- by Deacon Sean Michaelson, S.J. -

 

We have over the past several weeks remembered some of the great mysteries of our faith: God made human, the virgin birth, the birth of a Savior, the coming of the Light of God into the darkness of the world. But as we conclude the Christmas season today with this celebration of Epiphany, it is perhaps a good idea to think about the Christmas story once more. To think about it in terms in the life of one small family, really a teenage girl and her probably teenage groom and their newborn son. And when we think about this story in these terms we will perhaps begin to see this Christmas season in another way, and we can perhaps return to this story-a story so familiar to us-both a little of its mystery and a little of its humanity.

The story begins with this young, peasant girl whose whole future is overturned with the mysterious visit of an angel announcing that she will bear a Son, who is to be called Son of God and Son of Man, and who will be given the throne of David, and whose kingdom will have no end. It involves the birth of another boy, born to a relative who no one thought could have children, who would go before Mary's Son and prepare his way. This story involves this teenage groom having to hear his bride explain to him that she is pregnant, and to hear in a dream the voice of an angel tell him that he should not break off their relationship, although everything in his tradition, everything that he thought was right, said he should. It involves, in the middle of all of this, a decree from the all powerful Caesar Augustus for a census, forcing the young couple to travel to Bethlehem so that they could be counted, and there the birth of their son came in a barn, because there was no room left for them at the inn.

And I am convinced in my heart of hearts that at some point, whether it was Mary who turned to Joseph or Joseph to Mary, whether it was said with words or only with a knowing glance, but at some point in the middle of all of this one of them turned to the other and said: 'you know, this just can't get any weirder.' And it was at that moment that there came a knock at the manger door, and in walked the three wise men.

You know, this just got a lot weirder.

The three wise men are among the most enigmatic symbols in the whole Christmas story. We really don't know what to make of these guys, do we? Depending on where you were born and what age you are, you probably know these figures by any number of different titles. They are the three wise men, the three kings, the three magi, the three astronomers, the three astrologers, and even, if you love trivia, you know the tradition has given them proper names: Melchior, Gaspar and Balthasar.

These different titles are important, because each of the titles says something different about who they are and the symbolic role they play in relation to Jesus. To call them the three kings or magi is to place an emphasis on Christ's kingship, and the symbolic importance of these earthly kings coming to bow before him. To call them astronomers or astrologers is to say that the whole of the heavens were speaking to the glory of God at the birth of Jesus, and that these men, traveling evidently by night and sleeping in the day, came from wherever to see what this new star that they had seen might mean. To call them the three wise men places an emphasis on Jesus' connection to the Hebrew tradition of wisdom, and that Jesus is the summit and fullness of the wisdom of God. When you call them Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthasar you are probably just showing off.

But like so much of the Christmas story, much of the symbolic power and importance of the three wise men has been lost over the centuries simply through familiarity. 'But of course three kings arrived at the manger door bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myhhr. Why wouldn't they? That's what is supposed to happen.' Because we have heard it so often it makes perfect sense to us. But if we think of this part of the story again in the context of this simple, young, ordinary in many ways, Jewish family, it is yet another strange moment in their story. Three kings arriving from afar to offer expensive gifts to a child lying in a manger? Even with all that Mary and Joseph had already experienced, even with all that had already gone on, could either of them have foreseen these visitors arriving at their door?

And if we think about it terms of the life of these three men it is equally as strange. Whether they were kings, astronomers, wise men, the gospel seems to making the point that they were leaders of some kind in their communities, intellectuals, wealthy, established. And yet they took off across to the desert to a foreign land because of a star, to bow before a child in a manger. They took off across the desert because, as the gospel says, 'they were overjoyed at seeing the star.' It is a beautiful line that is overwhelmed somewhat because of where it is placed, for immediately we are told they entered into the room to see Mary and Jesus.

But what went on in the minds and the hearts of these three men from the time they first saw this star until they saw the baby Jesus in the arms of Mary? What sort of 'joy' was this that got them up out of their ordinary routines to seek out the meaning of a star? It is almost a sort of madness, a euphoria, there is nothing sensible or reasonable about it. Dare I say there is nothing wise about it; but they did it anyway.

The American poet Williams Carlos Williams has a wonderful poem called 'The Gift' in which he presents the three wise men in just this sort of way, as three old bachelors who really don't know the right sort of gift to bring to a newborn baby and his mother. In the poem Williams writes 'What could a baby know Of gold ornaments/ Or frankincense and myrrh,/ Of priestly robes And devout genuflections?' But Williams continues, saying 'But the imagination Knows all stories before they are told/ And knows the truth of this one past all defection/ The rich gifts/ So unsuitable for a child/ Though devoutly proffered,/ Stood for all that love can bring.'

This Christmas story, this story that seems so sensible and reasonable to us because we have heard it so often, is really anything but. The Christmas story is a whole series of strange and wondrous events, odd circumstances, twists and turns, and peculiar characters. And none are more peculiar than the three kings, wise men, astronomers, what you will, coming from their own homes to worship a child, lying in straw, as if he were a king, and presenting to him gifts of great value when all he needed was the basic necessities of life, because they were overjoyed at seeing a star. Perhaps the only thing more peculiar in the Christmas story is the part that says God so loved the world that God sent his only Son to be our Savior. That God is so overjoyed at seeing us, that God loves us so much, that God would come to us, would take on our humanity and live like us, and that God would take on the weight of our sins and die for us.

Symbols exist not so much to tell us who we are, or who we have been, but to help us imagine who we might be. The message of this Christmas season is that our God looks upon us with a profound feeling of love and a joy. The symbol of the three wise men is an invitation that we might look upon God in the same way. It is an invitation to dream, to imagine, in our own lives and in our own world, of all that love can bring.

 

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