Herod had no right to be king. Celebrating the Epiphany of the Lord, we usually focus on the three magi, but we also need to understand the figure of Herod. Herod comes from a family of aristocratic Edomites who converted to Judaism 50 years before, most likely out of political opportunism. After his family jockeyed for power for 50 years, the Romans make him Governor of Judea and then “King of the Jews,” a made-up title. (Saul, David, and Solomon were “King of Israel,” not “King of the Jews.”) By making up this title, the Romans emphasized that the Jews had a king, but no kingdom, no real country – the most brutal oppression yet, as we saw at Christmas.

So Herod is an: Infiltrator, betrayer, cooperator with the Romans, a puppet. In the end, he is a criminal. In the last 10 years of his reign, Herod killed his wife, mother-in-law, and three eldest sons. The governor of a neighboring province wrote: “I’d rather be Herod’s pig than his son.” Herod clings desperately to what is not his own in a naked bid for power. The contrast to the magi could not be more different: They risk seemingly everything for something they don’t need at all.

Wise men or kings did not travel alone. Travelling in those days was extremely dangerous. Lone travelers were subject to harassment, mugging, theft, and worse. The journey was also very long. The Greek word used for the wise men refers to a member of the Zoroastrian priestly caste of ancient Persia, in modern-day Iran (which until recently was one of the most learned, cultured, and storied civilizations in world history). Walking non-stop from the ancient Persian capital to Bethlehem would take 21 days on today’s modern roads, according to Google Maps. Two thousand years ago, the journey was certainly more arduous.

          It would not have just been the three wise men walking to Bethlehem, but a whole caravan of servants, guards, cooks for the entourage, etc. Not only do these three pagan priest-kings bring precious gifts to the Christchild, but the journey alone would have cost literally a fortune, a life’s savings. Even a very rich man could have been bankrupted by such an expedition.

          We refer to them as “magi,” from the Latin word magus, meaning a magician, but these are not conjurers of cheap tricks. Their magic is not in incantations and spells but in seeking the ancient things of the world, searching the past. They search the stars for signs and portents, and see the rising of a new star. However, the stars reveal not the future, but the past. The average star visible by the naked human eye is over a thousand light years away from the earth, meaning that by the time the light that we are actually seeing reaches us, we are seeing something that, at its point of origin, is really the distant past.

          Coming to Bethlehem, the wise men seek something, or rather, someONE, who is more ancient than the wisdom treasured in their homelands, but also something more new. They seek for Wisdom: the wisdom of the ancients, the wisdom of the stars. But what they find is Wisdom incarnate. Picking up on this theme, the liturgy identifies divine Wisdom with Christ in several places. In the late days of Advent, “Wisdom” is one of the titles given to the awaited Savior by the O Antiphons: “O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other mightily, and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.”

          In the week after Christmas, the we return to the Book of Wisdom in an entrance antiphon: “When a profound stillness compassed everything and the night in its swift course was half spent, Your all-powerful Word, O Lord, bounded from heaven’s royal throne,” connecting Christ as the Word with Christ as Wisdom.

          The three wise men, then, sought a new king, sought an ancient wisdom to help them grow in knowledge and stature, but what did the rest of the multitude in that caravan seek? Certainly not all of them shared the great devotion to truth of the Wise. We can picture, “camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow … the camel men cursing and grumbling / And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, / And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, / And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly,” as one 20^th Century poet imagined.

          What were they seeking? Did they even know? Interestingly, the Christchild, thirty years later will ask two new disciples whom he sees following him precisely that question: “What are you looking for?” They seem unsure and respond only, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Not knowing what we are seeking, but seeking it all the same, turns out to be more common than we would think.

          That same 20^th Century poet imagines the reaction of one of the wise men: “Were we led all that way for / Birth or Death? … I had seen birth and death, / But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.”

          Eliot imagines the Wise men no longer being at home after what they have experienced. It has changed them. There has been great joy in finding the newborn King of Kings. But now they are different, very different than their fellow Persians still looking for wisdom in the movements of the stars, not recognizing that, while they studied the ancient past, “When a profound stillness compassed everything and the night in its swift course was half spent, [the] all-powerful Word [has already] bounded from heaven’s royal throne,” and is no longer to be found in the movements of the stars or the divination of oracles, but is here in our midst.

          As we said at Christmas, to the world around us, it is precisely belief in Christ, or at least belief in the actual content of His teachings as relayed in the Church He founded, that seems to have grow old to our world. We would seem to be the ones holed up in our palaces, seeking wisdom in an old world whose time is long past.

          But maybe the world has that idea of Christianity precisely because you and I have not followed the example of the wise men, who after encountering the great newness of faith in Christ, were “no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,” the old set of rules. We too live, “With an alien people clutching their gods,” the gods of materialism and prosperity, the gods of self-determination and choice, or with the modern-day Herods who claim to do Him homage but seek only their own exaltation.

          Like the aged wise man looking back on those surprising events of many decades before, we “could be glad of another death,” because it is not only the birth of Christ they came to adore, but also His royal kingship to proclaim with their gold, HHHHd

is divinity with their incense, and even His death with their myrrh.

          So the question still remains to us: Are we too at home in the old dispensation? Has encountering the Christchild left us glad of another death? Or are we more like Herod, trying to wipe out the new world of grace, or just hoping it will go away?

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

Epiphany of the Lord, A.D. MMXXV

The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot: https://poetryinvoice.ca/read/poems/journey-magi