Magi, kings and ancient prophecies

The presents have been opened, the toys have been played with and broken, at long last the relations have gone, and all that remains is the Christmas cake and the decorations. Christmas is over and we begin a new year. In the Christian calendar we move from Christmas to Epiphany, from the birth of Christ, to the disclosure to the Gentiles. Today, as we conclude our sermon series on Matthew 2 what do we to make of it? It’s not all about camels and donkeys, tinsel and snow. Matthew 2 is more about dreams and angels, kings and magi, and the fulfilment of ancient prophecies.

The trouble is we’ve heard the story many times before. Or, perhaps, we think we’ve heard it. But our impressions are more from school nativity plays, Christmas cards, painting, hymns and films and not from the Bible. In the gospels there is no clear timeline. How does Matthew tie-in with Luke? And the death of the baby boys would suggest events taking place two years after the birth of Jesus. And how many magi were there (we only assume there were three because there were three gifts). And where did these events take place? Was it in Jerusalem and Bethlehem? And after a few years away in Egypt the holy family returned but why did they settle in Nazareth? And the images we have in our minds may not be quite right! Of a king in a palace. Of a baby in a stable. Of three kings on camels. To understand the story I want to refer to two places that are not mentioned in the text but which open it up and help us to understand what was happening.

1. Two Herods

Much of Matthew 2 relates to Herod the Great and there is a passing reference in Matthew 2.22 to one of his sons, Herod Archelaus. There is also the clever juxtaposition of an earthly king and the new-born heavenly king. Herod the Great was a thoroughly nasty piece of work. We know that he was a brutal, violent, unpredictable tyrant. He had ten wives, one of whom he murdered along with three of his sons, and when he died he wanted to have hundreds of Jews executed. He was both mad and bad. No wonder he was so hated and despised. Herod (a half-Jew) was a puppet king who ruled from 37 BC to 4 BC, and this would suggest that Jesus was born in about 6 BC. Yes, 6 BC because a mediaeval monk didn’t have a calculator!

The lasting legacy of Herod the Great was that he was a great builder. Two of his greatest achievements were the Temple in Jerusalem and the port at Caesarea. He erected 15 palaces e.g. in Jerusalem, Jericho, Caesarea, Masada and the Herodium. Both Masada above the Dead Sea, and the Herodium near Bethlehem, were part palace and part fortress. And as Herod’s paranoia increased he became more isolated and withdrew from society. He had poor health and came to a nasty end through chronic kidney disease and Fournier’s gangrene. He died in Jericho and was buried at the Herodium. The Herodium (named after the king) is a most extraordinary place and one of my favourite sites in Israel. It’s a large conical hill just outside of Bethlehem. It was built by slave labour and had commanding views over the surrounding region. The palace was luxurious and to reach it visitors had to climb 200 white marble steps. When the star appeared Herod could have been in his palace in the regional capital (Caesarea), or in Jerusalem or Jericho or more likely with his court and members of his family at the Herodium.

Think about it. Whatever we make of the star that led the magi from the east, why should it lead them seven miles from Bethlehem to Jerusalem? How did the star identify the place? Was it a single beam of light like a search-light or simply bright star-light? Was the divine satnav so inaccurate? Surely it’s more likely that the star led them correctly. It was above Bethlehem and the nearby Herodium and quite naturally the magi assumed that they were to find the king in a palace on a hill rather than in the home of a peasant in the valley. And what are we to make of the killing of the baby boys? Over the centuries tradition greatly overestimated the number who were killed. Some put the massacre as 20,000 or as many as 200,000. But these are guesses and neither figure is correct. It’s more likely to have been about 12 children. At the time Bethlehem was a small village of no more than 500 people. And think about it, if Herod was prepared to murder members of his own family it would have been no big deal to kill a few peasant children. That there were so few may well explain why these deaths were unrecorded elsewhere.

Herod died in 4 BC and his kingdom was divided among his three sons. One of whom was Herod Archelaus (Matthew 2.22) who was reputed to have been more brutal than his father. He was ill-equipped to rule and ten years later was banished by the Romans. In his place they installed their own leaders known as procurators – one of whom was Pontius Pilate. To avoid the wrath of Herod, Joseph took his family to Egypt and lived there for some years before returning to the Holy Land. Egypt had a large Jewish population and so the family could live safely among friends and perhaps relations? Following the death of Herod the Great, Joseph returned to Judea but found that he had been succeeded by Herod Archelaus so he journeyed on north to the Galilee. But have you ever wondered why Joseph moved there? Yes, he had been warned in a dream. Yes, it was safer, out of the way. But there were also economic reasons. He went there looking for work. Joseph was a jobbing builder (he was more than just a carpenter) and it is more than likely that ‘Joseph and Son, builders’ were part of the labour force responsible for the rebuilding of the city of Sepphoris about four miles from Nazareth. Sepphoris was a large and prosperous commercial centre. Today the site has not been fully excavated but what has been found shows that it was a wealthy community with a large synagogue and fine houses.

