Once again this year for the Christmas morning message I have chosen to share with you a story. This year the story is of a member of the magoi who came to see the child Jesus and to worship and bring Him gifts. I trust you be blessed by the story. May God bless you with a Merry Christmas, filled with an awareness of God's presence in your life.
Good morning! It is good to be with you this morning. I have never been in a Mennonite church before, especially at Christmas time. This is quite different from the region of the world from which I come and needless to say quite different also from the time in which I lived. Do any of you know who I am?
If you have looked in the bulletin this morning you may have deduced that I am one of the Magi. Do you want to know my actual name? I’m not going to tell you my name; the Bible doesn’t give you my name and if the Bible doesn’t give you my name then Yahweh must have His reasons. In the Bible we are simply called the Magoi which is translated as Magi in English.
Do you know how many of us there were who followed the star to visit the child? Be careful. Children in Sunday School quizzes have gotten this one wrong for centuries. How many of you were going to say there were three Wise Men or Magi? Yahweh has never told you how many of us there were that came to visit His son. He only told you that we brought three gifts. He told you that there was more than one of us; magoi, you see, is a plural noun. I know how many of us there were, I was there, but like Yahweh I’m not telling.
I must tell you my story, the story of the Magoi and the star. The word ‘magoi’ literally means ‘magician’ and later in history it was a term which came to define those hucksters and charlatans like Simon the sorcerer (Acts 8:9, 11), people who traded in the magic arts and attempted to use their skill to cheat people out of their money. During my lifetime the magoi had not yet stooped to such depths.
The magoi had a long and proud history. In fact a very famous character in Yahweh’s Bible was a member of the magoi. The magoi are the priests of the Medes. One of the Median kings was a man named Darius the Mede who retained a certain Hebrew named Daniel as his Rab Mag - the head Magoi. Magoi were experts in interpreting dreams and there was none better in his time at interpreting dreams than the great Daniel. The magoi were, for many years, advisors to kings. Daniel was perhaps the greatest advisor to a king in the history of Israel - he and perhaps Joseph and the Pharaoh of Egypt.
The magoi were the supreme priestly magistrates for the Medes and the Persians and when those nations were conquered the magoi continued as the supreme magistrates for the Seleucids, Parthians and the Sasanians. The magoi held absolute decision making authority as to who would be king. We were king makers, not just in Parthia but throughout much of the region to the east of the Roman Empire. When we rode into Jerusalem that day we were a group of world renowned Parthian king makers.
Yahweh’s Bible says that pretender king Herod was disturbed when we arrived in Jerusalem. He had good reason to be disturbed. When the magoi ride into your foreign city in force we are not coming to make a social call - it was a business trip. Frequently, when the people of foreign nations heard of our choice of king they would foment rebellion and pogroms until our choice was eventually installed as king. Herod knew he was only half Jewish and half Edomite, and that he was only tolerated as king because of the force of the Roman empire on his behalf. He knew the Jews were waiting for the day when a full-blooded Jew would once again ascend the throne. Herod was terrified of that eventuality.
The period in history during which we rode into Jerusalem was a worldwide time when all peoples of the world were waiting for the dawning of a new age. Roman historians such as Suetonius and their poet Virgil wrote about a coming age when a new king would rise and a new era would dawn on the earth. Surprisingly, there were even those who said this king would come from the eastern portion of the Empire, from Israel of all places.
We were astrologers, which in our time, was a mix of astronomy and astrology. In our country every man believed that we could tell the future by looking at the stars. We believed that the star under which a man was born set the direction for his life. We watched the stars. We knew the stars and their courses as well as you know the streets of your own city.
One day a strange phenomenon occurred. We had been observing the sky when a star of unparalleled brilliance appeared. Not only did it appear but it moved. All stars seem to move ever so slowly but this star moved quickly - as though it were inviting us to follow it. The star seemed to be moving in a westerly direction. The next night the star was there again, the same place it had been when it appeared the night before and once again it moved toward the west. If stars could speak I imagine this one would have said, “Follow me. I will show you something no one has ever seen before.”
