St. Martin's Episcopal Church

Who Are These Guys?

By the Reverend Shirley Smith Graham

St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Williamsburg, VA, January 6, 2008

Matthew 2

            Who are these guys?  Who are these “wise men from the East?” 

They are cameo figures.  They inhabit one-shot moments.  These wise men appear to us only on the Feast of the Epiphany, which unlike today usually does not fall on Sunday.  Since few of us attend church on Epiphany day in years when the feast is not on Sunday, we rarely hear of this event, recounted in the Gospel of Matthew.  If we are to hear about these wise men at all, we must hear about them from the voice of Matthew, since only Matthew’s gospel includes this story.  So, assuming that everything in the Bible tells us something about God and our relationship to God, let’s hear the story again.

            “In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?  For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage” (Matthew 2:1-2).  Wise men.  Not “we three kings of orient are.”  No matter how lovely the hymn, kings is not what the gospel text calls them.  Indeed, neither are they “men,” as in our English translation.  Rather they are “ma,goi avpo. avnatolw/n”, literally majoi from the East.  Without being too pedantic, I’d like to revisit what we think we know about these majoi from the East, and thereby liberate them from their far too regal stereotype of “we three kings.”  And who knows, perhaps in the process of being liberated, they will free our vision so that we might see clearly the child before whom they came to go down prostrate and worship.

            To call these majoi magicians is to give the wrong impression.  In the ancient world, majoi were seers, folk with special abilities to interpret dreams, to render meaning from events that were otherwise inscrutable, to counsel those who govern.  I suppose that’s why the English term “wise men” was applied to them.  But really they are less sapientially wise and more able in the mystical sense to do things that most of us can’t.  Take, for example, the story of Balaam, in the Biblical book of Numbers.  He was a seer, a fortune-teller, if you will, who did not swear allegiance to the God of Abraham, our God.  Yet, he was able to hear God in a dream and know the people of Israel to be blessed, even despite the threat against them, the threat of the Moabite king, Balak.  So also were there wise men who counseled Pharaoh, the King of Egypt; and there were other interpreters who counseled the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, whom the Biblical hero Daniel served, as an interpreter of dreams.  Such majoi figures were a staple of the ancient world – a world that ranged far, from East to West.

            We may think of travel and commerce as fixtures of our modern world, but of course, for at least 600 years before the birth Jesus, the vast world extending along an East-West axis was well-known.  From Egypt and the shores of the Mediterranean in the West across to the empire of Persia, or modern day Iran and India, the peoples of East and West had encountered one another – in trade, in war, in captivity; they had even lived in one another’s lands.

            So here is the child Jesus, his father Joseph and mother Mary in the “west” and majoi coming from the “east.”  Matthew chooses not to say where in the East.  It could easily have been Persia or Arabia that was referred to.  Had the majoi come from Persia, they may have been Zoroastrians, precursors of early astronomers, who found science in the pursuit of religion.  In contrast, if the majoi had come from Arabia, they may have been nomadic folks devoted to the spirits of the desert, the els, the precursor-notion of El-ohim, our God of Abraham.  In either case, Matthew is bringing in “outside observers” to witness the coming of the Savior, God with us.  Just as international observers are called to witness the election of presidents, so Matthew points out have those majoi been called in from the East by a star, to attest to the birth of one who is “by no means least among the rulers of Judah … a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel” (Matthew 2:5-6).

Matthew’s story fits the ancient paradigm which extended far beyond those who believed in the God of Abraham and Israel.  It was a fixture of ancient cultures to believe that a savior would come from the West.  When the literature of various cultures of the ancient near east are examined – Israel, Persian, Babylonian, there are stories of a saving figured coming from the West.  So those majoi must not have been too surprised when the new star (or comet, or planets aligned to form one bright presence) lit up the sky and pointed them west – go west, young man.  West – following the star “they had seen at its rising, [following] until it stopped over the place where the child was.  When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy … [and they took the gifts they had brought with them], their treasure chests” and they offered them to the Christ-child, who had brought them joy.

            No matter that these majoi likely did not themselves believed in the God of Abraham and David, the God who sent His Son into the world, that God might be with us, Emmanuel.  No matter that these majoi were not going to settle down in Judah but rather would return to their homes in the East.  No matter that they were foreigners and “other.”  What matters only is that “they were overwhelmed with joy” (Matthew 2:10).

            In the presence of this Christ-child, they know joy.  This Christ-child gives them hope, no matter who they are and no matter from where they come.   They prove that this Christ-child is a savior not just for the respectable church-going Christian public, but for exotic diviners, seers and explorers.  By the very fact that these majoi from the East, that they are “ma,goi avpo. avnatolw/n”, that they are foreigners, by this very fact they prove that this Christ-child is a savior not just for tame church-goers like you and me but that this Christ-child is a savior for camel-riding majoi,  for seers and interpreters of dreams, for people who counsel the kings and leaders of the world.  This is a savior not just for us, but for everyone who is not

 like us, too. 

Who are these guys?  Who are these “wise men from the East?”  They are the ones surprised by joy in the presence of the Christ-child, seers and interpreters of dreams who point us to our own dream, that we and all the world would be surprised by the joy of God-with-us.

Amen.