Stargazer

Propers: The Epiphany of Our Lord, AD 2022 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

An “epiphany” means a manifestation or an appearance, especially as of a god unto a worshipper. In the Christian East, the feast of Epiphany celebrates all the ways in which God manifests Himself among us, reveals Himself unto us, in and through and as the life of Jesus Christ our Lord. So eastern Christians on this day remember the Nativity, Jesus’ birth; the subsequent Visitation of the Magi; His Baptism in the Jordan River; and the Wedding at Cana, the first of His many signs in the Gospel of John, turning water into wine.

This is why we have 12 Days of Christmas. The Western Church celebrated the Nativity on 25 December; the Eastern Church celebrated on 6 January; so why not keep them both, and all the days that lie between? We were very practical back then. This is also the reason why, over the course of the next two Sundays, we will read together the stories of Jesus’ Baptism and the Wedding at Cana. We do keep the full Epiphany, you see; we just don’t keep it all at once.

On this day we of the West have put particular emphasis on the Visitation of the Magi: wise men from the East, who followed a Star to Bethlehem to find the Holy Family, and there present to the Christchild gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This story has captured the imagination of the Western Church as few others. Legends about the Magi, art of the Magi, reflections on the Magi have proliferated throughout our churches, our museums, and our homes. They entrance us.

That basic tale—Wise Men from the East, following a Star, to find the Christ and give Him gifts—is as potent today as ever it was. So let’s talk about that tonight. Let’s talk about the men themselves, that special Star, and the significance of gold and frankincense and myrrh.

We know what a magus is—that’s the singular of magi—or at least we think we do. A magus was a Zoroastrian priest. And Zoroastrianism, while almost extinct today, might just be the most important religion you’ve never heard of. For 1000 years it was the faith of the mighty Persian Empire. Zoroastrians believe in angels, souls, prophets, messiahs, heaven, hell, free will, and the end of days. They learned a lot from the Jews who’d been exiled to Babylonia, and the Jews learned a lot from them. They would know Hebrew prophecy.

The defining features of the Zoroastrian priesthood were astrology—they were consummate stargazers—and the tending of sacred fires. They treated flame as a sign and a symbol for God, just as we do for God the Holy Spirit. “Magus” could also be a more general term, however, for those trained in astrology or other mystic arts. As you’ve probably guessed, it’s our root for words like magic and magician. Think of the character Simon Magus in the Acts of the Apostles.

As for our Magi, in this evening’s story, we don’t know that there were three of them; that’s just a guess based on the number of gifts. We don’t know that they were kings; that’s a later tradition, drawn from prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures. And we don’t know that they rode camels; that comes from Isaiah as well.

What’s important is what they represent, whom they represent. In Christian art and legend, the three Magi hail from the three known continents of the ancient world: that is, from Africa, Europe, and Asia. They are depicted at three distinct stages of life: one a young man, one of middle age, and one approaching dotage. Regardless of whence the historical Magi may have hailed—be it from Persia, Arabia, or somewhere else entirely—the Magi of art and tradition stand as representatives of all the world, all humankind, all of us!

We are the nations called to the Christ. Few of us here are likely to have Jewish or Israelite ancestry. We were not born into the family of Abraham, the people of promise, the Tribes of God. We were each called, adopted, baptized in Christ. We are offered by grace an inheritance not our own, as wild branches may be grafted onto a cultivated tree. Whoever we are, wherever we’re from, from China to Chile, we see ourselves in the Magi, in the Wise Men from the East.

Now, like any good magus, our Magi have followed a Star. And what exactly that Star may have been has been a subject of great debate. Some think it a comet or supernova. Some think it a particular conjunction of planets within a significant constellation; several books have been written about viable historical candidates. And yet others assume the Star to have been something supernatural: an angel in the heavens, perhaps, or a manifestation of the Christchild Himself. That’s why sometimes your Christmas tree topper is a Star, and sometimes an angel.

Stars are important in the Bible, and astrology shows up more often than you might think. This is because the ancient world viewed stars—including the planets, which to them were just wandering stars—as something divine and eternal. For our ancestors, everything from the moon on down underwent change and decay. But from the sun on up, the heavens appeared immune to the ravages of time, and thus literally eternal. That’s also why comets so thoroughly freaked out previous generations: they didn’t like unexpected things in the stars.

Hence our planets being named for Roman gods. Yep, they said, that’s Jupiter up there. And over there’s Venus, and Mercury, and Mars. For Jews and for Christians the stars represented not gods but their monotheistic equivalents: angels and saints. The heavens we can see are an icon of the Heaven we cannot. The fact that we now know stars to be massive balls of gas undergoing nuclear fusion no more detracts from their spiritual significance than does knowing the chemical composition of paints take away from famous works of art.

A Star leads the Magi to the Christ. And that Star represents the light of reason, of truth, of wisdom, of knowledge: all the highest and most divine faculties of the human mind and spirit. That Star shines down on everyone who is wise enough to see it. And so the light of reason, and of universal religious experience, leads us to Bethlehem, to the Christ, to Emmanuel, “God-With-Us.” And this is neither subrational nor irrational but suprarational. Reason points beyond itself to faith, to the self-revelation of God now perfect in Jesus Christ our Lord.

And they bring their gifts, those famous gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh. In many ways these are the most straightforward to interpret. The Magi bring gold and frankincense and myrrh because that’s that the Prophets promised, what the Psalmist promised. These are signs of God’s faithfulness and of God’s Messiah. And each one individually carries a meaning. Gold, for example, is of universal value. It is small, rare, incorruptible, beautiful, and shines like the sun. Gold is the province of kings: it represents the royalty of Christ, the son and heir of David.

Frankincense is easy as well. It comes from Sheba, from the sap of trees found at the foot of the Arabian Peninsula. Frankincense was rare back then and worth its weight in gold. More significantly, however, frankincense was utilized almost exclusively for religion. Pagans, Jews, everyone, really, burned frankincense in temples. Its gentle, calming fragrance lifts the prayers of the pious above. It is a gift fit for a God.

And finally we have myrrh, another incense, another tree sap. But whereas frankincense comes in bright little cheery golden balls, myrrh looks more like dried-out scabs. Cathedrals smell of frankincense, but tombs all smell of myrrh. Myrrh was worth seven times its weight in gold, and was used in the anointing of priests and of kings. But it was also the cloying scent of death. Romans threw it on funeral pyres; Jews dissolved it in oil to prepare their corpses for inhumation. Myrrh signifies sacrifice. It is the gift for one soon destined to die.

So there we have our Magi, our Star, and the gifts that they bear. And I’d like to conclude by pointing out that there are those who would question whether any Magi visited Jesus at all. Indeed, only Matthew seems to have heard of this story. Luke, Paul, Peter, John—they mention it not at all. And we could argue to and fro about the historicity of the Matthean account, or whether it’s all a pious fiction. Suffice to say that we can neither prove nor disprove the Visitation of the Magi.

But whether it happened in the way that we have it isn’t the point. What matters is what it means to us, what this story tells us of our life in Christ. We are called from many nations, many ages, many tribes; all peoples, gathered as one now in Jesus. We are called to follow the light which is both reason and religion. And we bring with us the best we have to offer—gifts which, after all, we only possess because He gave them first to us.

We are all of us called to the Christ. We are all of us called now to come home.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.