Picture the scene. A stable in Judea 2000 years ago bathed in the light of a star overhead, a woman cradling her baby surrounded by gentle cows and sheep. Three richly dressed men approach the stable and enter. The woman looks up.
“Who are you?” she screeches.
“We are three wise men.”
“Well what are you doing creeping around a cow shed at two o clock in the morning? That doesn’t sound very wise to me.”
This scene is not, of course from the Bible, but from the film ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’; a film criticised by some Christians when it was first released as being anti-Christian though in fact it is at pains to point out that the central character, Brian Cohen, is emphatically not Jesus. The reason I mentioned it, apart from the fact I find the line about wise men creeping around a cow shed in the early hours of the morning incredibly funny, is that it contains elements that Christians associate with Epiphany; a star over a Bethlehem stable, a mother within cradling her baby and three kings bearing gifts. In the film the kings eventually realise they are in the wrong stable and go to the one next door, where they find Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus in what is a Christmas card perfect scene.
Some modern biblical scholars try to spoil that scene for us. There was a program on BBC1 a couple of years ago that put some of these scholars’ views forward. The scholars tell us that the visitors were not kings, they were wise men or magicians or astrologers, men who studied that stars to try to predict future events, the Russell Grants of their day. They say that we do not know how many of them there were; that the Bible mentions three gifts; it does not say that there were three wise men. They say that the Bible does tell us that the wise men visited Jesus and his family in a house, not a stable and the visit may have been several months after Jesus was born. And you know what, none of this matters. What does matter is the way the wise men responded to Jesus, they way they responded and the way some of the other characters in our reading responded to the birth of Jesus.
First let’s take a look a King Herod. Now it has to be said that Herod was not a very nice chap. In fact his name is ranked with other infamous despots throughout history, evil men like Genghis Khan, Vlad The Impaler, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Herod was King of the Jews but he wasn’t even a Jew, he was of Idumean extraction and had been given the throne of Judea by the Romans. He was, in effect, a puppet king. To try and claim some legitimacy in the eyes of his people he’d married a Jew, the sister of the High Priest; but he was hated by the Jews and for good reason. Herod was a multiple murderer, responsible for many deaths. He had his beloved wife Mariamme killed, along with her mother and younger brother, the High Priest. He also put to death Mariamme’s Grandfather, the High Priest Hyrcanus. Three of his own sons were executed at his command because he feared they might try to take the throne from him. He also planned the murder of a crowd of Jewish dignitaries imprisoned in the hippodrome of Jericho to coincide with his own death and thus ensure widespread mourning following his own funeral. Fortunately this order was not carried out.
Yet Herod is not remembered by history for any of these evil deeds, he is remembered because of the way he responded to Jesus. When he heard from the wise men that the King of The Jews had been born his decision was immediate; a rival claimant to his throne could not be tolerated. It did not matter to Herod that this ruler was the longed for Messiah, the Son of God; all Herod could see was that he had a rival claimant to his throne and he knew how to deal with rivals; he killed them. Herod could not see beyond his own personal greed and lust for power, he could not see that wonderful act of God had taken place; all he could see was a personal threat and so he had innocent babies murdered in order to eliminate a threat to his authority.
Herod is not alone in seeing Jesus as a threat to his personal power. The High Priest and his fellow rulers of the Temple ensured Jesus was crucified by the Romans because they thought that he was a threat to their power and authority.
Even in the twenty first century there are people who react quite aggressively when the name of Jesus is even mentioned. Richard Dawkins is a very recent example of this. In his book The God Delusion he spends page after page telling us that Jesus was not the Son of God because, of course, in his opinion there is no God. He sees Christianity as a threat to the future of mankind. He says we need to cast off the shackles of religion and be free to pursue our own destiny. In effect Dawkins is saying we don’t need God and we don’t need Jesus, we should be free of them, free to decide to live as we want to live and to do as we want to do. This is the temptation that Adam and Eve gave into in the Garden of Eden, it is the same thing that caused Herod to slaughter innocent infants; the lust for personal power and authority, the desire to be our own god.
There is a little bit of Herod in us all, a part of us that wants to put our own needs and desires first, a part of us that’s wants to control our own destiny free from God’s rule. Here I speak from personal experience. There have been times in my own life when I’ve wanted to deny God, when it would have been so much easier to believe that there was no God who wanted me to live my life a certain way because he loves me. I found God’s rules too restrictive, I rebelled against his authority, I tried to live my own way and realised what an idiot I was being. The problem is that deep down I know that there is a God and that his so called rules are really the best way to live and in the end I always came back to God, to his love and his care.
Second we need to consider the response of the Jewish chief priests and scribes. It is easy to overlook them as they are barely mentioned in our passage, but they are there. Herod asks them where the Christ is to be born and they basically reply Bethlehem. That is it, their only appearance in the passage and yet it tells us volumes about their attitude to God and his Messiah.
