then they wouldn’t have
worried about asking for directions
they’d have turned up on
time,
they’d have brought a
casserole,
they’d have cleaned the
stable
they’d have helped with
the birth
and they’d have brought
some practical presents!
Aye - very funny.
Well since then, some man somewhere has thought about that scenario a little more and suggested that as they left, the conversation between the three wise women might have gone as follows…
Well, you’ll be waiting a
while to get that casserole dish back, then.
And
that was one of your Le Creusets!
Did you see the state of that
old robe she was wearing?
It’s no wonder, I don’t
think Joseph’s even working just now.
What kind of a husband is
he? How much effort does it take to log on to Trip Advisor and book a hotel room?
I always said he was far
too old for her, and you know what – between you and me, I don’t think the baby
looks anything like him!
So maybe it wouldn’t have
been much better after all.
But at least the women might have
brought some practical presents.
And in no small part,
that’s the kind of need we’re trying to meet through Food Angels in our
congregation.
But I think we can be a
wee bit unfair on the Wise Men for choosing to bring gold, frankincense and
myrrh.
As far as they were aware,
they were coming to see an infant King. What do you bring a child who, to the
best of your knowledge, already has everything? He wouldn’t need clothing or
bedding or toys. Plenty of those in a royal palace.
It looks like they wanted
to bring him something that would recognise his status and express their
esteem, and the three items they chose were among the most expensive
commodities available in the ancient world. Gifts that were suitable for
royalty.
I was talking to a lady
the other day who was telling me that when she went to the supermarket with her
newborn baby she’d come home, lift the baby out, and there would be handfuls of
pound coins in the pram. People would slip money into the pram to bless the
baby when she wasn’t looking! It was just something they did in the place where
she was living.
So the gold we understand.
It’s the other two that seem a little bit weird. And what are they anyway –
frankincense and myrrh?
Well both of them are
plant products: hardened, sweet smelling resins that are extracted from trees.
A deep cut is made in the tree’s bark, the resin pours out and hardens into
tears which are collected and used as-is, or sometimes purified. 
Myrrh has a similar kind
of provenance and history, but it’s also thought to have some benefits in pain
relief and because of that it’s often used in traditional medicines and
remedies. Another significant use in the ancient world was in embalming, a
technique perfected in
So there you have it –
gold, frankincense and myrrh. Royal gifts for a baby King. Not practical,
maybe, but fitting.
And we could leave things
there. But there are strong hints in the Scriptures that whether the wise men
realised it or not, these gifts have more significance than we might realise.
7 centuries before the
birth of Christ, the prophet Isaiah spoke of a time when kings from the East
would travel to the Holy Land to pay homage to Israel
“The wealth of the nations
will be brought to you;
From across the sea, their
riches will come.Great caravans of camels will come,
from Midian and Ephah.
They will come from
People will tell the good news of what the Lord has done”.
Frankincense was one of the spices especially bound up with the worship of God in
And myrrh makes a much
later appearance in the Jesus story. As he’s being crucified they offer him
wine mixed with myrrh to drug the pain, but he refuses to drink it; and later
still, when Joseph of Arimathea takes Christ’s body away for burial, the balm
he applies before wrapping him in linen is a mixture of myrrh and aloes.
Tradition holds that these
seemingly odd gifts the wise men bring to Jesus have a deeper meaning because they
point to the three offices of Christ – the gold for his Kingship, the
frankincense for his Divinity, and the Myrrh for his sacrificial death.
Maybe they’re not so
strange after all.
And I want to leave you with another story that tradition brings us, and although you won’t find this in the Bible, the point it makes is entirely sound.
It’s the legend of the fourth wise man..
In the story, his name was
Artaban and he travelled from Persia
On his way to meet the
other three, Artaban met an old Jewish man by the roadside, who was almost
dying from fever and he decided to stay with him until he recovered. But because of that choice, he missed meeting
up with the other three wise men who were already on their way to the West.
The old man told Artaban that the Jewish prophets said the new King would be born in
When he arrived there and
made enquiries, he was told that the other wise men had left 3 days before. A
young mother told him that the family he was seeking had fled, and that the
people of Bethlehem
While Artaban was in Bethlehem
Artaban now had only one
of his gifts left - the pearl, but he decided that whatever else he did, he
would keep on searching for the king.
Finally, after 30 years,
he came to Jerusalem
Artaban wondered whether
he could use this last jewel to save the life of this man, Jesus. But as he
hurried through the streets of the city he came across a young girl who was
crying. She told Artaban she was crying because she was going to be sold into
slavery to pay off her father’s debts. Artaban felt he couldn’t pass by and
leave the girl crying so he gave her the pearl, the last of his jewels, to gain
her freedom.
At that very moment Jesus
passed by carrying his cross to the place of execution. Their eyes met, and in
that moment Artaban knew that this was the king he’d been looking for all these
years.
“My Lord, I’m sorry – I
have no gift to bring you.” he said.
“But how can that be?”
said Artaban. "I’ve never even seen you before today, my Lord”.
“When you did it for the
least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it for me” said the Christ.
Amen
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