexist. Women don’t have a monopoly on common sense, but let’s face it, the Wise Men who came to Jesus don’t really seem all that wise at all – going to Herod was a big mistake! - and their gifts were certainly not very practical. But I suspect that may have been part of the point Matthew was making.
Gold, frankincense and myrrh were the kind of symbolic gifts which would have been common in diplomatic or political gift exchanges, things given by people wanting to impress others with their wealth and status, as well as their loyalty. That’s why they stand out to us as odd. What is this tiny child, of poor parents, going to do with them? Nappies, casseroles, formula, and a helping hand would have been far more useful. But it’s because these gifts weren’t sensible, because they weren’t really appropriate for an ordinary child born to ordinary parents, that we notice them. Matthew is very deliberately upending that world of political gift giving, so that he can point out how different this child is going to be.
The world his Magi have come prepared to encounter is the same one our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah, evokes. Isaiah’s prophecies were spoken to a people in exile. The people of Judah had been conquered by the Babylonians many years before and many of them taken away as captives. Jerusalem had been smashed to smithereens, looted, humiliated, reduced to a vassal state, like all the other nations which had stood in Babylon’s way. The people had no realistic hope of going home or restoring their land. But Isaiah’s prophecies said otherwise. God hadn’t finished with them.
One day, he said, the boot would be on the other foot. The nations they had paid tribute to would come to pay tribute to them, bringing the best of what they had as gifts. Those who first heard Isaiah’s words would have seen great tribute processions like this, with vassal nations bringing gold, spices, slaves and livestock. They were memorialised in the great friezes which decorated Babylonian monuments – you can see them in the British Museum now - a permanent reminder of who was in charge, who ruled the roost.
But Isaiah says that one day the balance of power will be turned around. The abundance of the sea, the “wealth of the nations”, camels from Midian, gold and frankincense, will be brought to Jerusalem by foreign kings. That’s how the Magi got turned into kings in later Christian imagination, by the way. It’s borrowed from this reading. If it sounds a bit like a revenge fantasy, then perhaps that’s understandable; Isaiah was trying to speak hope to a people who felt hopeless, reminding them that God hadn’t abandoned them, however it felt right then. But there’s a subtlety here that is easily missed. This isn’t going to be about Israel’s own greatness. It’s not them who will have won the victory. It is God whom these foreign kings will have come to honour with their gifts. They will “proclaim the praise of the Lord!”, not the power of the generals and kings.
As I said, it is a subtlety that is easily missed, though, and that’s what makes Isaiah’s words, and the image they create, dangerous. They were meant to give hope to the powerless, but have often been misread by empire builders as justification for their quest for riches and honour for themselves. If you are wealthy and powerful, and all look up to you – even if only through fear – then God must be blessing you, you must be in the right. I have no doubt that Herod, the king we meet in our Gospel reading, thought like that.
Herod is known to history as Herod the Great, and he really was great, if you count greatness by wealth and the ability to get things done that you want to be done. He was responsible for some of the largest building projects of ancient history – the restoration and extension of the Temple in Jerusalem, the building of aqueducts, the building of the great port of Caesarea Maritima on the coast of Israel among them. Maybe his most peculiar project though, and the most revealing, was the fortress of Masada.
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| Masada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada |
Masada stands near the shores of the Dead Sea on a high plateau, in a baking desert, at the very edge of the vast, barren mountain range which border it. Philip and I visited it last year. Mercifully there is now a cable car to take you up to the fortress, which is surrounded by sheer drops on every side. Hardy souls can walk up to it, on a precipitous path, but in temperatures approaching 40C, we were very glad not to! It’s about as inaccessible as it can possibly be. It’s certainly impressive, but there isn’t really any natural beauty about it, unless your taste is for bleak and inhospitable! It’s not even defending any borders. Why on earth would Herod choose to build here?
The simple answer was fear. Herod was a paranoid megalomaniac, convinced that everyone was out to get him – and to be fair, quite a few people were, but if you behave as he did, ruthlessly eliminating any challenges your power, you’re not likely to endear yourself to people. This fortress was his hiding place of last resort, a place where he thought that he could escape from his enemies. But he discovered, as perhaps all tyrants do, that ultimately walls don’t make you safe, however high and thick they are. He couldn’t see that the darkness and danger he feared was mostly coming from inside him, not from others. That’s why he had several of his wives murdered, and a number of his children too. There’s no independent record of a slaughter of children in Bethlehem, but it’s the kind of thing he would have done without batting an eyelid.
He spent his whole life on a desperate quest to feel as great as his name suggested, but he died in the end, very painfully, of a ghastly disease, the symptoms of which are far too gruesome for a Sunday morning…
Greatness is a popular word at the moment. President Trump promises to Make America Great Again. Populist nationalism is springing up all across the world, including in our own country – after all, we’ve even got “Great” in our name, Great Britain. But what does it mean to be great? How do you know when you are? Populist leaders appeal to people by equating greatness with wealth and power, being able to have what we want, keep what we’ve got, make things happen the way we want, have influence in the world. And it works. It sells. It gets the crowds on your side. That kind of greatness promises security, and in a dangerous world, that’s something people crave, but often it has a hidden cost, injustice is tolerated, prejudice is justified, and those at the bottom of the heap pay the price.
That’s why the Magi’s offering of gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus is such a subversive act. Not only does he have no real use for them, but the Magi who give them to him aren’t going to gain anything for themselves by doing so. These gifts could have bought them Herod’s friendship, or what passed for it, but what has this poor, vulnerable child got to give them? Nothing at all. When they lay down their gifts before him, they aren’t just giving up some of their wealth, they are laying down a whole world-view of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”, the cynical game- playing which diplomatic gift giving is usually all about. They pay Jesus “homage” says the story, instead of paying homage to someone who could offer them some worldly reward for it, like Herod.
The word homage comes from the French word “homme” – man. Knights paid homage to their Lords in the Middle Ages, allying themselves to a leader they thought was worthy of their service. Paying homage said “I’m your man,” yours to command. But these Magi are putting themselves into the hands of the least powerful person in the story, someone who seems to have nothing to offer them. Many more people in the Gospel stories will go on to do the same; fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, and some leaders too, will throw in their lot with Jesus, a carpenter from the backwater town of Nazareth. They will lay down the tools which might have brought them power and security, their fishing nets, their businesses, their status in society, their whole way of life, and follow him to the cross and beyond. Like the Magi, they’ll have to take “another road” through the world, and it will often feel scary, tempting to try to play the old power –bargaining games. Matthew’s story reminds them that the only power worth allying yourself with is the power of love.
That’s why I think it’s important that the Magi didn’t actually bring Jesus nappies, casseroles and formula – sensible gifts that he might actually need. Jesus came to show us that we don’t need to bargain with God, even if we could. The only gift worth having in this story is the gift of Jesus, freely given to us. We can come to him empty handed, because there is nothing we need to do, or could do, to make God love us more than he does already. We don’t need to try to manipulate our way into God’s favour, or buy a place in his kingdom. We’re there already. It’s ours already.
If we read this story aright, it challenges us to look at ourselves, and the games we play to try to big ourselves up in the eyes of the world, and even in the eyes of God. It challenges us to ask ourselves why we feel we need to play those power games. It challenges us to be aware of the precarious situation of those who have no worldly bargaining chips, through poverty or disability, and to remember that in God’s heart they have pride of place. Most of all it invites us to put ourselves into the hands of that child of Bethlehem, to be his people, and to ask him to show us the “other way”, his way of love.
Amen
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