Since the magoi were part of the government establishment it was necessary for us to appoint a committee to study what should be done because of this star. While that committee met and deliberated, each night the star appeared and moved and invited us to follow. We knew we had to follow the star. With the worldwide expectation of a new era about to dawn it made sense that there would be a new star to herald the beginning of this new time in human history.
Well, it takes time to put together an expedition of government officials traveling uninvited to what, in all likelihood, would be a foreign nation ruled by a hostile foreign power. There were security considerations. Being government officials, king makers at that, we would be targets for every robber and rebel along the way. We didn’t know the countries through which the star might lead us. We didn’t know how long our journey would take or how far we would have to travel. We didn’t know our destination before we left. Do you ever leave on a journey where you don’t know your destination?
We would carry treasure as a gift to whomever we would find at the end of our journey. We would carry additional treasure with which to purchase provisions as well as to pay for safe passage as we travelled through countries of which we did not yet know. We needed an armed cavalry of sufficient size to ensure our safety and the safety of our treasure as well as to ensure that hostile foreign powers would take us seriously. It was a very complicated and involved process to plan a voyage the length of which you do not know before you leave to a destination you will not know until you arrive following a star which you have only seen for a month or two.
We as magoi needed to decide who would go on this journey and who would stay behind. We had no idea what we would encounter on our arduous trip, a journey which might take months or years in both directions; we didn’t know. Oh the meetings we had to decide who would be the ones to follow the star. Since it was such a momentous occasion the most senior of the magoi were insistent they should go. However, the most senior of the magoi were also the most frail and least able to endure a hazardous journey of unknown length. In the end we struck a balance between vigor and experience and I was among the magoi selected to go.
Of course when you are going to see the one who has been born the king of a new era of human history you cannot go empty handed. We agreed on which gifts to bring. Our gifts were gifts fit for the station of the one whose appearance was heralded by a unique star but our gifts could also be used as currency in the region through which we projected we would travel. We brought with us gold which is a gift fit for a king but which is also a readily accepted currency the world over. Frankincense is the gift that represented the priesthood - being the highest order of priests in the world we thought it right to bring this to the one who would begin the new era. Frankincense, also, was traded around world and could be traded for food or safe passage should the need arise. And, we brought myrrh, the traditional embalming spice of the eastern regions of the empire. We thought it fitting to bring myrrh to the new king to celebrate the death and the burial of the old and to herald the beginning of the new era.
The day we left we travelled in the direction the star had been tracking every night since it had first appeared months earlier. That night the star did not appear in the spot where we had grown accustomed to seeing it appear. Instead it appeared over the place where we were and proceeded from there. The star led us across the Syrian desert between the Euphrates and Syria. The star led us to Tudmar and then turned us toward Damascas. The star led us south along on the Great Mecca route. We continued to the south along the east side of the Jordan river and the Sea of Galilee. The star wisely elected to show us and our extensive entourage to the Romans from a safe distance at first. We hoped to communicate that ours was a peaceful journey not an attempt to trigger some sort of border incident.
When we did cross the Jordan at the fords of Jericho it still caused a stir. We were greeted by platoons of soldiers and commanders who vigorously demanded to know what business we had crossing into their territory. We told them that we were searching for the one who had be born king of the Jews. One born king of the Jews would be in sharp contrast to Herod the half-breed pretender to the throne who currently went by the term ‘king’ in Israel. We were searching for one who would be the rightful heir to the throne of Israel.
We were directed to Jerusalem - where the temple and the seat of Israel were located. We entered Jerusalem with all the pomp and circumstance we could muster after eight months of travel. We were, admittedly, a rather impressive entourage of Parthian cavalry and Persian magoi the priestly magistrates who were world-renowned king makers. These king makers appeared before the pretender Herod and asked him to tell us where the rightful king of Israel had be born - not appointed to the throne by Rome after a purchase had been negotiated - born King of the Jews.