These chief priests and scribes knew their scriptures; they were able to tell Herod straight away that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. But did they go to Bethlehem to see the Messiah? Did they lift a sandal to go in the right direction? No! They knew a Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and that if the Wise Men were right this birth had taken place, but they did nothing at all about it. This is a danger facing religious scholars in every age, they can get so wrapped up in their studies that the studies become all and they forget that what they are studying is real. The chief priests and scribes had great knowledge of the scriptures, but that knowledge proved to be utterly useless so far as their own salvation was concerned.
You find this unfortunate attitude amongst religious scholars today; university theology professors and theological tutors who are so obsessed with the origins and authorship of various books of the Bible, of their date of composition and so forth that they forget to consider the message the scriptures actually contain. Others get so obsessed with trying to find the historical meaning and context of the scriptures that they forget to look for God’s truth.
I recently read a book by Professor James Tabor called The Jesus Dynasty. In the book Professor Tabor admits a life long obsession with the person of Jesus, starting in his teens. This man has studied the gospels for years and yet has come to the conclusion that Jesus was not the Son of God but a Jewish revolutionary of the line of King David who wanted to rule Judea and who had no intention of founding a new religion. For whatever reason this very intelligent and genuine scholar has failed to see the truth that Jesus was the Son of God who came to Earth to die on a cross for our sins and rise from the dead to give us hope of eternal life.
It is very easy for some people to become obsessed with reading books about Jesus, with watching TV programmes about Jesus, with debating with others about Jesus and to forget the actual basics of spending time with God in prayer, of reading the scriptures devotionally, of worshipping in church and of living the Christian life. It’s a trap it is easy to fall into.
The third response to consider this morning is that of the wise men themselves. Their response stands in sharp contrast to that of Herod and that of the chief priests and scribes. Their response was the correct response. The response of the wise men was to seek Jesus out and worship him.
The wise men were serious about seeking Jesus. The Bible doesn’t tell us how long their search took; it may have been days, weeks or even months. We do not know how far they travelled, though some scholars have suggested they came from Mesopotamia, which we know as Iraq. We do not know how far they travelled or for how long but the wise men undertook their journey determined to find Jesus and not to stop travelling until they did.
How far are we willing to go to meet Jesus today? We may not have to undertake a physical journey, but we do need to spend time seeking Jesus if we really want to meet him and know him. We need to spend time reading the word of God in the Bible if we want to meet and know Jesus, we need to spend time talking with God as we pray in Jesus’ name if we want to meet and know him and we need to help others to meet Jesus by showing them his love in the way we live our lives. The wise men were deadly serious about finding Jesus. How serious are we about it.
But seeking Jesus is only part of it. The wise men were seeking Jesus because they wanted to worship him. Our passage tells us that “on coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him.” This was more than the dedication that would be given to an ordinary King; ordinary kings were honoured but they were not worshipped: worship belonged to God and God alone. By bowing down and worshipping the infant Jesus the wise men were saying something very profound about Jesus, they were saying that he was God.
The three gifts given by the wise men reinforce their view of Jesus. By presenting Jesus with gold they were acknowledging that he was a king. Jesus was King of the Jews by birthright because he was of the line of David, but he was also the heavenly king of kings whose reign would never end. By presenting him with incense they were acknowledging that Jesus was a priest. Jesus is our great High Priest who fulfilled that role by bringing man and God together by his glorious self sacrifice. Myrrh was used for embalming the dead. The gift of myrrh was an acknowledgement that Jesus would die on the cross, a foretelling of his ultimate fate.
Like the wise men we have the advantage of knowing who Jesus was, what he came to do and his ultimate fate. We know from the gospels and other books of the New Testament that Jesus was and in not only a king, but the Kings of Kings who was raised from the dead and is seated at God’s right hand in heaven, the King who will return to this earth in glory to rule forever. We know that Jesus was our great High Priest who spent three years teaching us what God is really like and what our Heavenly Father wants from his children, to love and worship him forever. We know that Jesus died on the cross for our sins so that we might be forgiven. We know much more than the wise men knew, yet their response was to worship Jesus. What is our response?
Over the next couple of weeks many Methodist churches across Britain will be holding their covenant service. Covenant is another word for agreement. The agreement we make with God during the covenant service is a profound and far reaching one. We promise to give ourselves fully and completely to God, to allow him complete control over every aspect of our lives both now and in the future. We promise to give God everything, to hold nothing back. That is the response we should make to Jesus. He gave everything for us. He came from the glory and majesty of heaven into the form of a helpless baby. The God who had limitless power endured the limitations of a human being. He suffered rejection, torture and one of the most horrible forms of execution ever devised by man for us; all because he loves us. He gave everything for us. What can we do in response but worship him and give him everything we have and everything we are?
