Epiphany, 2018

Matthew 2:1 – 12

What would Christmas be without the Three Kings? As you can see, one is old, one is African, and one looks like the King of Hearts in a deck of cards. There is a whole literature on them, including the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. Of course they were also called Apellus, Amerus, and Damasius by a historian in the middle ages. There are stories about how each of them after returning to wherever they came from set out to lay the groundwork for the apostles who would be the first missionaries. But all we really know is right here. They were called “magi” which may or may not mean “astrologer” We don't know how many there were. There weren't any camels, unfortunately. All we know is that they gave Jesus the highly symbolic gifts of gold, for a king, frankincense for a high priest, and myrrh for embalming a body.

Matthew, who always tries to line up Jesus' life with the prophecies of Isaiah and the figure of Moses in the Old Testament, is at work here as well. The first reading tells us about camels and gold and frankincense. And the prophecy says that “you shall be radiant at what you see, and your heart shall throb and overflow” – and the magi were overjoyed when the start they were following stopped over the home of the Christ Child. And we could say a lot more about Matthew's approach to telling the story of Jesus, but not right now, thankfully.

There are some things we can say, though, that might apply to our own lives. First, the Magi and Herod both receive the same revelation – that the ruler who is to shepherd Israel will come from Bethlehem. And we have no indication that Herod did not believe this. Indeed, Herod must have believed it because he later on ordered the slaughter of all the boys under the age of two years. Now Herod in the scriptures is a villain, and in real life he wasn't much better. He executed three of his sons and his favorite wife because he thought they were plotting to take over his throne. It's said that Herod was so upset about having to kill his wife that he wandered around in mourning for several days. Probably we don't see a resemblance in ourselves to Herod. But we are with him when something comes along that demands change. Even though all of us know we will grow old, get sick, lose loved ones and eventually die, we cling to what we have, often long after we should let it go. In our house, just as an example, we have stuff we got more than 50 years ago, plus boxes of stuff our children had, and it's very hard to part with these things, even though nobody including us, wants them. And that's a minor issue, of course. But there are more serious ones, like the man with early Alzheimer's disease who won't stop driving, or the doctor who is way passed his prime but continues to operate on patients. We are like Herod, we cling to things, even though if we stepped back and thought about it, everything in our lives comes from God.

The Magi, on the other hand, receive their revelation and do something about it. They leave their homes, travel through foreign lands, probably at night, since they are following a star. And when they reach their destination, they are overjoyed as they part with their gifts. Maybe that's a model for us. Instead of clinging to the past, to the status quo, to stuff, can we leave our comfort zone for God? I don't mean becoming a missionary to a foreign land or joining a monastery, although maybe one or two of us are called to that sort of thing. I mean rather, looking at what makes us uncomfortable and asking whether this is something God wants me to do.

In my own situation, I never thought I would enjoy visiting people with declining physical and mental abilities; in fact, until Father Reilly asked me to help out at the Jewish Geriatric Facility, I would not have chosen that for a ministry. But despite my discomfort, I began, and now I look forward to the opportunity – I get a chance to meet Christ suffering in these people, and I in some limited way bring Christ to them. Certainly by diving into your own discomfort you quickly learn whether it is going to help you grow as a Christian or is definitely not for you.

And like the magi, we are all given gifts, gifts for the building up of the Church. Saint Paul says each Christian is given a charism. The Magi joyfully gave their gifts away when they met Jesus. How are we giving our gifts away? Do we even know what they are?

And maybe another insight is that when the Magi had met Jesus, it says they went home by a different way. We have just celebrated the fact that God became one of us, that the Divine broke into his own creation with the intention of drawing it all back into himself – we know that a great mystery of our faith is that God has chosen to build up his kingdom through us. There is no back up plan. We know the kingdom will come, but whether our lives will help bring it about or get in its way, depends on our choices.

Herod learned of the newborn king and he did not change; perhaps in his brutality he became even more himself. The Magi encountered the newborn king and went home by a different route; they allowed themselves to be changed.

You and I encounter the risen Lord every time we celebrate the Eucharist. We experience God breaking into the world at every Holy Mass. If we encounter Christ and are not changed, what is the point? If we are still part of this world, where violence, consumerism, poverty and perversion continue to rule the culture, we are not in the kingdom. But if we follow Jesus example, if we go by a different route, then the kingdom is coming and we are bringing it on.