AN EPIPHANY STORY . . .

The Revd Deacon Polly M. Bowen

All during the Christmas season we watched the “wise men” as they journeyed day by day from the farthest window in the church until on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, they finally reached the manger scene in front of the altar. This is how we marked their journey, even though Matthew’s gospel explicitly states “on entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother,” and common sense tells us that Mary and Joseph would have moved the Holy One out of the stable by this time.

But tradition is hallowed in the Church and in our lives; sometimes we can’t bear to give up the old familiar customs. They’re comfortable, and that gives them an aura of legitimacy. Even when we know that they are technically “wrong,” they are spiritually “right” for us.

But every now and then a truly Wise Man (or woman) comes along to gently challenge our complacency with the customary habits. Such a man is Martin Smith, former Abbott of the Cowley fathers, a Benedictine Order.

Martin is a prolific author, and when I met him at General Convention a few years ago, it was the high point of my two weeks in Denver. Like a regular groupie, I asked him to autograph the book I had just bought, and then we chatted for about half an hour. It turned out that we had some mutual friends and many mutual interests. But, impressed as I was, it wasn’t until I got home and actually read his book that I was really in awe of his considerable gifts.

I have long known that the “wise men” were probably astrologers, which does call into question their designation as “wise.” But I have overlooked that, knowing that they could have been kings or rulers, that they were certainly religious men, that whoever they were, they came looking for Jesus. Most of all I acknowledged that astrology was part of the wisdom of the age. (It’s interesting, though, that even in our time astrology is where foolish people often turn when they are seeking wisdom.)

But Martin put aside all my uneasy feelings about these astrologers in Bethlehem when he suggested that the gold, frankincense and myrrh that we know as the gifts of the magi were never meant to be given to Jesus. He suggests that they were simply the tools of their trade: gold talismans for casting spells and reading fortunes, the frankincense with which they fogged and perfumed their mysterious rituals, myrrh that they used in their magic ointments. [i] These were items they carried with them wherever they went.

And they went to Bethlehem, and came face to face with the Way, the Truth and the Life. And in that Holy Presence they saw their hallowed ceremonies as merely hollow incantations, and their tools as empty bags of tricks. So they dropped them there on the floor before the Child, forgotten, no longer of any use to them, as they lost themselves in adoration of the Holy One. If they were foolish men who were called wise when they arrived, they went away with authentic wisdom.

The magi in the church and the magi in my living room still make their deliberate pilgrimage to the manger each year, because I love the ancient tradition. But I can never again think of them in the same way. Now I see them as exquisite examples for all of us in our Christian journey. As they emptied out their bag of tricks before the Christ, so must we.

Whatever it is that holds us back in our relationship to God is what we find in our bag of tricks. Here are petty grievances, jealousies, resentment, lack of charity, our failure to even see the injustice all around us, or to see our inattention and thoughtlessness as complicity. Whatever it is that lurks within us barring the way to Jesus, or to one another, or even to our authentic self - these are the things we must leave before the manger, before the altar, before the King of Kings. Only when we come before Him in simple honesty, without any pretense, can we truthfully offer ourselves to Him. This, to me, is the real lesson and Gift of the Magi, the lesson of the truly wise.

[i] Smith, Martin, Nativities and Passions, Boston: Cowley Publications 1995 p. 14