Spreading the Good News

January brings the Twelfth Night of Christmas and Epiphany. The arrival of strangers from the east who had followed the star to the place of Christ’s birth have captured our imagination for years and years. Although they appear only in Matthew, 2:1-12, they have been assigned identifies, professions, skills, and much more that isn’t documented in those verses. The carol We Three Kings, originally composed in 1857 as We Three Kings of Orient Are by American clergyman and hymnodist, John Henry Hopkins Jr., filled in many details that had been left to our imagination before that. Even though there was much poetic license taken in the lyrics, they have become an integral part of the story of the Magi for us since then.

The three gifts listed in Matthew 2:11 are what led to the idea of there being three wise men (Magi in Greek). Further thoughts on the gifts include that the value of the gifts shows the honor and status afforded to Jesus. Scholars think that they also have spiritual symbolism about Jesus’s life and death: the gold representing his kingship, frankincense as a symbol of his “priestly role”, and myrrh, an aromatic resin from a tree used to prevent decay after death, foreshadowing the crucifixion and embalming.

What is deduced from the story of the pilgrimage of the wise men is that they were not Jews. This is the first recorded incidence of Gentiles coming in contact with Jesus. King Herod knew and feared the birth of Jesus but was not present. The Magi arrived in Jerusalem asking “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising,[b] and have come to pay him homage”,  Matthew 2:2. To paraphrase, they continued their journey until they came to the place where they saw the child with his mother and felt great joy. One assumes they traveled safely home after taking a different route and disobeying King Herod’s request that they return and report to him. Once home we imagine that they proclaimed the amazing news of the birth of the king of the Jews.

The magnificent Epiphany or Adoration of the Magi window was written about last January and that piece is on the Christ Church website: https://christchurchgreenwich.org/epiphany-or-the-adoration-of-the-magi