Herod was visibly shaken by our presence. He assured us there had been no royal birth since the time we had first seen the star. We pressed him further assuring him that we knew that a new and great king had been born in the nation of Israel because a new star had led us to this place. Largely to appease us he called upon the priests of Israel and asked them if they knew of any place other than Jerusalem in the palace of the king where a royal birth might take place. The priests looked no more thrilled to see us than Herod had but they answered and told him that their prophets had foretold that in the town of Bethlehem there would one day be a royal birth. We asked if this birth had taken place at some point during the previous year. They had no idea and even if they had known they would have never admitted it in the presence of Herod, that most vindictive and paranoid of rulers.
Finally, we knew we were on the last leg of our journey. After weeks of planning and gathering provisions. After a seemingly endless stream of meetings to determine the logistics of a journey whose length and destination we did not know. After months of travel through nearly 1200 miles of difficult terrain and danger and discomfort, through cold and heat and rain and arid spaces. After having endured an audience with that insufferable Herod finally we were traveling the last six miles to our destination. To our great relief and joy the star led us on from Jerusalem to Bethlehem where it appeared to stop and, if anything, it grew brighter.
We stopped on the outskirts of Bethlehem to review our protocols. Our most basic assumption was that we couldn’t just burst in to visit the king who had been born to begin this new era of human history; it would be presumptuous and undignified and unbefitting either of our stations. Furthermore, we knew that any king so great as to command his own star which had led us to the place where he was had to be a king whom we could not merely greet with a casual hello and a wave of the hand. A king this great had to be greeted with the greatest display of deference and reverence we could muster. Such a great king must be worshipped by all who came into his presence. If the king makers of Persia worshipped a king, he was a king of the highest order.
For months, I had imagined the moment when we would first set eyes on this great king. I had constructed in my mind a grand and magnificent scene; a scene of utmost pomp and splendor. Then the star that led us stopped over a house; a house not a palace. It was a peasant home, not the palatial mansion I had imagined. For the first time I doubted the star which had so faithfully led us to this point. The star must have made a mistake, this couldn’t be the home of the child born to be the king who would usher in a new era of human history. I looked to the sky to see if the star had moved but clearly the star shone brightly on this peasant house and only on this peasant house. There could be no doubt this was where the star wanted our journey to end.
The star didn’t seem to know or care that in our experience kings don’t live in peasant homes amid squalor; kings live in palaces amid splendor. Kings should have an aura of majesty and royalty about them; this king had only the odor of a stable in a poor part of town about him. What king is born and lives in such commonness?
When we entered the home and saw the child he was overwhelmingly normal. He looked and sounded like any other Israelite child. His voice was loud and his demands were insistent like any other child his age. Protocol demanded that we pay homage to this child. We did so. We did our duty and we bowed low. We soiled our splendid clothes on the earthen floor of the peasant home as we prostrated ourselves before this most ordinary of children. No act of worship was ever carried out more reluctantly and with greater scorn than my act of worship before this child on that day so many years ago. I followed the demands of protocol with my body but my heart and spirit didn’t believe what my body was doing; my heart and spirit were disgusted by what my body was doing. I felt so cheap and used and dirty. I could not wait to leave that house.
What an unmitigated disaster this journey had turned out to be. How embarrassed I was to have been part of the group of magoi who had been selected to make this arduous journey. How I wished I had been either old enough or young enough to be allowed to stay home. I turned to leave the house completely deflated.
Not only had we prostrated ourselves before a peasant child and given him our valuable gifts, we also faced the prospect of having to pay a return visit to Herod to inform him of what we had found. How could we appear before Herod and tell him that we had indeed seen the future king of an new era of human history when all we had seen was a peasant child? How could we hold our heads up when we arrived home? The shame of having to admit we had invested nearly two years of our lives and an enormous fortune from our kingdom’s coffers on a trip and gifts for a peasant child who happened to live beneath the path of a strange and unusual star. King makers, indeed. Surely, this was the beginning of the end of the reputation of the world renowned magoi. Thankfully we were saved a measure of ignominy when each of us, on that very night, dreamed an identical dream telling us that we should not return to Herod but should travel home by a different route. What a relief to leave and to finally cross the Jordan river and see the scene of the greatest embarrassment in magoi history fade out of view.
