“They departed into their own country another way”
Unlike Caesar who famously said, “veni, vidi, vici” – “I came, I saw, I conquered” – the Magi-Kings of Anatolia, “viderant, venerunt, et adoraverunt” – “they saw, they came and they adored”. It makes all the difference. Instead of conquest, there is adoration. They saw a star which they followed. They came on a long journey, it seems, to Bethlehem. They worshipped – adored – the child Christ and “they presented unto him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh”.
It is all part of the Christmas pageant, part of the rich tableau of images that confronts us and amazes us at Christmas. For some, Christmas is too much: too much fuss and bother, too much stress and worry. Some are only too glad that it is over and gone. For others there is never too much Christmas, even Christmas in July! But the real spiritual wonder of Christmas is that it lasts for more than a day, more than a week. There are the proverbial twelve days of Christmas! There are even the festivities in parts of the western world of “twelfth night” – not to mention Shakespeare’s play by that name. For the vast world of Eastern Christian Orthodoxy – for Russian, Greek, and Coptic churches, for example – Christmas really only begins with the coming of the Magi-Kings, the Wise Men to Bethlehem. Why? Because with the coming of the Magi-Kings from Anatolia (from the East), Christmas is omni populo, for all people. There is a rich fullness to the Christmas mystery and to the forms of its imaginary. So much is clustered into that simple scene in Bethlehem. A rich fullness in the midst of human poverty.
Only Matthew tells us about the coming of the Magi and yet his simple story has inspired a wealth of other things belonging to the work of holy imagination. The Magi, quite literally, have captured the imaginations of artists and poets from the carol “We Three Kings of Orient Are” to the Huron Carol, from simple crèche scenes to elaborate Baroque-style crèche displays. The Magi-Kings are a major part of the Christmas story. And yet we really know precious little about them. We don’t really know how many. Were there three? The tradition of three is based simply upon the three gifts. But holy imagination builds wonderfully and significantly upon the sparse details of Matthew’s account to provide them even with names – Casper, Balthazar, and Melchior, for example – and addresses in terms of different cultures and races from exotic places. No doubt they would be nowadays equipped in our imaginaries with GPS and cell-phones (in the hopes that they might get there on time, perhaps!).
Who are the Magi? It is not too much to say that they are associated with an aspect of the ancient world particularly in one of the forms of its intellectual sophistication. They are usually thought of as astrologers – the forerunners of astronomers – those who study the stars and discern the patterns and movements of the stars. We forget how incredibly knowledgeable the thinkers of earlier times were about the stars. But there is another consideration which might trouble us – the idea that the stars determine our lives, a kind of astral determinism, a form of fatalism, as it were. And yet that has its counterpart in our times. Instead of staring at the stars, some might be inclined to stare at their genetics. There is the equally fatalistic notion that we are determined by our genetic code by some sort organic algorithm.
But the story of the Magi-Kings is actually a counter to the idea of any kind of material determinism. They followed a star, to be sure, but they come and worship the child-king of the universe. The Gospels signal the mystic and mystery of God with us in the simple humanity of Jesus Christ. The wonder of the God made man. That changes everything.
Two things belong to this idea: first, the gifts that the Magi-Kings bring, and secondly, that they departed into their own country another way. The gifts, as one of the great hymns of the Epiphany teach us, are “sacred gifts of mystic meaning”. They are gifts which teach. They are about the deeper and true meaning of gifts – not simply useful things like a toothbrush (or money which is equivalent to gold, one might suppose), but gifts which occasion delight, gifts which honour the one to whom the gifts are given. Thus the gift of gold honours Christ as a King; it is not just about wealth and power. Frankincense is even more direct; it is a part of worship, the smoke of sweet-smelling incense ascends like prayer to the throne of God. It honours Christ as God. But the most peculiar and the most troubling gift is the gift of myrrh. The ancient burying spice of the middle-eastern world (as we might call it), it signifies sacrifice. It portends the death and burial of Christ. It speaks to the deeper purpose and meaning of Christ’s birth in the Christian understanding of things. Suffering and death are not hid from view. Christ was born for this. He comes as redeemer.
The Magi-Kings “departed into their own country another way” having been “warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod” in Jerusalem to give him word of where the child-king of Israel was born. There is an element of danger that is part of the story. One of the most disturbing Christmas stories comes out of this sense of danger – The Feast of Holy Innocents. Herod instigating a policy of infanticide upon all the little ones of Bethlehem in order to extirpate the threat of a potential rival to his throne and power. The poet, T.S. Eliot, intuits another feature of this return from Bethlehem. The Magi-Kings return to their places, he says, “but no longer at ease”. What he has glimpsed in the story is how they have been changed by what they have seen and adored.
That is the point of our liturgy. We are being constantly changed in our outlook and understanding by what we have been given to see. Such is the power of ideas, the power of God’s Word and Will conveyed to us on angels’ wings and by the gifts of kings. If we are indeed wise then we shall learn. It may mean that we shall be unsettled and no longer at ease in the comfort of our homes and customs. But that is the point of the encounter with God. He seeks more for us than our attempts to domesticate and sentimentalise the mystery of Christ. And that is the counter to all of the fearful and fatalistic determinisms of our world and day. We are challenged to think about things another way.
“They departed into their own country another way”
Fr. David Curry
Eve of the Epiphany, 2017