In the jargon of the church calendar, today is called “Epiphany Sunday” – or, more properly, “Epiphany of the Lord Sunday.”  It’s the day on which, traditionally, every Christian church that has a manger-scene set up somewhere in its sanctuary adds the figures of the wise men, and the camels, if they’re not there already.  It’s the day on which, traditionally, Christian people of faith have celebrated the “epiphany” – that is, the manifestation, or the appearance, or the “showing forth” of God to humankind.  And not just a manifestation or a showing forth that happens in some kind of mystical, abstract way, but the very concrete appearance of God in the form of a small human child to a group of people who come seeking that child, because of a vision – an intuition – a mysterious message of some kind that has told them this child is going to transform the world in some way.

            Now, like a lot of the rest of the Christmas story, we’ve filled in a whole lot of details that aren’t really there in the original version of this story.  Every one of you who has ever attended a children’s Christmas pageant knows that invariably three of the children –             usually all boys – will be attired in bath-robes and crowns made of aluminum foil, and will creep up to the manger, and lay three boxes (also covered with aluminum foil, and perhaps some fake jewels as well) next to the baby’s crib.  Tradition – the tradition we have created over the centuries – accompanied by songs like “We Three Kings of Orient Are” – has created the story of three fabulously rich rulers who travel untold distances to pay homage to the newborn king.

            But the reality is, we don’t really know all that much about what really happened all those years ago.  We don’t really know how many visitors there were – the presence of three specified gifts led to the idea that there were three of them – but we don’t really know.  And we don’t really know exactly what kinds of people these were – the original Biblical text calls them “magi” – which means wise ones … or scholars … their ancient time’s equivalent, more or less, of scientists, or university professors.  We don’t know that they were all men – in that part of the world, especially in communities of learning, women were active participants – so there might well have been women among these “magi” or “wise ones.”  And we don’t know precisely where they came from … or exactly what the “huge star” was that they followed … or how long it took them to make the trip … or even when they arrived in Bethlehem – in fact, contrary to the popular scene of the wise ones gathered around the manger in the stable on the night Jesus was born, the Biblical account actually has them visiting not at a stable, but at a house … and some translators have suggested it was as long as a couple of years after Jesus was born.

            Given all those details that we don’t know – why would we, 2,000 years later, care about this story at all, beyond it being a sentimental part of the larger Christmas story?  Why did those folks who decided what stories were kept in the Biblical canon, and which ones got left out, keep this one?  And I think the answer to both questions is related to what we do know about this event.

            First, we know that those magi brought gifts in order to worship God, and to give thanks for God’s real, incarnate presence in the world.  They brought gifts to acknowledge and celebrate the notion of Emmanuel – of “God with us” – wasn’t just some kind of abstract, good idea, but something that had actually come to pass in the day-to-day world.  And their example, across time, invites us – as people of faith – to bring our own gifts to God … because when we bring our gifts, when we share what we have with others, we too are sharing them with our God, and honoring our Christ, the same way the magi did. 

            Their example also invites us to think about the spirit in which we bring and offer our gifts to God.  In her book Manger and Mystery[1], Marilyn Brown Oden talks about the difference between “duty” and “delight” in our giving.

            Most of us know what it means to give out of “duty” – the present we had to buy for the brother-in-law we don’t much like, or for the office co-worker, who we knew would give us something, so we needed to get them something, or even, sometimes, the dollars we put in the offering-plate here at church simply because we feel like we have to do it.

In contrast, Oden says, the giving of the wise ones – those fabulous, rich, glorious, amazing gifts – was out of “delight” – out of their sheer delight that they had made the arduous trip, had found the child, had somehow verified the vision of this glorious thing that had happened, and that was happening.  The sheer delight we may experience when we find that just-right “something” that we know will tickle the heart of our spouse, or partner, or child, or grand-child, or friend.  The delight that makes us hold our breath as they open the gift, knowing their eyes are going to open wide in wonder, and their mouths and hearts are going to open wide with smiles, and they – and we – will know how much we love each other.  And that, friends, is the kind of giving that this story invites all of us to.

            The second thing we know is that the magi brought their gifts not because all was right with the world, but because it was not.  They brought their gifts in spite of the darkness and brokenness of the world, and to help bring a little light into it.  In fact, it is the “back story” – the story behind the story of the magi’s visit – that most connects it with our world today.