No doubt some of you are stunned to hear that I left the presence of the child as one who didn’t believe. Indignantly you ask, “How can you encounter the living Son of God and not believe?” Let me answer that by saying there are thousands, no millions and millions of people the world over throughout human history who have encountered the living Son of God and refused to believe. There are thousands of people in churches this very morning worshipping and singing songs of praise to the newborn King of Kings who do not believe. I may have been among the first but I was certainly not the last to encounter the living Son of God and not believe.
I did, however, return home a changed man. What changed was I no longer had the absolute belief and trust in our abilities as magoi. If we could have made such a colossal blunder in the case of the moving star who was to say that we would get anything of note right in the future.
For some reason I could never get that whole sordid incident out of my head. I never forgot the star and I always wondered what had gone wrong and what we had misinterpreted. I never forgot that journey; it is impossible to forget an ordeal that lasted more than two years from the time we first saw the star until we returned home from Bethlehem. I remembered the hardships and perils of the journey. I remembered Herod and wondered what had happened after we chose not to keep our appointment with him. Most of all, for some strange reason, I could never forget the face of that child - so ordinary but for some reason it was that very ordinariness of his face which was deeply embedded in my brain and I was never able to get rid of it. I tried to forget. It would have been more comfortable for me in my life if I had been able to forget but I couldn’t forget. I often wondered what had become of that peasant child. I wondered what that family had done with the treasure we had brought them, which must have seemed to them as though they won the lottery.
It must have been more than 30 years later when a man named Thomas ventured east from his native Israel into the land of the magoi. I heard him speaking one day of a man with whom he had spent three years of his life. Thomas spoke of this man, Jesus was His name, as being God who had become a man and lived among human beings. He spoke of how this Jesus had been born to an ordinary, peasant family in Bethlehem. Thomas said that he had once been told that magoi had come to visit this child after he had been born and he asked if any of those men might still be alive.
I searched out this Thomas and told him that I had been on that journey and I had often puzzled over that child. He told me of the teachings of Jesus. He told me that Jesus had spoken of a God of grace and mercy and love and forgiveness. He told me that this man, Jesus, had been killed by the Romans at the insistence of the Jewish religious leaders but that He had been raised back to life after three days. I must have looked completely dumbfounded at his story. He looked at me and nodded and chuckled. He then told me that he too had refused to believe that a man put to death by the Romans could come back to life after three days. When Romans kill people, they stay dead. Thomas told me how one evening he and his friends had been locked in a room for fear of the authorities. He told me that Jesus had appeared to them and had invited Thomas, by name, to put his hands in Jesus’ wounds. At that point Thomas fell on his knees and worshipped Jesus. He worshipped Jesus because at that point he believed.
I told Thomas that I had worshipped Jesus all those years ago when He was a young child, yet I hadn’t believed Him to be worthy of worship at that time. As Thomas and I spoke together over the years I came to believe that the story of the Star had been true. I came to believe that the historians and poets of the day had been correct. A new era of human existence had begun when Jesus the King of kings was born in Bethlehem. A new era had come. An era where people could know God and have a relationship with Him had begun on that day. I believed that the magoi, the king makers, had gotten it right after all. Eventually, Thomas baptized me and I spent the rest of my life worshipping and serving the King who had been born as a peasant in Bethlehem.
If I might I would like to leave you with one final thought. Some of you worship Jesus in buildings like this on a regular basis, yet, by the way you live your lives, it’s obvious you don’t believe. My challenge to all of you is to worship Jesus every day, in the songs you sing and in the way in which you live your life. Merry Christmas.
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