“The Wisdom of the Magi”
Matthew 2:1-12
1/6/08
You’ve heard the saying, “Wise men still
seek Him.” Well, who are these wise men and where are they
today? Look around you. You who have come together here
today to worship Jesus are those wise men and women. You are just
like the wise men we hear about in today’s Gospel reading, who
came to worship Jesus with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and
myrrh. How does it feel to be in the company sages, to be
enlightened, discerning, and profoundly wise beyond even your own
understanding?
But is this a wisdom we can take credit for, or is
it a gift to us from God? Is this worldly wisdom or wisdom from
above? When I looked up the word “wisdom” in the
dictionary, I got: “the quality of having experience,
knowledge, and good judgment” and “the soundness of an
action or decision with regard to the application of such experience,
knowledge, and good judgment,” all of which could be summarized
as “having good sense.” But wisdom can also be
defined as “the body of knowledge and principles that develops
within a specified society or period,” like when we talk about
oriental wisdom, for example, or the wisdom of
philosophers. So, why are the wise men here called wise
men? Of what does their wisdom consist? Were they wise,
because they had good sense and acted wisely? Were they wise,
because they knew a bunch of stuff and were very philosophical?
Or were they wise, because they had been enlightened by the Word of God
and acted on it?
It may interest you to know that St. Matthew
doesn’t call them wise men at all. He calls them
Magi. And if you knew who the Magi were, you as a Christian
probably wouldn’t consider them to be wise at all. The Magi
were priests in a pagan religion called Zoroastrianism, the religion of
Persia at that time (which is modern day Iran). The Magi would be
consulted by the rulers of Persia, because they used things like
astrology and dream interpretation to determine the affairs of the
state. So, people would have considered them to be wise
men. But while they were wise by worldly standards, the Bible
tells us that God considers such wisdom to be foolishness, because it
keeps people from believing in Jesus Christ. Worldly wisdom has
its roots in our sinful reason and understanding, and it manifests
itself in all kinds of false religions, false belief, and false
worship, so that as the Apostle Paul writes, “the natural man
does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are
foolishness to him...” And so, one who is wise by worldly
standards will consider God’s wisdom and the preaching of the
cross of Christ to be the height of foolishness.
Now, this worldly wisdom is the kind of wisdom that
you and I were born with. With this kind of wisdom we try to
reach God through our own means and efforts. It’s this kind
of wisdom with which we build our own little towers of Babel in order
to try to make our way up to God. It’s the kind of wisdom
that tries to come to God the Father apart from Jesus. But
it’s actually a wisdom that keeps us from God, a wisdom with
which the devil blinds us, so that we cannot see the light of the
Gospel of the glory of Christ. In this state, neither we nor
these so-called wise men are truly wise before God; we’re
fools. And without the wisdom of God, they and we would perish,
suffering separation from God for all eternity on account of our sins.
But the good news is that God does not keep His
wisdom to Himself. He imparts it as a gift. And He does
this through the Word about Jesus, crucified for our salvation.
It was while the Magi were in the darkness of their worldly wisdom that
God enlightened them with His Word and made them truly wise through the
knowledge about Jesus. But how did this happen? How was it
that the Magi came looking for this King of the Jews they were asking
Herod about? The star they followed didn’t speak; it gave
them no information; it just moved. So, where did they get such
wisdom?
It all goes back to the time when the Jews were
exiles in Babylon (which, as you all know, is modern day Iraq, the
next-door neighbor to Persia/Iran). In the book of Daniel, you
find that the Persians conquered the kingdom of Babylon, and so
inherited the Jews who were exiled there. Well, the Jews had
brought their culture, their religion, and their sacred writings - the
Scriptures - with them to Babylon, so that it would have been easy for
men like the Magi of Persia to become acquainted with the Scriptures
themselves. They may even have read the very Scripture from the
book of Micah that the chief priests and scribes quoted to them:
“And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means
least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who
will shepherd my people Israel.” This, then, would explain
how the Magi came to know about Jesus in the first place. Then
somehow, by the work of the Holy Spirit, they knew that this special
star that appeared in the sky announced His birth, and so they followed
it as it led them to the One of whom the Scriptures spoke.
