[CatherineTorpey]

Merry Christmas and happy new year!

Sunday will be the 8th day of Christmas. I’m so delighted that Middle is doing a whole 12 Days of Christmas thing! So let’s keep celebrating the coming of the “Niño Dios” (baby God)! Also, happy new year! May this be a year of health and happiness for all of us.

Rev. Natalie is preaching on “Home by Another Road.” Her text is Matthew 2:1-12. This is the story of the Magi, which is celebrated on January 6, called Three Kings Day popularly and Epiphany liturgically. Traditionally in Latin America, Three Kings Day has been more of a fun celebration than Christmas Day; it was the day gifts were given, echoing the giving of the gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The Christmas story appears only in Matthew and in Luke, and they are two very different stories which liturgically we blend. We think of the Magi (or “wise men” as the King James had translated it) coming to the manger, but that mixes the stories of Luke and Matthew. There are no shepherds nor manger in the story that Matthew tells. Here, it says that the Magi arrived at the “house” where the child was.

Matthew’s story is full of important people like Herod, the chief priests and teachers of the law, and the Magi, who represent the wisdom of the East (Persia). It is also all about Joseph, and messages in Matthew are received in dreams, not by direct interactions with angels.

The word Magi is, of course, the same root as “magic”. It is the plural of the word Magus (Latin), and the word originally comes from the Median language. Medes was a culture in modern-day Iran, later populated by Persians. These people were known for their astrological knowledge.

Later tradition numbers the Magi as 3 and named them Balthazar, Caspar and Melchior. Matthew doesn’t state the names nor does it even say that there were 3. Apparently, there were lots of different ideas about exactly who they might have been. The names of Balthazar, Caspar and Melchior might have stuck because of some magnificent mosaics made in the 6th century in a church in Ravenna, Italy, where they were depicted with those names inscribed below.

Balthazar came to be depicted as a black man over the centuries, perhaps because the wise men came to be seen as representing all people from all continents. This is an article from The Root which asks why one of the Wise Men is black. It’s a nicely written analysis of the painting (in the form of a triptych) by 15th century Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch, called “Adoration of the Magi,” which can be found here.

If you wish to do your own little study, it is always fun to compare and contrast Matthew’s version of the birth narrative with Luke’s version. For Matthew, the whole story is found in the first two chapters. For Luke, there is first the story of John the Baptist, and then the story of Jesus’ birth begins at 1:26 and ends at 2:40.

See you at 10am on Zoom!

[CatherineTorpey]

Marty, I believe this is the movie you referred to, “The Fourth Wise Man”?

https://youtu.be/pPOOW0wDjEU

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