The Feast of Epiphany
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| Byzantine mosaic of the Wise Men |
We have reached Epiphany.
We have spent Advent pondering Jesus’s arrival on Earth as God’s gift to our world. We have given each other gifts in memory of that great gift. And now, ancient astronomers from the East travel a vast distance to give this gift some gifts of his own: gold, frankincense, myrrh.
The Bible does not speak much about the Wise Men. They appear only in a single chapter of Matthew’s gospel. Yet many traditions have surrounded them through centuries of Christian worship. One tradition links each gift to one of Jesus’s roles: gold, for the splendour of a king; frankincense, used by priests to lift their offerings and prayers to God; and myrrh, an embalming oil, for one who is to die.
Matthew tells us that, when the Wise Men brought these gifts to Jesus, they stopped at Jerusalem on their way. They asked Herod where they could find this new king. Herod responded by massacring every infant boy in Bethlehem under the age of two years old. Mary and Joseph escaped by fleeing to Egypt with their son.
What Matthew does not tell us, but tradition suggests, is that the Holy Family used the gifts of the Wise Men to finance this flight into Egypt. It makes sense. And it also strikes me as an illuminating reversal of how we think of Christmas gifts. These were not simply gifts to be enjoyed. These were gifts to be used. These were gifts to be lost.
The song attached to this reflection* is my own interpretation of this reversal, and a response to We Three Kings, where the gifts are not given, but sold to fund a refugee family’s flight. Writing it made me think of the story as I hadn’t before. How obedient Mary and Joseph must have been, and how frightened and perhaps underqualified they must have felt, young parents entrusted to care for God’s son in the midst of political occupation and slaughter. How often did they remind themselves that their son was to be called the Prince of Peace, in the midst of the conflict that buffeted them? Did Egypt welcome refugees or detest them? And were Mary and Joseph just as frightened to go back to their home when Herod no longer threatened them? I suspect they had some inkling they were returning to a world that would soon send Jesus to the cross.
Yet just as the Wise Men’s gifts were sold to continue a larger story, Jesus’s death was part of a much, much bigger plan. The baby in the manger was and is a gift to us all, but the gift had to be lost to really be much of a gift at all.
Any conclusion I can draw from these musings is in the song, so I will let it tie up these loose ends as best it can. And going into this new year in this lost world, I pray that we are allowed to catch glimpses of the gift that even our losses point to.
My thanks to Jess Syratt for playing banjo with me on this song—and Blue the cat for his cameo.
Rachel Robinson
*Many thanks to Dave Siverns, whose song The Gifts Were Sold inspired this one.
Pawn Shop Rachel Robinson
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