A JOURNEY ACROSS ADVENTby Ray Waddle As a kid at Christmastime, I always wanted to play a Wise Man. In the church nativity scenes, the Wise Men had the best parts. They got to carry shiny gifts and wear those beards and make a (late) attention-getting entrance. They got to lead a camel around (if the church budget allowed), or even ride one (if the liability insurance allowed). As an adult, alas, I'm seldom invited to ride a camel stage anymore. But the Wise Men, the Magi, keep arriving at the nativity scene every year, filling the room with wonder, never saying a word. Their mysterious presence never fails to draw my attention. Whether in the gospel story or the neighborhood church stage, they seem bring large human secrets the divine goings-on at the Bethlehem birth, something more than the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. It's December, Advent time, and the Wise Men are on their way to Christmas again. After all these years, we still aren't sure who they are. There's a modern December tradition I savor: the annual news reports the latest wild surmises of scholars about the Wise Men's identity and origins. They were Iraqis, according to a sly recent theory. That is, they were from ancient Mesopotamia, where Iraq is now. It's small world after all. The Gospel of Matthew is the only place in the New Testament that mentions the Wise Men. In the gospel story they got audience with nervous King Herod along the way, so we say they were kings. They followed a star, we say they were astrologers. They brought three gifts, we say there were three of them. Yet the Bible never specifies the number of Wise Men or where they came from, except to say “the East.” Later storytelling traditions impulsively added tantalizing new details, as if to rebuke Matthew for giving us so little in the first place. My favorite Wise Men version comes from the Armenian Infancy Gospel, written probably in the 6th century. They had names — Melkon the Persian, Gaspar the Hindu and Balthasar the Arab. They arrived from Persia with 12,000 soldiers on horseback and a complex array of gifts — aloe, cinnamon, pearls, fancy fabrics and strange books written and sealed by the finger of God foretelling the birth of Christ, according to the Penguin Book of Carols. Later the symbolism of the gifts was simplified: Gold referred to Jesus' status as king, frankincense to Jesus' divinity, myrrh (an embalming spice) to Jesus' death. (Humorist Garrison Keillor has his own theory. The Wise Men arrived bearing gifts of covered dish, which proves they were the first Lutherans.) Theories come and go, but the Wise Men keep showing up, regardless. They embody an unexpected, unpredictable element of the gospel tidings, a chorus of wordless amazement. They bore the difficulties of their long trip and delivered the goods. The goods they brought were affirmations of the senses, materials of the earth, a physical dimension to the story of redemption. The Wise Men were the outsiders. They were the world. They were us. They took a big journey, and so do we, the journey of Advent, the journey of faith. They accepted the role of a lifetime with exemplary grace, they faithfully appeared on the scene, then made their way back home again, surely the greatest unrecorded homecoming in history. They are worthy mentors trekking annually through the pages of the Bible, across winds of resistance and longing, to a nativity scene near you. Ray Waddle, religion editor at |
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