Christmas 2, Year C 2025: Matthew 2:1-12

The British motoring show Top Gear aired a Christmas special in 2010 ostensibly recreating the Wise Men’s journey from Iraq to Bethlehem. The three presenters each had £3500 to buy a car with which to make their journey. The film crew encountered, alongside the typical mechanical problems that the budgets for the cars almost ensures will arise, food poisoning, land mines, and border controls. They had to take a roundabout way when Iran wouldn’t let them cross the border from Iraq due to the production being run by the BBC, and negotiations were done to ensure border crossing from Jordan into Israel. The presenters were each assigned one of the three traditional gifts of the Magi - gold, frankincense, and myrrh - to bring to the baby Jesus at the end of their journey. The gifts they ended up delivering to Bethlehem were a gold relief medallion, a bottle of shampoo labeled “frankincense”, and in lieu of myrrh a Nintendo DS.

Oftentimes, Bible stories will have elements to them that become so central that they distract from the larger point of the story - or even parts of the story that are more interesting once we get past the distraction. In the story of the magi, we tend to get distracted by the gifts. Every year memes circulate about the three wise women who asked for directions, cleaned the stable, and brought casseroles which, while cute, only works as a joke if you ignore what the magi did in following the stars and all of the symbolism in Matthew’s story.

To get past the distraction, we’ll start with the gifts. Gold, of course, is a gift of high value fitting a king. Gold is never the gift that gives people pause. Frankincense is a spice that is often burnt for its scent. Oftentimes churches to this day use frankincense for their incense. Exodus 30 prescribes frankincense, mixed with equal parts of three other sweet spices, to be ground and burned before the ark of the covenant. But the instructions make it clear that this blend is to be made for the Lord and only for the Lord - it is a holy offering, not to be enjoyed by the people for its fragrance. Exodus even says, “whoever makes any (incense) like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from the people”. Frankincense is the base of this incense which is the Lord’s and the Lord’s alone. Myrrh serves a similar purpose in Exodus 30, when its use is prescribed as a holy anointing oil for Aaron and his sons as part of their consecration as priests. In addition to these rituals, frankincense and myrrh were both spices used in burials in ancient times. All of this symbolism is certainly important, but only part of the story and perhaps causes us to miss an even bigger point.

Let’s look past those distracting gifts from the end of the lesson, and back up to the beginning. The Gentile magi show up at Herod’s asking about the king of the Jews. While Herod was a Jew and a king, he was not a king in the way that David was an anointed king. Herod was a king because Rome placed him in charge. So Herod’s “rule” was much more tenuous than what we think of when we hear the word “king.” Since the title “king” was granted only by Rome, the arrival of a new king would have had politically subversive implications. But Herod, being a Jew, called in the chief priests and the scribes - all of the people who should have recognized the Messiah - to verify the story of these Gentiles who practice astrology - which those same chief priests and scribes would not have been permitted to practice. 

In all four Gospels, there are stories where Gentiles recognize Jesus while his own people do not. Matthew bookends Jesus’ life with two such accounts that share a phrase: “King of the Jews”. We read the first account today in Chapter 2 at the beginning of Jesus’ life. Perhaps it  wasn’t the most astute move by the magi to approach a king asking about a new king. But it also wouldn’t have been a terrible assumption to visit the current king to check out the new king, on the chance that the new king is the offspring of the current one. But the magi set off a panic among the powerful who stood to lose the most if there were to be a change in the political status quo. And then they went off on their way, intending to return.

The second bookend is at the end of Jesus’ life. In Matthew 25 Pontius Pilate, another Gentile, wrote the charge against Jesus above his head on the cross - a customary practice meant to serve as a deterrent to other criminals - and it read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews”. That phrase, “king of the Jews” suggested revolutionary activity, but contained a different, ironic truth for those who believed in Jesus. It’s no accident that Gentiles recognized Jesus’ messiahship at the beginning and the end of his life, providing Matthew’s readers with a lens through which to see Jesus’ earthly ministry.

I spent many years studying martial arts, and one thing my instructor would caution us against was “tunnel vision”. That is, getting so honed in on our target, or attacker, that we’re looking so intently in that one spot that we can’t see anything else around us. Any time he would catch one of us with “tunnel vision” he’d call out “wide eyes”, which would cause us to relax, look more broadly, and regain our peripheral vision. We are wise to remember to read the Bible in the same way. While the Bible can absolutely be a difficult book to read and one that is easier to read with guidance, we can widen our eyes by remembering that, while the Bible is a story like no other it is also a story like every other story - meant to be read and understood and to become a part of who we are. There is so much we can learn from the Bible by reading it like it tells us what’s important. It’s hard to do that with some of the stories we’ve heard so many times that we kind of skim to the part we’re preoccupied with - like the magi’s gifts. It’s one of the reasons I don’t write in my Bible - so my eyes aren’t drawn to and influenced by previous conclusions I’ve drawn.

As we reflect on this lesson in its textual and seasonal contexts, I wonder if we forget the final gift of the magi where they went home by a different road. Is it a demonstration that sometimes the gifts we give aren’t even those we anticipate or plan on being gifts at all? And I wonder if the magi just thought, “well this dream is weird and we aren’t even from here - we don’t owe that king jack - so let’s be careful and go back by another route.” It’s not like they were going to be extradited back to Herod!

The trip the Top Gear crew took was a 1200 mile drive. And even though their budget cars weren’t in great shape, they made the trip considerably faster than the two years it was estimated to have taken the magi. And while Top Gear does silly things like spend time decorating their cars and disabling one anothers’ stereos, part of what makes their schtick work are the moments of beauty and of seriousness in the midst of all their nonsense. As they passed the West Bank barrier, one of the presenters simply, yet profoundly narrated, “Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all men”. It reminds me that, as humans, we need both. We need the silly and the serious, the simple and deeper complex understanding. Too much of one or the other is emotional tunnel vision, like only seeing the gifts from the magi and wondering what myrrh is while missing all of the deeper meanings we glean by widening our eyes. Amen.