True wisdom, then, is the wisdom which God gives us
through His Word. It is a wisdom that causes us to renounce
worldly wisdom, which leads people to believe they can get to God apart
from Christ. A person becomes truly wise before God when he hears
God’s Word and believes it, which is what happened to the
Magi. The same thing happened to you. You became truly wise
when the Holy Spirit spoke the Gospel about Jesus to you, and you
trusted in the Word that God has made a way for you to come to Him
through the cross of Christ. The star that you follow today which
leads you to Jesus is the Word of God, the Bible. As you hear and
read the Scriptures, so you are enlightened by the Holy Spirit as He
leads you to your Savior.
It’s the Word of God that leads us to worship
Jesus. Just as the star led the Magi to Him so that they might
worship Him, so the Bible leads us to Him, so that we might worship
Him. This too is wisdom, that we worship Jesus as our Lord and
our God. The Magi manifested this wisdom when they got to
Jerusalem and asked, “Where is He who has been born King of the
Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship
Him.” A wise person in God’s eyes is one who not only
recognizes who Jesus is, but also worships Him. But what does it
mean to worship Him? We often describe worship as a
service. And so we call what we’re gathered here for today
the divine service. But who’s doing the serving here?
Some would say that we’re doing the serving. But does God
need to be served? In fact, it is He who is serving us, and
it’s only as we are first on the receiving end of His gifts to
us, that we may then give our gifts to Him. Jesus is God’s
gift of salvation to the world. He is the Savior of the Jews as
well as the Gentiles, as is seen by the fact that God led even these
Gentile Magi to Jesus as well. Their primary act of worship was
then to receive Him as their Savior, to receive the gifts of
forgiveness, life, and salvation that He was bringing to them, and then
to respond by giving Him their gifts. So you too come to worship
Jesus by first being given to by Him, and then by responding with your
gifts of thanks and praise, obedience and confession, love and service
towards one another.
But the wisdom of the Magi didn’t stop
here. It began when they heard the Word and believed it. It
was manifested when they followed the star to come and worship their
Savior. Then it continued to show itself in that, when the Magi
were told where to find Jesus, that’s where they went. Now,
this may seem sort of obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many
people look for Jesus where He is not. They’ll look for Him
in nature, or in some kind of experience, or in visions, or
they’ll try to find Him within themselves. But though Jesus
is everywhere, He locates Himself for you in specific places. For
example, if the shepherds on the night of Christ’s birth had not
gone to the manger in Bethlehem where the angels had told them to go,
they would not have found Jesus. If they had decided to go to
Jerusalem instead, they may have found another baby boy, but it
wouldn’t have been Jesus. The same goes for the Magi.
If they had disregarded the Word of God which told them where to go to
find the Child, they never would have found Him. And so for us,
too... We are not to go looking for Jesus where we think He
should be, but to go where He has located Himself for us and has
promised to be - in His Word and in the Sacraments of Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper. These are the places where you will find
your Savior, the places where He is delivering the righteousness He
fulfilled for you, where He’s setting up His kingdom among you,
where He is shepherding you, His people. And to look for Him in
these places is true wisdom.
Finally, the Magi showed true wisdom as they
worshipped Jesus with their gifts. It was by their gifts that
they confessed both who Jesus is and what He would do. With the
gift of gold they confessed Jesus to be a King. Jesus is the King
of kings, whose kingdom is not of this world, but who has come to
redeem His fallen creation and reestablish His gracious rule over
it. With the gift of frankincense the Magi confessed Jesus to be
God. Frankincense was the incense used in the temple
worship. And so, by giving Jesus this gift they were
acknowledging that here was the Lord of lords, the One who was
worshipped in the tabernacle and the temple, now tabernacling among us
in the flesh. And then with the gift of myrrh they confessed that
Jesus would die, as myrrh was a spice that was used in embalming.
Like the Magi, we too show true wisdom when with the gifts of our words
about Christ and our deeds of love we confess both who Jesus is and
what He has done, that He is the King of creation, God in the flesh,
who came to give His life on the cross to save us from our sins and to
bring us back under God’s gracious reign.
This, then, is the wisdom that is seen here among us
today. It is true wisdom, the wisdom that God has given us, a
wisdom which follows the light of His Word to Jesus Christ, crucified
and risen from the dead for our salvation, a wisdom that looks for
Jesus where He has located Himself for us - in His Word and Sacraments,
and a wisdom that confesses Him in our words and deeds. Those who
have this wisdom are truly wise in God’s eyes. We the
baptized, who have been so enlightened by the Spirit of God, are the
wise men and women who still seek Jesus, find Him, and worship Him
today as God our Savior. Amen.