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Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Where Can I Find Jesus?
Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
There's something intimidating about the 3 Wise Men, Kings, Magi -- whatever you choose to call them.
There they come, marching right into the sweet sentimental story of the baby Jesus, gentle Mary, strong silent Joseph, angels, shepherds, sheep and lambs. They're downright awesome in their physical presence, decked out in splendid robes and crowns, redolent of Asian herbs and spices, as foreign to Jewish Mary and Joseph then and there as they are to us these many centuries later.
And so we ease the tension by making jokes about them.
There was actually a fourth Wise Man, but they sent him back home when his gift turned out to be a fruitcake.
A fourth Wise Man somehow got left out of the official story, but he was definitely welcomed by Mary. The gift he brought was an epidural! I know a few strong men who, when called upon to portray the Wise Men in a church pageant or a production of "Amahl and the Night Visitors," tried to shrug it off with the crack, "Yeah, I'm one of the three wiseguys." That is such a guy thing.
As counterpoint, my friends of the female persuasion assure me things would have been much different if it had been three Wise Women who showed up to worship the newborn king...
First of all, they would have asked for directions. They'd have arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, and cleaned up the stable. They'd have brought practical gifts. And they'd have cooked a casserole. For all of that, the Gospel of Matthew does tell us some mysterious male visitors from Mesopotamia came looking for a promised newborn king who would surely change the world. Led by a most unusual star, they came first to the holy city of Jerusalem only to discover their true destination was nearby Bethlehem. And sure enough, there they found the baby and his parents, and they humbly presented their precious gifts to him.
We call them Wise Men, and they surely were. Skilled in astrology, spiritually sensitive, they put together a pilgrimage that crossed the vast Fertile Crescent with no help from a GPS or Google map. But it's fair enough to wonder if, after all, their wisdom only went so far. Listen to Frederick Buechner's reflections on that question...
The gifts that the three Wise Men, or Kings, or Magi, brought to the manger in Bethlehem cost them plenty but seem hardly appropriate to the occasion. Maybe they were all they could think of for the child who had everything. In any case, they set them down on the straw -- the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh -- worshiped briefly, and then returned to the East where they had come from. It gives you pause to consider how, for all their great wisdom, they overlooked the one gift that the child would have been genuinely pleased to have someday, and that was the gift of themselves and their love.
(Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who's Who)
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posted by Jack Buckley at
2:31 PM
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