The Magi from Iran

The Magi and the nations

by Douglas Miller

Two weeks ago we celebrated Christmas, and we have just emerged from the twelve days of Christmas. Orthodox Churches celebrated Christmas on Friday, which is the date that Western Churches recall the visit of the Magi or Wise Men from Iran.

Matthew and Luke both want to tell us that the first people who came to honour the new-born Christ, the Son of God, were the last people you might expect to. They were outsiders.

Luke tells us that the first people who came to honour Christ were those shepherds, out on the hills. Shepherds were not that well regarded. They were obviously needed, but there was a perception that they were rather rough people, living outside a lot of the time, and rather careless about the requirements of the Torah. Yet the angels took the news of Christ's birth to them. Not to the respected leaders in Bethlehem, not to the rabbis there, not to the people of that neighbourhood, but to these shepherds. Luke made the point many times that Jesus accepted the outsider, and would associate with people others found unacceptable: with the tax collector, with the prostitute, with lepers, with Roman soldiers, with anyone. The story of the shepherds fits in well with that emphasis on Jesus welcoming the outsider.

That is Luke's Gospel.

Matthew's Gospel tells us the very strange story about Magi from Iran coming to offer their gifts to the person born king of the Jews.

Now I said Magi from Iran. Matthew does not tell us where they came from, but we know they were from Iran. The magi were a priestly caste in the Zoroastrian Religion, which had been the predominant belief in Iran for about six centuries, and it was the official belief of the Parthian Empire. Greek people believed that the magi of Iran had special powers and insights into nature and predicting the future. They practiced astrology. And they seem to have made some scientific discoveries unknown in the West. The word magi gives us the word "magic".

Now the magi coming from Iran was also a very political matter. At that time, that part of the world was divided between two large superpowers. Basically the area we now call Turkey, Syria and Palestine was the Western end of the Roman Empire, which covered the whole Mediterranean Empire. East of that, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan was the Parthian Empire, which had effectively blocked all attempts by the Roman Empire to expand further East.

So these magi were people who had not only come from a distant place. They had come from the other side of a hostile political divide, and crossed the border to bring their respect to the new-born king.

Now the magi in this story were both very wise and very naïve at the same time. They were people who believed you could tell the future by looking at the stars; and God had sent them a star as a sign that the King had been born.

Now they didn't just say, “well, that's interesting, let's wait and see what happens.” No. They did something about it. They decided to go, with all the risks, across that major border, into country unknown to them, to offer their respect to the new-born king.

They are to be commended for being willing to do something about what they had learned. But when they come to Jerusalem, they acted like idiots.

Matthew begins the story with the words, “in the time of King Herod”. Now there were many kings called Herod, there were four generations of them, but the King Herod, King Herod the Great, achieved a lot in his forty years of rule, including the rebuilding of the Temple. He was a puppet King under the Romans, but with significant independence. He had a fierce reputation for being extremely cruel. When Matthew said, “in the time of King Herod”, it was like saying, “in the time of Josef Stalin” in the Soviet Union, or the Pol Pot government in Kampuchea, or the Stalinist government that still rules North Korea.

King Herod is thought to have suffered from depression and paranoia. He had many people killed because he suspected they were plotting against him, including his wife Mariamne and several of his sons. In the final months of his life in 4 BC, he went to a health resort near the Dead Sea, and ordered that several hundred leading people from all over the country be imprisoned in Jericho. His orders were that they were to be killed as soon as news came through that he had died, so that nobody in Israel would rejoice when they heard that King Herod had died. Fortunately the plan backfired. When news came that Herod had died, Herod's son Archelaus simply ordered them to be released.

So the Magi came to Jerusalem in the time of King Herod, and went through the streets asking anyone and everyone, “where is the one born king of the Jews”.

And Matthew, and people of his generation who heard that account would have said, “that was just so incredibly stupid. You just do not ask about another king during the reign of King Herod.” People would just not want to know about any such conversation. It was a one-way ticket into big trouble. And Matthew says, “King Herod was frightened and all Jerusalem with him”.

The magi were really naïve. It gets worse when they meet King Herod, who pretends to be really interested, and gets advice from the Rabbis about where the Messiah would be born. They refer him to the Book of Micah, which names the place as Bethlehem. So he sends them to Bethlehem, and asks them to come back and tell him so he too can go there and pay homage. Noone in Jerusalem would have believed that, but it seems they did. They were really naïve.

The story ends with God speaking to the magi in a dream and telling them to go back to their country by another way, and not to return and tell King Herod about it like they promised they would. And when Herod realised they were not coming back, he got really angry and ordered his soldiers to go to Bethlehem and kill all the baby boys under two years old. But Jesus was not there, for Joseph and Mary had fled as refugees to Egypt.

What is God saying to us through the story of the magi?

First, God is saying that the people who recognise God's work in the world are sometimes the very last people you would expect. The people who should have recognised it were possibly Bible scholars and religious leaders, possibly leaders in the local community, possibly friends and relatives of Joseph and Mary. But somehow God bypassed all these people, and stirred in the hearts of people of another country, priests of another religion, people who studied the stars and thought they could predict the future through them.

And some of these were the people who were so convinced that God was doing a new thing that they took the difficult journey to a foreign country, where they knew nothing about the local politics, to give their worship to the new-born king.

So the story is saying to be very careful about assuming that we can judge who is most likely to respond to the work of God. Only God knows that, and we should accept every person as they are, and let God work in their heart as God chooses to work.

Second, God is saying that these people represent the first of the Gentiles coming to Christ. Now Matthew himself was very Jewish, and saw Jesus very much as the Messiah coming to the Jews. Matthew tended to stress the abiding value of the Torah. His views were very different from those of Paul. But by the time he wrote his Gospel, there were more gentile Christians than Jewish Christians, and the numbers of Gentile Christians were growing, while the numbers of Jewish Christians were declining. And Matthew saw these magi as the first of the nations of the world coming to the new light, that was giving light to the world.

And today we gather in worship here as a congregation drawn from many different nations who have come to Melbourne. The Magi are our predecessors in the faith.

Third, I am sure God is also saying, "do not be as stupid as those magi were". Jesus once said, “be wise as serpents and harmless as doves”. When we serve the Lord, we cannot simply charge in with our bright ideas, and expect everyone to fall in line with them. We really do need to read the culture and the politics and the beliefs of the environment we are in, and act in a way that takes that seriously. Otherwise we will simply make tragic mistakes like they did.

Finally, God is saying that Jesus is the Messiah, who was specially protected at this time from the anger of the King and the incompetence of his admirers.

So as we conclude the season of Christmas, let us remember, first and foremost, that Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is the Word of God become human for us, has lived for us, and has died and been raised for us. The story of Bethlehem is not just the story of the birth of a child, wonderful as that is. It is the beginning of a life of love and obedience, of declaring the Kingdom of God, and welcoming people into fellowship with God.

Let Christmas just passed be a time of renewal of our own communion with God, through Christ.

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