The Wise Men Who Sought Jesus

Pastor's Christmas Message

    ​When it comes to the narratives of Jesus’s birth and baptism, there are many aspects of both stories to explore and further contemplate. As priests, we try to approach each year’s Christmas message from a different one of these aspects. This is so that it doesn’t sound too much like the same message every year.
      There are a lot of elements to the story, so there is a lot with which to engage. This year, the element that got me thinking the most was the story of the wise men who came from the east seeking the newborn Christ child around the time he was born.
     In the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2 (which we read during the Christmas Eve Badarak), we read the following:
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.
When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea…Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. (Matthew 2:1-12, NRSV)

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The Three Magi, depicted in a medieval Armenian miniature illustration

There are a few things that stand out to me from this part of the story and I wanted to share them with your on this beautiful Christmas morning.

1. The wise men were actually known as “magi,” or “մոգ” in Armenian. A “magus” was an astrologer, sorcerer or magician of ancient times. This is where we get the word “magic” from and it’s kind of where we get the modern idea of a magician from – someone who can understand and manipulate the elements and make extraordinary things happen from the ordinary. Traditionally, they are depicted as a group of three, although the biblical narrative does not specify exactly how many they were. There could have been five or there could have been five thousand. The reason they are traditionally depicted as three, however, is because the Bible does record the three gifts that they brought to the newborn Christ – gold, myrrh and frankincense. One of my favorite Gary Larson comics is the one that depicts a fourth wise man walking away from Jesus’s house with a disappointed look on his face, over the caption, “Unbeknownst to most theologians, there was a fourth wise man, who was turned away for bringing a fruitcake.”
2. So, who were these magi – these magicians, these astrologers, these wise men – that came from distant lands in the east? What business did they have coming to Judea? They are often referred to or depicted as kings. Whether or not this meant they were rulers of kingdoms in the traditional sense, or simply that they were men of great means (no doubt brought about by their immense knowledge) who lived like kings or were respected like kings, we cannot be sure. It seems, however, clear that they were men with some kind of power and means at their disposal. They were able to spend most of their time studying oracles and prophecies of foreign religions in far-flung lands. They were able to devote themselves to the long, drawn out, painstaking study of stars and constellations. They were able to take a leave of absence from their day jobs and make an incredibly long journey to check out this latest prophecy in person. Lastly, they were able to bring some of the most precious commodities of the time – a metal like gold and spices like myrrh and frankincense. These were precious and expensive elements at the time, but they were able to make their journey with them in tow.
3. Most importantly, however, is the almost incredible way they “got it right” when it came to finding “the real deal” in saviors of the world. At the time, there were many people in many religions around the world that were prophesying and proclaiming one Messiah or another, one manifestation of the divine here or there. The wise men were like the venture capitalists of big religious events. They kept tabs on the market of religions around the world, and when they saw something that seemed like a genuine “real deal” they went for it. And the way they went after it! These men of incredible intellectual and financial wealth saw their task as something almost scientific. The methodology they used in garnering the necessary information, the way they were able to cross reference it with their database of knowledge and the precision with which they were able to narrow down the time and place of the defining moment of entire history – the birth and revelation of divine savior of the world – is nothing short of breathtaking. These were indeed the great scientists of their day and the apex of their scientific knowledge led them to follow a star to find a tiny newborn thousands of miles away. The NRSV version of the text waters it down a little bit, using the phrase “pay him homage.” But we should make no mistake: they sought him out in order to worship him. The Armenian word used, which is երկիրպագանել (“to bow down/worship”) makes that abundantly clear. The scripture tells that they were “overwhelmed with joy” when the star they were following stopped over Jesus’s house. That doesn’t sound like the mere adventure seeker to me. They did not go on a fact finding mission, or out of curiosity or simply as observers to what they thought might be an important event to a foreign people in a particular land. No… they went to fall down before him and worship him as the newborn king and savior of the world and to offer him gifts out of their abundance. Contrast this with the scientific movement of the modern day, which has led most in the scientific fields to skepticism about the divine, or in many cases avowed atheism. It’s sad to think that if all the stars were to have lined up for this great event to take place in our modern age, anyone who would have gone to the great lengths that the wise men did would be ridiculed as fools, rather than revered and labeled as wise men.

But for us, that is neither here or there. What’s important to us is the question “what can we learn from the wise men today?”

1. Like the wise men sought out the newborn Christ, to seek out Jesus Christ in our life is what it truly means to be wise.
2. Like the wise men used their remarkable knowledge to find God and his glory, to use our knowledge for the glory of God is the most blessed way to live.
3. Like the wise men travelled great lengths to reach the Lord, we should go to great lengths to find God in our lives – because the results won’t let us down.
4. The scripture says that when the star they were following stopped over the house where Jesus was, they were “overwhelmed with joy.” Our Lord Jesus Christ can become our joy in life as well.
5. Lastly, like the wise men, when they found Jesus Christ our Lord, they fell down in worship and gave him gifts, we, too, can give him the gift of our heart and our mind and our soul.

    Dearly beloved, it’s the fools of the world that do not seek after our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Psalmist says, “The fool says in his heart ‘there is no God.’” (Psalm 54:1)
The wise men from the Gospel were no fools… they sought after the one who has been revealed as God and king and lord.
    Wise men sought him way back then… wise men still seek him today.
   We don’t need to be magi or kings or part of the intelligentsia to be considered wise men… we only need to seek after our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the light that shines today from his heavenly face. Amen.

Prayerfully,
Fr. Stephan Baljian, Pastor
​Holy Nativity & Theophany 2024