Gifts to Save a Mother: A Sermon for Epiphany

I have to admit that each time I go to write a sermon, I learn new things. You know how it is? When you read something again and again, you discover things you didn’t see before. And when reading more commentaries, there are always new perspectives to be found.

            The story of Epiphany is not an unfamiliar one. As we all know from our nativity sets, some very special guests attended the birth of the Jesus: wise men from the east, bearing gifts for the newborn king - gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew 2:11 states: "On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh." So, Epiphany is a festival that commemorates the visit of the magi from the east and symbolizes the manifestation of the baby Jesus to the world.

            But is that how the story really goes? There are many questions that arise from Matthew’s version of the story, and there are many perspectives of this tale.

In fact, the scriptures aren’t very forthcoming with the details around the arrival of the magi. Compared to the Bible’s account of the royal visit, the story we tell is often padded with a bit of extra information. History and tradition have done their part to fill in the details regarding these visitors, including their number, names, and the timing of their arrival.

            For example, it isn’t very likely that the magi were there for Jesus’ birth. Unlike the shepherds who went to Bethlehem right after the angel had told them, “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior” (Luke 2:11), the magi arrived later. From their initial sighting of the star to their arrival in Bethlehem after a stop in Jerusalem, considerable time would have elapsed. After all, Herod ordered all boys under the age of two to be killed, not just infants a few months or weeks old (2:16). Moreover, verse 11 says, “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother.” By then, the holy family would have long since left the temporary shelter where the shepherds first visited for more appropriate lodging.

One aspect of the visit that has largely escaped alteration is the list of gifts presented to Jesus: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Matthew 2:11 goes like this, “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.”

Upon this verse, much folk theology has been built.  The story of the wise men, or magi, or astrologers, coming to visit Mary is an important part of our cultural understanding of Jesus’ birth. One thing needs to be clear, despite what the song says, they were not kings. There isn’t really a reason to believe there were three of them. There were three different gifts, but no where does it number the men. I don’t bring this up to make any grand theological point other than to remind us of how often we read into Scripture, and how difficult it can be to unpack centuries of tradition.

Now, if you’re wondering what use an infant would have for these gifts, you’re not alone. The primary significance of the gifts lay in their great value; they were indeed gifts fit for a king because gold, frankincense, and myrrh are expensive luxury items. These valuable gifts were clearly intended to honor Jesus, but it’s possible they carried another meaning.

The traditional interpretation of the gifts goes something like this:

1.      Gold: Gold is a precious metal and available only to royalty and nobility. It is a gift for royalty, so giving Jesus this valuable gift acknowledged that he was part of a royal line.

2.      Frankincense: Frankincense is an expensive perfume or incense that was burned as a part of ceremonial worship in The Temple. This gift signifies Jesus’s divinity.

3.      Myrrh: Myrrh was most commonly used among wealthy Jews as an anointing oil for the dead. Thus, the myrrh is seen as a foreshadowing of Jesus’s death and a reminder of his mortality.

When we look at what our tradition tells us about these gifts, it makes sense, right? Jesus is a royal king brought to us by God to live with us on earth only to die for us on the cross. Looking at it, perhaps the gifts fit just a little too perfectly, though. I mean, how would strangers from the East have known Jewish ritual customs of the Temple? And it doesn’t say that they worshiped him as a deity.  Instead, they “paid him homage.” Also, isn’t every baby mortal? Why would anyone need to be reminded that a king will someday die?

If we look at things from a different perspective, maybe there is another significance behind the gifts brought to Mary and her son that night?

Frankincense and myrrh have been used for medicinal purposes for over 5,000 years in places like India and Saudi Arabia. I can’t vouch for their specific purpose or their effectiveness, but these magi would have had that knowledge and obviously thought that Mary might need these medicines after given birth to a baby. Perhaps even the baby himself might have needed some medicinal care.

Though we often sing “Silent Night,” anyone that has been anywhere near the birth of a child knows that there is nothing silent about the experience. Giving birth is a messy and dangerous. Today a mother dies in childbirth once every two minutes. In many parts of the world, it is the most dangerous thing a woman can do. And it’s not like Mary gave birth in a full-staffed hospital. No matter which gospel account you read, Mary’s pregnancy didn’t end in clean, sterile conditions.

So, while we have retrospectively given divine significance to the gifts brought by the magi, it is quite possible that they brought these gifts with practical reasons in mind. It is quite possible that without the gifts from the magi, Mary would not have survived the birth of Jesus. Though Mary gets the short end of the stick through much of the book of Matthew, this act of gift-giving is a reminder of how important a mother is to a child. By choosing to give especially frankincense and myrrh, the magi were valuing the life of a woman.

Perhaps on this day of Epiphany we can remember to not only celebrate the revelation of the baby Jesus, but to also remember Mary, a woman who risked her life in many ways to give birth to the Messiah, the king of kings, and to remember all who may be risking their lives to carry their babies to term and who may be delivering their babies in less-than-ideal circumstances.

Find a women’s shelter near you. Bring to them a gift in honour of Mary – diapers, onesies, blankets, socks, lotions, shampoos, and more. Phone ahead and see what they need. This small act of mercy might help a mother care for her child. And just maybe, a relationship will begin to build between you and that shelter, between the church and that shelter. Like the Magi so long ago, may we pay homage to the newborn King by making sure his mother survives.