In the New Testament we read about the small town of Nazareth but not the neighbouring city of Sepphoris. Why was that? Nazareth was the home town of Mary (and perhaps also of Joseph) and where Jesus lived until he was thirty. Later (during the ministry of Jesus) Sepphoris had been eclipsed by Tiberius as the regional capital. So, in reading the narrative in Matthew 2, we need to put it into some sort of geographical context which includes both the Herodium and Sepphoris.

2. Two testaments

As I said just now, much of Matthew 2 is about dreams and angels and the fulfilment of ancient prophecies. But how are we to understand them and what do we make of what they tell us? In the first century, how did God communicate with his people? Obviously through what we call the Old Testament, through the promptings of the Holy Spirit and through dreams. I don’t know what you dream about (mine are usually a strange mixture of recent or rather bizarre happenings) or aimlessly wandering around like Mr Macabre looking for something to turn up! But where there is no other means of communication God uses dreams and visions to communicate directly to his people. And still today, in lands closed to direct Christian mission, dreams feature in the conversion of Muslims. Sceptics question this heavenly intervention. But we must be less critical and more ready to believe in the God whose purposes were being worked out in the lives of a handful of godly men and women – Zechariah and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, Simeon and Anna. And while they were all open to the Lord’s intervention, what about us? Yes, we have the Word of God. Yes, we have the Holy Spirit. But in our lives are we genuinely open to God’s direct intervention?

Here in Matthew 2 are dreams and angels – but what of biblical prophecy? What are we to make of that? All that the gospel writers had was the first testament (what we call the Old Testament): the second testament (the New Testament) had yet to be written, and collated, and authorised. The events concerning the birth of Jesus were recorded by Matthew and Luke – Matthew from Joseph’s angle and Luke from that of Mary the mother of Jesus. Remember too that Luke was a gentile and Matthew was a Jew. And as a Jew Matthew would have been steeped in the writings of the Old Testament. He did not merely record the events / but he saw them through the prism of the Old Testament, through which the LORD had made himself known to his people. In other words there is both continuity and fulfilment. The Old Testament points us forward to the New Testament, and the New Testament expresses a continuity of faith and insight that had prepared the way for the coming of Christ. Jesus put it like this (Matthew 5.17):

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them

One commentator (Don Carson, Matthew) put it like this:

The Old Testament was preparing the way for Christ, anticipating him, pointing to him, leading up to him.

And that is precisely how we should understand these first two chapters in Matthew’s gospel. Matthew was not merely a chronicler of events but one who made connections with the Old Testament (some of which are clear and some are more obscure). Matthew opened doors and we peer inside – sometimes we see clearly but sometimes the light is obscured - and so we must simply trust what he says.

In all of this we need to ask a simple question. Did any of the prophets Isaiah or Jeremiah, or Micah or Hosea know that they were referring to the coming of the Messiah? Probably not, but what they wrote was part of an unfolding plan of salvation that pointed to the one who was yet to come and whose precise identity could not yet be fully discerned. Remember, we have hindsight (we can look back). We can see the sequence of events (we can put the jigsaw pieces together), but they could only hope and anticipate the coming of the LORD’s anointed.

In Christmas services, I’ve often used a prayer which says:

we confess that we have allowed the most important event in history to become dulled by familiarity.

That’s true isn’t it? Our senses have become ‘dulled by familiarity’. Just for a moment, forget all of the commercialisation; of the greed and secularisation of a winter festival, and of the hijacking of the Christian story. Strip that all away and what remains? Too often we over-sentimentalise our reading of the gospels. We turn it into a school nativity story. We buy into traditions and carols quite unrelated to the narrative. We muddle the shepherds with the kings (who were not kings but astrologers) and we introduce camels and donkeys and innkeepers. There were three gifts but were there three givers? And of course there must be snow / and we sing ‘See, amid the winter snow’ – but did these events actually happen in the winter? Were the shepherds throwing snow balls and making a snowman?

At another level we try and become too inclusive, too much concerned with reading back into the text current issues and concerns. The alternative narrative being more about the plight of refugees and of those who are excluded and isolated. Yes, they did have to leave the country. Yes, the leader was a tyrant. Yes, they couldn’t be accommodated in the main part of the house. But remember/they were probably staying with family or friends in Bethlehem. They were not unwelcome strangers. As someone has put it:

The idea that they were in a stable, away from others, alone and outcast, is grammatically and culturally implausible … [Jesus] birth took place in a normal, crowded, warm, welcoming Palestinian home

So we mustn’t get side-tracked and buy into an alternative story. Matthew and Luke are telling us about the Incarnation. That God came to us. That he become one of us. That Jesus come to be the Saviour of the world. That’s what the story is all about and we mustn’t obscure it, embellish it or forget it! Today we have looked at two Herods and two testaments both of which give us the background to the birth of the Lord Jesus: the One who is Immanuel, God with us. In this New Year let’s make that truth central to our lives – that God has come among us to be our Saviour!