Sometime in the few years after my kids were too old for such things, a friend of mine, an Episcopal priest, started posting pictures on her social media of her “wandering wisemen.” I have to say, I was jealous I missed out on the chance to pick up this tradition with our family, but with almost 30 nativity sets, I have not added it because it feels like a lot of work. The Wandering Wisemen involves taking the magi figurines from the nativity set at home (or at church!) and, at the beginning of Advent, placing them somewhere far away from the rest of the scene.
Each day of Advent and Christmas – ideally, through the whole 12 days until Epiphany on January 6 – the wisemen wander around the house on their way to honor Jesus; that is, they are moved from location to location, from the farthest point until they make it to the manger bearing their gifts.
Like I said, I love it AND it sounds like more work than I can keep up with, even though the sight of the wisemen greeting the baby Jesus surrounded by the shepherds and all the rest does sort of make the hairs on the back of my neck rise just a little because of its inaccuracy. (I know. That’s a bit nerdy.) But most historians agree that, while it messes up our traditional figurines, the scholars or sages who followed a star to find the child Jesus probably didn’t arrive for a few years after his birth.
Just as Luke took care to set the historical and political context of Jesus’ birth for readers, letting us know it took place while Caesar Augustus was emperor and Quirinius was governor of Syria, Matthew also sets the arrival of the wandering wisemen, the magi, in its larger context. He zooms in a bit and points out that King Herod was ruling over Judea at the time. Herod was an appointee of the Roman government, but chosen from among the Jewish ruling class, a practice the empire used to create the so called “pax Romana,” the peace of Rome, in the lands the empire conquered. He was installed, essentially, as a king who the locals might see as “one of us,” but who was loyal to the emperor and the emperor’s interests, not those of his own kin.
So when Herod caught wind that some scholars had arrived from the east, likely even from Persia, the last empire to free Judah and Israel from a conqueror, and they were looking for a child who had been born king of the Jews, Herod’s interest was piqued. To say the least. He wanted to know what they thought was going on because his own position as the king from among the Jews might be in danger. He would want to stamp out any threat to his own client-kingship.
You can practically hear his anxiety in the way the story unfolds. I mean, the text itself tells us he is frightened, so that’s a big clue that he is nervous about the implications of a new king of the Jews. But it keeps going from there. He calls together all the chief priests and scribes to ask them what they know – what his own tradition says about where the Messiah will be born. And then when he finds out a scripture points to the city of Bethlehem, he calls the magi in to find out where they’re heading.
Secretly. He calls them in secretly. I imagine he doesn’t want his own advisors nor his own subjects to know he’s consulting these foreign sages. It feels like he’s embarrassed to have to ask them for some insight. He probably doesn’t want the people who look up to him to know that he doesn’t have all the answers, and he certainly doesn’t want word to get back to Rome that he was consulting possible advisors from another empire altogether. His loyalty might be questioned and his position endangered.
That sounds like an exhausting way to live.
- Scared to think outside the box.
- Nervous to be seen as inadequate.
- Unable to admit that you don’t know everything.
- Caring more about maintaining power and clinging to a title than learning about the events of the world around you.
I mean, it sounds exhausting because I know it is. I know I’ve been lured into this way of being in the world before. I imagine most if not all of us have at some point. We have known that fear of not being seen as having it all together, important, and self-sufficient. We have nodded along in meetings or conversations, only to rush later in secret to Google what people were talking about. We have agreed to courses of action that we don’t quite understand because we didn’t want to be the ones asking questions about something everyone else seems to get. We have ignorantly wielded whatever power we do hold to secure our own safety and comfort without pausing to consider the full impact on all people or worse, without caring about the impact on all people.
It’s not just the kind of fear that drives a world leader to act outside of bounds of national and international law in order to substitute their own judgement for that of the collective wisdom and shared power, but it is definitely that.
