The Feast of the Epiphany Service
Dr. Todd Granger, Parish Catechist for Adults, preaches on the Feast of the Epiphany at our morning Eucharist service.
The Epiphany: The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles
January 6, 2021
By Dr. B. Todd Granger, Parish Catechist for Adults
Isa 60:1-9
Ps 72 or 72:1-11
Eph 3:1-13
Matt 2:1-12
[B]ehold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star [at its rising] and have come to worship him.”
The identity of the wise men, the magi, has captured the imagination of Christians for a very long time. Magi originally were a priestly caste of the Medes who managed to survive in the Persian empire after the widespread conversion of that people to the Zoroastrian religion. They were widely known throughout the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamian world for their knowledge of the stars and of the influence of those stars on human affairs, subjects that we would now distinguish on the one hand as astronomy and on the other as astrology. By the second or third century before Christ, the word magi had come to be applied more widely to men of wisdom and learning, and particularly to those learned in the arts of astrology and divination, among not only the Persians but also the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, and the Arabians as well. Because of their sought-after ability to read astral portents, kings usually had court magi, astrologers who would discern the most propitious times for festivals, sacrifices, betrothals and marriages, alliances, and wars.
Early Christian writers like Clement of Rome and Tertullian, who flourished in the late first and second centuries, supposed that the magi of St. Matthew’s account came from Arabia, and there is evidence in the text to support this. “The east” (as in “wise men from the east”) in the Old Testament could refer not only to the farther reaches of Babylon or of Persia but to Arabia as well. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh were highly prized and expensive products of southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa that made their way into lands of the eastern Mediterranean (like Judea) by means of Arabian trade caravans. In recent years priest and author Dwight Longenecker has made the case for the identity of the wise men of Matthew’s account as astrologers or astrologer-priests at the court of the king of Nabataea, an Arabian kingdom to the south and east of Judea. The Nabataean capital, known as Petra for its public buildings carved into the rock faces of the area in which it was, was an important trade center for goods coming from farther away in Arabia as well as from Egypt, Ethiopia, and Mesopotamia. As such it was a wealthy and bustling city, with coursing waterways, beautiful palaces, and population of several tens of thousands, ruling over a large area of northern Arabia. The king of Nabataea was thus a powerful regional potentate—and a near neighbor to the king of Judea. The appearance of what appeared to be an embassy of magi bearing royal gifts from the Nabataean king for a newborn king of the Jews who was unknown to Herod could surely have made him suspicious that the Nabataean king, Aretas IV, was planning to put an infant usurper on the Judean throne who would be a puppet of Nabataea. But whatever their country or royal court of origin, one thing is clear: the magi, the wise men, were Gentiles.
Not knowing biblical history well—for he was himself not in origin a Jew, but a pagan Idumean, one of those who in the Old Testament are called Edomites, descendants of Esau rather than Jacob—and fearing for his throne, Herod assembles the Jewish religious authorities to consult with them as to where the Messiah is to be born. In the Gospel according to John (7:41-42), even the crowds knew Messiah would come from Bethlehem, and this cultural-religious background underscores the ironic point being made by Matthew—that Herod, the so-called king of the Jews, is in his pride and paranoia ignorant of the deepest hope of the people whom he rules. The answer to the question of Messiah’s birthplace as given by Matthew is a composite of two passages, Micah 5:2 and 2 Samuel 5:2, and they highlight the character of the promised Messiah as Davidic king and as shepherd of Israel. As Matthew has already alerted us with his stylistic language in the first verse of chapter two that echoes the prophetic text: “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,” he will come from Bethlehem, in size one of the lesser towns or even villages of Judea. But in historical importance, Bethlehem was “by no means least among the princes of Judah,” for it was King David’s ancestral town, where he was first anointed king by the prophet Samuel. The last portion of the quotation given by Matthew, “for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel,” comes from the fifth chapter of 2 Samuel, when all the tribes of Israel met together at Hebron to confirm the shepherd David’s kingship. The promised Davidic shepherd king who is to be born in Bethlehem and who will bring to an end the exile of the people of God, will also bring about the realization of the prophet Micah’s vision of peace not only for Israel, but for all people:
It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and it shall be lifted up above the hills;
and peoples shall flow to it,
and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Micah 4:1-2)
Micah’s vision of the nations coming up to the mountain of the house of the Lord to worship him is realized for the first time in the visit of the magi to the house where they found Jesus with his mother, for the magi fall down and worship Emmanuel, who is himself the temple and dwelling place of the God of Jacob. As Jesus will tell the Pharisees later in Matthew’s Gospel when they criticize him for allowing his disciples to pluck grain on the Sabbath, “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here” (Matt. 12:6).
