Today we celebrate wisdom from the East or rather we see that the Christ can mean many things to many people if only we accept those who see Christ differently from us. What opportunities are there that we miss because of our eyes and our hearts that are directed away from God's presence by our own thinking. Just look at the Gospel story which is only present in Matthew's gospel and nowhere else to this extent (Mat. 2:1-12). Tradition suggests that it was three magi or wise men simply as a result of the three gifts, an assumption and perhaps one that does what we all do when we ass-u-me. Tradition also speaks of another fourth King / wise man who did not quite make it in time but spent all his gift on assisting various people on his journey through life (see Van Dyke's book published in 1896). So perhaps it is of no consequence if it was two, three, four or more magi it just shows that there were others in the world who accepted the presence of God within the Christ child.
For us this is the important message that comes from the story in Matthew's gospel. It is not the gifts or anything else that is connected with the story other than the fact that these were people not connected in any way to the Jewish religion who understood that God was incarnate. This extraordinary understanding that is inherent in the wisdom of these people from a different religious background, of a person who embodies everything that God wants from creation. A deep basic understanding that no matter the persons birth or their status or any other thing that we can think to divide people and communities God loves the other and the other loves God in return. We can only embody this understanding in our hearts if we truly grasp that the other is one and the same as ourselves. The wise men show us the way forward and determine our course into the future and the gifts if we must include them pave the path that we must take. The inclusion of the gifts into the story are but symbols and signs for us to read as we move along the path of life and towards God.
Let's just change things about a bit and look at the gifts from the point of view of the three monkeys. You know the ones see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. We start with the first of the gifts which corresponds very neatly to all of them. The riches of Gold that signifies kingship in our tradition is also truly representative of our current world experience. We just need to think of recent exposes with regards to the disbursement of grants and bribes in many places through out the world. The gold and its signifying of wealth has the dark side of preventing words being said when needed to ensure justice, for others to turn a blind eye or ear to what we see as corrupt and less then loving ways within communities and societies throughout the world. Gold's riches should encourage us to speak out for justice and never to turn a blind eye or deaf ear to those in need but rather to pave the path to communities rich in love and awareness of their neighbour. This is God's gold offered and accepted by Christ.
The second of the traditional gifts actually point to the church and indeed in many ways to the clergy themselves. This gift speaks to us of the priesthood a recognition of Christ our great high priest who ministers from the crib to those who come to adore him. Yet, when we look at this gift it so often that the church blinds itself to hypocrisy and injustice in the world failing to speak out. More often then not it is often those who should no better who, like the Pharisees criticised by Christ, lead believers away from love by not listening to truth and only believing what they want rather than what God requires. Death comes to us in many ways and Myrrh reminds us of this fact. The very point of death is that it is part of our being and should not be denied. Christ accepts death as part of the way to a new life but we so often deny death or else assist in true death rather than renewal into a new life blessed by God. The reason we deny death is that we do not want to change or have to go through the process of change. This is what the gift of myrrh challenges us with that sometimes we have to die to ourselves and our lives to move into a new life of love and understanding. This often means change in all of its difficulties and challenges. It serves us better to accept the gift as the Christ child does knowing that change is as inevitable as death and taxes to bring God's love into the world.
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