It’s also the fear we regular folk can get caught up in that draws us into ourselves, or set us against our neighbors, or leads us to plot with suspicion ways to keep resources, power, or wealth in our own control.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about some of the protective qualities of fear. Fear can alert us to danger. It can remind us to pay attention, be on alert for something out of the ordinary that’s taking place. It can take us back to our basics, our core beliefs, our centering values, and, at its best, fear can give us opportunities to act courageously.
But when we succumb to the fear as Herod did, when we live from fear – when we are afraid, as the angels warn us against – when we let fear drive our decision making and our orientation to the world, when we attempt to hide behind locked doors with limited knowledge, when we try to mask our ignorance with blustering decisions and quick fixes designed to gain attention or center our own needs and desires, we risk the mess that inevitably follows. In the case of King Herod’s fear, it’s not just a mess; it’s devastating destruction – the Slaughter of the Innocents.
Like last week’s story about the Holy Family’s escape to Egypt, this isn’t a story we hear a whole lot in worship. In fact, in 24 years of leading Christmas season worship, I have only preached it once before. (I was pulpit supply that year in a church other than my own, while I was out of town on vacation. It’s probably not hard to believe that I was never invited back to preach at that church. It turns out that most of us would rather not think about massacre that took place after the magi showed up in our nativity scenes.
But that’s what Matthew tells us happened. On the heels of the news that there might be a new king who has been born, learning that someone else might get the honor he craved, wanting to protect his own interests by any means necessary, Herod orders the slaughter of all children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.
Maybe King Herod and rulers like him who would be quick to point out that the ends justify the means, aren’t people to whom we should relate or follow too closely.
Thankfully, the magi show us a different way forward. They show us a different way to receive news we might not expect, revelation and people that feel like they might threaten our position or comfort. They show us a faithful way to receive God who shows up in unexpected ways that might just disrupt our lives and plans.
“Three wise men”, our traditions tell us, even though the scriptures don’t tell us how many are there or that they are specifically men, travel from some land east of Judea. We don’t know their exact faith, but by the word used to describe them, magoi, we can deduce that they are probably Zoroastrian. It’s quite possible there were women among them because in that tradition both men and women held the title “magoi.” They have seen a new star, interpreting it as a natal star announcing the birth of a king – but not even their king – and they have followed it find the one to whom it refers.
They don’t seem threatened. They don’t seem fearful, or at least no more fearful than anyone embarking on a long international journey. But even facing the unknown, even crossing boundaries of nationality and religion, social-economic status and possibly gender, they come with hearts and hands open generously. The magi arrive in Jerusalem asking questions publically, not sneaking around. Searching for information to fill in the gaps in their own knowledge.
They’re willing to meet with Herod. They even learned from him, but when something wasn’t quite right, when things weren’t adding up and they weren’t sure they could trust him, when the Spirit moved and gave them a warning in dream, when they discerned that there was nothing about the king’s power or position or authority that was more important than their integrity and responsibility to protect the child they met, they went home by another away. They stepped out on yet another journey, on a different route, to avoid conspiring with one whose fear led to violence, rather than curiosity.
There is another way to live that is not bound by fear, but is open to the guidance of the Divine One who sets the stars on their courses. There are other interests to prioritize that are not those of the empire, but those of the child who was born as one of us for all of us. There are options beyond circling the wagons, seeking information that only confirms our own biases, and resisting the new things God is doing in our midst in order to protect our comfort and power and position. Instead we can embrace the movement of the Spirit who leads us beyond what we know and into that place of holy imagination and possibility.
We find that other way with the kind of curiosity that carried the magi across mountains and deserts. We find it with their steadfast determination to discover what the heavenly powers greater than kings were showing them. We find it with the faithful discernment they trusted and acted on in defiance of a corrupt leader. We find it with a generosity of heart, spirit, and hand that gives honor to Jesus, the Messiah, the Lord. Having seen him not just this Christmas season, but in our own lives and experiences, may we rise up with fear that does not consume us, but bears hope, seeks justice, and fuels curiosity to lead us forward in love. Amen.
Where is love calling you
to move through your fear?
Scripture:
Matthew 2:1-12, 16-18