Over the centuries symbolic meanings have been given to the magi’s gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew assigns no meaning to the gifts per se, his focus being instead on the reverence and worship that the magi pay the infant Jesus. Their rich gifts serve to recall the offerings of the Gentile kings in Isaiah 60: “They shall bring gold and frankincense.” Though the magi are not kings themselves, they are very likely the counselors and possibly emissaries of a king and so bear a royal character by association. Their gifts also recall Psalm 72: “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute, the kings of Arabia and Saba offer gifts.” Their tribute to the newborn Messiah and King of the Jews is like the tribute offered by the Queen of Sheba (Saba?) to Solomon, like Jesus a son of David, but just as something greater than the temple is here, so something greater than Solomon is here, as Jesus will say of himself later in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt. 12:42). Here, in a lowly house in Bethlehem, is something—Someone—who is greater than both the temple and Solomon, to whom the Gentile wise men offer both worship and tribute.
The worship and tribute offered by the magi only partially fulfill the prophetic vision of the Gentiles streaming up to the mountain of the Lord and offering the riches of the nations for his worship. The embassy and pilgrimage of the magi anticipates the eschatological gathering of the nations before God, when, as Jesus says later in Matthew’s Gospel, “many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 8:11). Matthew, like the prophets, believes the gathering of the nations to worship God to be a fulfillment of Israel’s calling to bear witness to God’s righteousness and glory to the whole world; to be, as the children of Abraham, a means of blessing to all the families of the earth.
This eschatological vision and its partial realization in the apostolic mission and later evangelization of the nations, the grafting of believing Gentiles into the olive tree of believing Israel (the metaphor that the Apostle Paul uses in the ninth chapter of Romans), is possible because Jesus fulfilled the vocation at which Israel had failed. Called to be the witness to God’s justice, righteousness, and glory, they repeatedly turned to injustice, unrighteousness, and idolatry, unfaithful to God’s law and commandments. So it was that in the fullness of time Jesus came to fulfill Israel’s vocation in his own person, to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to [God’s] people Israel” (Luke 2:32). Matthew makes this clear in the scenes that follow the visit of the magi. As Joseph, the son of Jacob, saved his family during the time of famine by inviting them into Egypt, so another Joseph, the son of another Jacob, saved the infant Messiah, Israel’s king, by fleeing with his mother to Egypt to escape the murderous wrath of Herod. On Herod’s death, Joseph returned from Egypt with the Jesus and Mary, God thereby bringing Jesus out of Egypt as he had Israel, providing a double meaning to Hosea’s words regarding the Exodus, quoted by Matthew: “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” The words of the prophet Jeremiah, the lament of Rachel for her children, that close Matthew’s brief account of the slaughter of the infant boys of Bethlehem by Herod’s men, is a lament of exile and loss, for Jeremiah’s lament was originally for the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians and the taking of the ten northern tribes into exile, captivity, and oblivion. Like Israel, Jesus will be tested in the wilderness, for forty days rather than forty years, and he will dwell in the Promised Land, saving his people from their ills and from their sins, not sinning himself as Israel had done before him. By recapitulating the history of Israel in his own person, Jesus fulfills what the children of Abraham were called to do, for as Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well, “Salvation comes from the Jews.” Through Jesus, the faithful Son of God and Servant of the Lord, and only through him, could Israel be saved, and the Gentiles be brought up to the mountain of God to worship in the house of the Lord.
As St. Paul has written in the Epistle appointed for today, taken from the third chapter of his letter to the Ephesians:
When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. (Ephesians 3:4-12)
Rejoice, brothers and sisters, on this great feast of the Epiphany, for by the leading of a star God has manifested his only Son to all the peoples of the earth. Rejoice, you who know him now by faith, both Jew and Gentile, for he leads us to his presence, where we may see his glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord.