Sermon preached at St. John’s Church
Stamford, Connecticut
January 5, 2025 / Second Sunday after Christmas Day
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
Matthew 2:1-12
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is a very rare thing indeed that we should be able to worship together on both the first and the twelfth days of Christmas. And so we get to be together to hear one of the most significant parts of the Christmas story, which often goes unread and unpreached in church. Because of all the characters who surround the birth of Jesus Christ, the most enigmatic are the wise men from the east.
We don’t know much about them: they are mentioned only in St Matthew’s gospel, as we have heard; we don’t know where in “the East” they were from, or how they came to formulate their plan to follow a star. In older English translations of the New Testament, they are referred to as kings, or wise men, or even astrologers.[1] The gospels do not specify that there were three of them, only that three was the number of their gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
What little we know about the wise men has the effect of highlighting what we do know about them, which is that they “observed his star at its rising, and [came] to pay him homage.”[2] These men were not Jews, and yet they travelled over what we can assume was difficult terrain to kneel at the feet of what for them was a foreign monarch. The tribute they paid him was not merely the gifts: Upon finding the house where Jesus was, St Matthew tells us, “they were overwhelmed with joy,” and they knelt down and paid homage to the infant king.[3]
One of the biggest challenges to faith is what can seem to be the enormous distance of time and space between the gospel narratives, with their often inscrutable cast of characters, odd narratives, and improbable events, and the lives we live in the here and now. But I would say that we are not by a long shot the first people in the history of Christianity to observe that distance. Perhaps surprisingly, that gulf can actually be useful.
There is a German Christmas carol, published in about 1870, the text of which we heard in its English translation at the Christmas pageant back at the beginning of December. This carol, written by Peter Cornelius and entitled simply “The Three Kings,” is mainly a restatement in verse of the narrative of St Matthew’s gospel narrative, and it underlines the devotional quality of the wise men’s visit:
Three Kings from Persian lands afar
to Jordan follow the pointing star:
and this the quest of the travellers three,
where the new-born King of the Jews may be.
Full royal gifts they bear for the King;
Gold, incense, myrrh are their offering.[4]
As you can hear, the first verse retells St Matthew’s narrative, as does the second verse; the third verse, however, turns the focus on its end: the third verse is not about the kings, living all those years ago halfway around the world. The third verse is about us.
Thou child of man, lo, to Bethlehem
the Kings are travelling, travel with them!
The star of mercy, the star of grace,
shall lead thy heart to its resting place.
Gold, incense, myrrh thou canst not bring;
offer thy heart to the infant King.
We know that the wise men came to Bethlehem from a great distance and at some expense to themselves, and we know that their gifts were costly, gifts appropriate to a monarch: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But what about those of us who are not kings, who might not be wise, who do not have such things to lay at the feet of Jesus? As the poet reminds us, and as St Matthew tells us, it was not merely the outward gifts that the wise men brought; they came to pay him homage, to fall at his feet with joy and devotion, and in that, we can travel with them, we can join them, we can offer what we have to give, which is the only thing valuable enough to devote to the king of the universe: our hearts. That’s what we can bring to the manger.
In 1872, the English poet Christina Rossetti would echo and highlight again this contrast, in the text of what is now her more famous poem, “In the bleak midwinter.” You will know the final verse well:
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am? —
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him, —
Give my heart.[5]
In today’s second lesson, in the letter to the Ephesians, we hear that “[God the Father] destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”[6]
A little later in his letter, the apostle underlines the significance of this gift with a prayer. He prays that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.”[7] The wise men followed the star, looking to find the kind of enlightenment that is fitting to wise men. We may think of ourselves, living in the 21st century with our little devices in our pockets, as much wiser than a group of ancient astrologers, but we would probably be wrong.
As we know very well, our world supplies its own orthodoxies, its own laws about who we should be and how we should live, and most of those don’t set us up for either success or joy. At Christmas, the Word made Flesh who is Jesus Christ comes to us unbidden, to redeem us, to rescue us from the power of those orthodoxies and restore our proper human nature. When St John writes that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory… full of grace and truth… From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace,” we are reminded that it is through Christ – through the “new light of [the] incarnate Word” – that we have received grace upon grace, by which the Holy Spirit works his gifts within us and which makes manifest in us our “adoption… through Jesus Christ.”
That is what happens when we offer to Jesus what it is that we can: our hearts, or, as we say in the eucharistic prayer, our “selves, our souls and bodies.” The poets remind us that what may seem to be the most obvious gift is also the most precious, and therefore more appropriate even than the gold, frankincense, and myrrh that we can recite. And when we do this, God returns to us the gift of a renewed spirit, of a changed life, of an existence in the Lord Jesus characterized by the same joy experienced by the wise men upon arriving in Bethlehem.
Those wise men came to the manger, and they left by another way. Having offered not only their gifts, but also themselves, they left transformed, having found in the Christ Child the way to lives that could be, that had the capacity to feel and be “overwhelmed with joy.” If and when you bring your gift to the manger, God promises that he will enlighten the eyes of your hearts, and that you also may know the hope to which he has called you.
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him, —
Give my heart.
AMEN.