Winter Camellias. Photo (c) Katherine E. Brown

“And seeing the star, they rejoiced with very great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother and, falling down, they worshipped him, and opening their treasuries, they offered him gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Matthew 2:10-11 (from Matthew 2:1-12, NRSVUE linked here)

The Twelve Days of Christmas are past. Now we’re at Epiphany. Three Kings Day. January 6.

Does that last calendar-date caption sound now more political than liturgical? Maybe recent history reminds us that the text has been political since it was written. The first reported human speech in Matthew’s gospel is, after all, the query uttered by the magi, “Where is the one born king of the Jews?” Don’t adorn their question with the fairy-tale garb of tradition — opulent robes and jewel-studded crowns, imagined camels and an expansive retinue. That keeps the figures safely constrained in ancient story. Suitable for nativity plays (children wearing borrowed bathrobes and crowns of foil-covered cardboard). Nothing to do with our lives once the season’s church services are past. Nothing to do with reality.

Reread that query. Words said by humans, not angels. Words uttered in a real place, at a real time, to a real king — Herod, insecurely power-hungry given the larger real-world context of Imperial Rome in oversight of all his machinations. A query about a king that disturbs a king so greatly that all Jerusalem is disturbed with him. Does the idea of a power-hungry leader and a power-roiled city sound real enough?

Reread the magi, too. Not as kings with retinues but as analysts with responsibilities. In DC terms, maybe, career civil service. Matthew’s magi are not Luke’s shepherds, who were minding their own business out there in the fields until suddenly that choir of tinsel-haloed cherubs appeared in the church balcony. Matthew’s magi have a different role, a different work. They read the visible signs of change in the world; they follow where those signs lead. They observe. They inquire. They discern by what has risen new (that star) and by what is old (the prophets’ writings). They ask questions, including of traditions and cultures not their own. They engage in conversations, even conversations at cross-purposes (“Go and search diligently for the child,” Herod tells the magi as if he too desires to worship) — which to me is perhaps the realest part of this story’s reality: the intersection and opposition of desires both holy and horrific. Which intersection and opposition — accurate information and duplicitous intent — yet conspire to lead the magi towards their journeys’ end.

Herod sends the magi to Bethlehem. And as they go, they see again the star whose rising they had seen before. The star going ahead of them until it stood above where the child was.

“Seeing the star, they rejoiced with very great joy.”

Joy before they entered the house. Joy before they saw the child with Mary his mother. Joy before they knelt and worshipped and opened their treasury to offer him gifts. Joy maybe because the star they’d lost sight of for a while (else why would they have showed up in Jerusalem?) was again bright before their eyes. Leading them. Delighting them. Opening them for encounter anew.

Maybe the reason to return to this story year after year is not just to be reminded of its reality but to be recalled by it to the reality that undergirds and overarches our own story. Not absolving us of the responsibility to observe, to inquire, to set out as steadfastly and to journey as diligently as we can. But recalling us to the the star’s reappearing. Reminding us that our purpose is not power but worship. We may pause in power’s halls (the magi speak to Herod with equanimity, secure in their expertise, unafraid to ask) but it is the star’s promise that draws us on, that guides us to our true end: the encounter that drops us to our knees, curves our mouths into smiling Os of awe, opens the treasure of our hearts that we may give.

Joy is the pivot on which the magi’s journey turns, the twist that sends them journeying again. Traveling another way. Returning to where they had been even if they were not who they had been when they left, re-shaped as they were by their journey in surprising, delighting joy.

May I be re-shaped by their story to journey truly in my own.