Today’s Scripture Reading (December 20, 2016): Isaiah 2
Their names were Melchior (a Persian scholar), Caspar (an Indian scholar) and Balthazar (a Babylonian scholar). Well maybe. To be honest, we really don’t know. We don’t even know if there were three. The biblical text just mentions three gifts – gold, frankincense, and myrrh – and from the three gifts, we have surmised that there might have been three gift bringers. They are the Magi or the Wise Men who came to worship the baby born King of the Jews over 2000 years ago.
Most likely they were followers of Zoroastrianism – another monotheistic faith of the East. Their mention in Matthew, which appears to have been written for the benefit of the Jews, is more than a little shocking. After all, they were Gentiles, non-Jewish followers of a different faith. They followed a star, most likely this means that they read the story in the stars or constellations that a king had been born, rather than the traditional rendering of a star that shone only over the manger. Astrology, the practice of reading stories in the stars, is strictly prohibited by the biblical text. Yet, these astrologers found the story of the baby born King of the Jews, by reading the constellations. First, they went to King Herod in Jerusalem (which also refutes the idea that a star shone only over Bethlehem), after all, that was where we would expect a King to be born. Then, following the advice of some Jewish experts, they went to Bethlehem and finally found the baby and offered their traditional gifts to the new born king. And then, being warned in a dream of the danger that Herod posed to the child, they went home “a different way” – they avoided returning to Jerusalem and Herod. Tradition holds that during the ministry of Jesus, all three adopted Christianity. But then again, we don’t know if we even have the number of wise men right.
But the story does give a suitable example of Isaiah’s prophecy. In the day of the Lord or when the Messiah comes, the arrogant will be brought low, and the proud will be humbled. I have no doubt that the wise men, no matter how many of them there might have been, had no idea that they would be arriving at a stable to honor the newborn King of the Jews. Herod was humbled. Arrogant and proud the king thought that he could stop this move of God. He failed desperately. And the child, born in a stable, brought up in the house of an ordinary carpenter, and executed on a Roman cross as a criminal, changed the course of our world. He, our Lord, was exalted from the manger above the palace.
And if the wise men did become followers of Christ, that would be just another example of the idols that fall away when we truly follow the King born in a stable. There is no room for the worship of anything else when we follow Jesus. And no need to worship anything else either.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 3
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