The real world of political tyrants and powers.  The real world of a ruler named Herod who was so vicious, so power-hungry, that he killed two of his wives and three of his own sons, so that he could protect his power and his privilege at any cost … The devious, manipulative ruler who doesn’t fool the wise ones for a second with his “once you find him, come and tell me where he is, so I can go worship him too” ploy.  The one who, only a few verses later in Matthew’s account, who only a few days or weeks after the wise ones’ visit, learns he has been tricked when they fail to return to his palace, and using the information they have provided about approximately when the Messiah was to be born, he orders his soldiers to slaughter – to brutally murder – every child under the age of two years in Bethlehem. 

            Try to imagine that.  The soldiers walking through the city streets, listening carefully for the cries of babies and the voices of little children, frantic parents trying to hush them, or to hide them,… and those terrified parents seeing their doors broken down, and their beloved children grabbed by the soldiers’ great rough hands, and swords drawn, and the babies’ throats cut before their parents’ agonized eyes.  Not a single child spared.  Every child left dead or dying in a pool of its own blood for its parents to weep and grieve for.  Just like today.  You only have to open the newspaper, or turn on the news, to know that children are dying – from political machinations, from war, from malnutrition, from preventable diseases – in Darfur … in Baghdad … in Denver, Colorado.

            As Ralph Milton pointed out in his recent commentary on this passage, “The Christmas story without (this) excruciatingly painful story (of Herod’s slaughter of the children) becomes a sweet tale without much connection to reality.  It is a warm fuzzy story about poor but noble parents who had a beautiful baby who was born in a nice sanitary stable among contented beasts.  The shepherds came to admire him and the magi came to bring him expensive gifts, and he lived happily ever after[2].”

            But the reality is that he didn’t.  We know the rest of the story.  A life of struggle and difficulty and challenge.  A life ended all too early, with a horrible death because Jesus was committed to living out and showing forth the message of God’s love for everyone to the very end, no matter what.  The same message we’re called to live out, as his followers.  In an equally dark and broken world.  And so, this story is not just a nice fairy-tale, but a call to remember the importance of giving as a way of making what light we can in the world we live in today.

            The third thing we know about this story is that when the magi brought their gifts, when they knelt before the child, they saw – they understood – they “got” – the reality that God had come into the world in a new way.  Now think about this for a minute … this scenario cannot have been anything like what they would have imagined when they had the vision that they were to go and find the new “king of the Jews,” and when they made that long, uncertain trip for hundreds of miles across the desert.  Surely they wouldn’t have been expecting to end their journey at either a stable or a humble house; much less being confronted with this pair of poor, blue-collar parents; much less, in fact, with the reality of this apparently ordinary baby or small child.  As yet, as they knelt – or stood – or sat – in that stable – or house – and offered the gifts they had brought – every single one of them experienced God’s presence in a way they never had before. 

            And this, perhaps, is why the visitors are described above all as “wise.”  Not as “rich.”  Not as “smart.”  But as “wise.”  Because they had the deep wisdom to really see what they were seeing.  To look beyond the surface appearances and see God in the flesh.

            And so the invitation this story offers us – the call it rings out to us – is for us to come, bringing our gifts to God.  Yes, our gifts of gold, so that others might be fed, or warmly-clothed, or sheltered … but also our gifts of outrage at injustice – the gifts that lead us to confront and challenge the Herods of our day … and our gifts of care, and time, and commitment – to doing the healing work that we’re able to do, to doing what we can to share the message of God’s love with others,  to worshipping God in this time and place with our hearts, and souls, and voices, and hands. 

            In one of his sermons on this text, William Watley suggests:  “I hope to be able to give (Christ) the gold of a life that has been tested by the fires of trial, so that the best has come forth.  I want to be able to give (Him) the frankincense of a life of service.  I want to be able to present him with the myrrh of a life of sacrifice[3].”  Listen again:  “I hope to be able to give (Christ) the gold of a life that has been tested by the fires of trial, so that the best has come forth.  I want to be able to give (Him) the frankincense of a life of service.  I want to be able to present him with the myrrh of a life of sacrifice.”  I can’t imagine a better hope, a better prayer, for my own life, and for every one of us in this place on this Epiphany Sunday.  May it be so.  Amen.