Strangers at the Door

Matthew 2:1-12

The Day of Epiphany

William G. Carter

I did a quick survey of Christmas cards we received this year, and didn’t see a lot of Wise Men. Usually a number of magi ride their camels across the desert sands and into our holiday greetings. They come with jeweled turbans and luxurious robes, back lit by the moon on the horizon, a bright star over their heads. But not this year. I’m wondering why that is.

Maybe it’s because they were running late. According to the story, it may be two years after the child was born, and here they come, knocking on the door. Enough time has passed that Mary and Joseph are now living in a house. Verse 11 says they were in a house. But the house is in Bethlehem, which is a four days walk from Nazareth, which is where they live. Two years is a long time to live with an infant far from home, far from his grandparents, far from Joseph’s wood shop. That’s unusual.

But these wise men don’t seem to care about the timing. They aren’t in a hurry. Like the guy I know who doesn’t take down the Christmas tree until early in August. By then, the round red ornaments are covered in pine pitch, and he doesn’t notice. Or that lady I know who had every intention of sending out a Christmas letter. Last year it became an Easter letter. The year before that, it arrived on Valentine’s Day. If the baby Jesus is important enough for God to put a new star up there to mark his birth, he has eternal significance. Nobody should be in a hurry. Maybe this year, the wise men aren’t on any of my cards because they didn’t get their pictures to the print shop on time.

Or maybe it’s because of the gifts they bring: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Three gifts, that’s why we have always thought there three of them. There might have been two, might have been seven, but we settle on three. One of them brings gold, a gift to honor a king. As they said to Herod the king, “Where is the new king?” Another brings frankincense, an expensive incense that you ignite when you offer prayers. It is an appropriate gift to give to a priest. The baby Jesus will be the king above kings. He will be our one and only high priest.

And the third brought some myrrh. Apparently he didn’t get the memo. Why did he bring myrrh? Myrrh is a burial spice. It is used for embalming the body. It’s not the most appropriate gift to bring a young child. It’s like purchasing him a cemetery plot. I would guess, after they left, Joseph turned to Mary and said, “How about if we sell the myrrh and get some diapers?” I wonder if the word got out about their gifts, and they didn’t end up on a lot of Christmas cards?

Maybe the reason is because they are strange. They are odd. They don’t come from around here. Like my friend who moved to Pittsburgh a few years ago. He says the people in Pittsburgh are born in Pittsburgh, they die in Pittsburgh, and in between they hardly ever leave Pittsburgh. After he moved in, my buddy went to the gas station to buy a pack of gum. He handed over the money and the clerk said, “You’re not from around here, are you.” He said, “How can you tell?” The clerk said, “I can just tell.” My friend said, “Is my money still good in here?” The clerk said, “I’d better check.” Ever have that experience?

We are not sure where the wise men come from. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you will discover they probably came from Persia, what we would now call Iraq and Iran. So that might explain their absence from the Hallmark store. This year, they probably got held up at the border. In previous centuries, they could have brought their caravan right into the country. These days, not so much.

But we can be absolutely certain: the three Wise Men aren’t from here. They don’t come from here. They don’t belong here. They read the stars rather than read the Bible; according to the book of Deuteronomy, that makes them suspect. As one Bible scholar sums up the research, "The term ‘magi’ refers to those engaged in occult arts and covers a wide range of astrologers, fortune tellers, priestly augurers, and magicians of various plausibility."[1] If that is so, and we have every reason to expect it is, traditional Jews would declare them as pagans and heretics. What are they doing at the cradle of Jesus?

Did you ever stop to think about this? It is one weirdest details in the Christmas story: wise men from far away are drawn to the baby Jesus. They look to the sky and perceive something is up. They figure out enough of they mystery to travel the long road to Jerusalem. They presume it is a royal birth, so they go to the palace. Something is drawing them in. Call it “God,” or “the star,” or “the primal mysteries of the universe.”

They tell us why they come in the very first line of the story: “We have seen his star at its rising and we come to worship him” By worship, they don’t mean yawning through the sermon nor writing a grocery list in the margin of the bulletin. The verb for “worship” is a physical word. It has to do with bending your knee or falling on your face or offering your deepest riches, all in response to the One you are honoring.

What the Gospel of Matthew is suggesting is that even the strangers out there declare that this is their deepest need. The magi travel for weeks, at great expense, through foreign land and hostile territory, to the one aim that they can kneel before the newborn King. They are willing to give up everything if they can only see him and honor him. That’s the definition of worship.

The irony of the Gospel of Matthew is that the very people you would think would welcome the Christ are the ones who dismiss him or ignore him. It is the newcomers and the outsiders who show us all what we’ve been missing.

Someone was telling me about a recent worship service they attended. In fact, it was in another church, just last week. We had a good service ourselves last Sunday, although you could tell by the attendance figures that it wasn’t Christmas Eve. That’s how it is in many congregations on the first Sunday following a holiday, and that’s how it was the congregation that I heard about.

The numbers were down, there weren’t a lot of kids, the congregational energy was on a slump after a sugar high. The advent wreath was turning brown, and starting to look like a fire hazard. There was a guest preacher, who unlike our guest preachers, was not very good. The greens were still in the windows, the twinkle lights were still on. In fact, the handmade wooden manger was still in the chancel, leftover from the previous week’s pageant.

But something happened. The congregation was singing “The First Noel.” It’s a long Christmas carol, has a lot of verses, and arguably goes on way too long. But this time, in the middle of the second verse, a woman nobody knew made her way down the aisle. She looked Middle Eastern, Egyptian as it turned out. Her head was covered in a traditional scarf. She came down to the first step, knelt before the manger, then prostrated herself on the floor and started to weep.

The ushers didn’t know what to do. Here is this lady nobody knows, weeping on the floor in front of a leftover  pageant prop, while the congregation is singing a half-hearted version of a really long Christmas carol. It was a shocking moment. Everybody froze in place, wondering what to do.

Just then, the congregation sang, “Then entered in those Wise Men three, with reverence fall on their knee, then offered up in his presence the gifts of gold and frankincense.”

When the song was over, someone was up there, checking on her, helping her back to her feet. And she explained, “I know the Christ has been born among us, and I had to fall down and worship him.”

They tell me that they never caught her name. She slipped away rather quickly. But they said, “For the moment, it was very clear that she was reminding all of us why we are actually here every Sunday.” Somebody else added, “It shook me awake, in the best kind of way.”

After the birth of Jesus, strangers arrived to say, “Where is he, born king of the Jews? We have come to kneel down, to fall before him in worship.” We may not know who they are. We may not know how they got here. But they point us to the place where the whole Christmas story directs us: to worship Christ, the newborn king. To give ourselves completely to him.

Jesus Christ is the Lord over God's creation, the king over all other kings, and crowned by the praises of those who love him.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 167.