“How do you know elephants love to travel? Because they always pack their trunk.” Everyone else has more trouble packing their luggage for a trip. Personally, I hate it. You have to think about what you will need, both for the journey and at your destination. Based on that, you pick up all the required items. Then you realise that your suitcase has limited capacity, so you have to limit the number of all those necessary things to fit them in. Having packed your suitcase, you check its weight, and it’s inevitably over the airline’s limit. So, you have to open up the suitcase, remove some items or move them to your hand luggage only to recall that that bottle of expensive single malt whisky for your family abroad will not go past the airport security. Staying at home, with all your resources at your fingertips, is so much more convenient. And yet, we do travel. I will soon go through the hated process of packing my luggage and greatly limiting my choice for three weeks because visiting my Mum is worth it.
This rather convoluted introduction has nothing to do with the troubles of the Wise Men from the East we heard about in today’s gospel. We know of three gifts they brought to Jesus (single-malt whisky wasn’t listed), but nothing about their problems with packing was mentioned. Their actual problem was that they had got lost and had to ask for directions. My introduction has everything to do with the question of why this rather peculiar story made it into only St Matthew’s gospel. Nowhere else in the New Testament is it recalled, referred to or even hinted at. Why did St Matthew go to the trouble of writing about it and quite extensively too?
These days, thanks to the original invention of the printing press by Mr Gutenberg over half a millennium ago and current modern technology, it’s relatively cheap and easy to produce huge volumes of writing. Modern authors – at least theoretically – can include all the source material in their non-fiction books. For example, the 2010 version of the last printed edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica spanned 32 volumes and 32,640 pages. However, ancient writers didn’t have such luxury. The upfront cost of writing material was huge, and the process of writing was challenging (no word processors to correct mistakes easily). Copies of the final piece could only be produced by hand, a labour-intensive and time-consuming process on top of the huge costs of writing material. So, producing a book was similar to packing for a very long trip with a budget airline. The author had to think hard about who his target audience was, what his main message was, and which resources to select to achieve his goals in the most concise way. Consequently, we can safely assume that the story of the Gentiles paying a visit and homage to baby Jesus must have been of massive importance to give it so much space.
St Matthew addressed his gospel to the Christian community, which consisted virtually of Jewish converts. Non-Jewish members of that community were people who had converted to Judaism first. They didn’t see their faith in Jesus as the Messiah as a new religion but as a development or expansion of their existing Mosaic faith. The unintended consequence of such an attitude was the continuation of their insularity from the pagan world; this approach had been alive since the time of the Maccabean revolt and restoration some 150 years before the birth of Christ. However, early Jews-only Christianity was soon challenged by an ever-increasing influx of Gentiles attracted to the new faith, who had no intention of going through the prolonged and elaborate process of conversion to Judaism as the first step towards becoming Christian. The tension between the traditional Jewish and the new, much more liberal approaches became one of – if not the greatest of the internal challenges the Church faced in the first century. St Matthew wrote his account of Jesus’ ministry in just such a polarised, even volatile environment. His aim was to reconcile the traditional Jewish way with the new reality of Gentiles accepted into the fold in a much simpler way. That’s why the story of the Wise Men from the East made it into the tight selection decided by St Matthew.
There are a few interesting elements in the story. The Wise Men came from the east, most likely Babylon. In Jewish folklore, it was the embodiment of abusive, hostile, cruel and evil powers. The visitors arrived in Jerusalem spurred on and led by their astrological knowledge rather than the preaching of Jewish rabbis. Using modern terms, we can say that the wise men had come to that place in their spiritual journey via scientific research: “Where is the infant king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose.” Here is the clever and nuanced twist in the story: “We have come to do him homage.” What they talked about wasn’t a polite but meaningless bow or curtsy. The person who paid homage acknowledged and accepted the superiority of the one to whom they paid that homage. So, the whole story can be summarised like this.
The representatives of the power that had brought an end to King David’s kingdom now came to submit to the reign of his successor, the infant king of the Jews, Jesus Christ. They did it by offering gifts worthy of a king. Having done that, they returned to their country “by a different way” as subjects of “the infant king of the Jews.” It must have been quite an uplifting story to St Matthew’s Jewish audience, softening and opening their hearts to the idea that Jesus came to save both Jews and Gentiles, if and when they submit to His sovereignty.
The internal division of the primal Church was healed thanks to the countless truly wise men like St Matthew who worked hard to reconcile two approaches, two ways, two traditions to keep the unity within one broad church. We are beneficiaries of that monumental and brave decision made at the first-ever Church synod in Jerusalem (Acts 15). Two millennia later, we need wise men and women brave enough to stop and ask the question: “Where is the infant king of the Jews?” and braver yet to look for answers outside the box and walk new paths. For such a journey, you really need only one item in your bag: the belief that the Holy Spirit always continues to lead the Church in mysterious ways. Do you believe this?
