Scripture reading: Jeremiah 31:7-14.

Sermon text: Matthew 2:1-12.

The trip covered anywhere from 1,000 to 1,200 miles, depending on the city where it began. The journey would have taken the travelers through at least 5 modern nations. For those who wonder about these things, the record states they stopped and asked for directions at least once. Then, after throwing the regional capital into complete chaos, they finished the trip only a few miles south of the place where a pretender king started plotting the demise of the One they had traveled so far to see.

The story of the Wise Men, recorded in Scripture only in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, has fascinated its readers for centuries. The visit was also recorded in paint in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Church history, as early as Justin Martyr in the second century A.D., attests to this location of Jesus’ birth. The mosaic of the Wise Men in the Church literally saved the church from destruction during the Persian raid of the Holy Land in A.D. 614.  When the Persian soldiers entered the church, they saw a picture of the Wise Men, recognized the Persian clothes in the picture, and left the church undamaged.

What propelled the Wise Men to travel the distance between Tuscaloosa and New York City? What caused these Persians — who, by the way, didn’t worship the Jewish God — to spend months away from their homes and families to worship the “King of the Jews?” Their story should speak to the Church today and cause us to consider more deeply the calling of Jesus in our lives.

The story of the Wise Men’s journey includes the tense relations between the Roman Empire and Parthia, the successor empire to the Persian Empire that arose after the fall of the Greek Seleucid Empire in the third century B.C. Rome and Parthia began fighting each other in the last days of the Roman Republic. The 2 empires would fight a series of periodic wars for Mesopotamia over the next 7 centuries. The Parthians had invaded Judea in 40 B.C. and replaced the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus II with his nephew Antigonus.

The story also includes a direct link to Herod the Great, the Idumean who, with Roman aid, overthrew Antigonus and ended the Hasmonean kingdom in 36 B.C. Remember this fact: Herod overthrew the Parthian-installed ruler of Jerusalem to establish his own kingdom, a feat he could not have accomplished without Roman legions.

As an Idumean, Herod the Great’s family had undergone conversion to Judaism under John Hyrcanus roughly a century earlier. Herod considered himself a Jew, although he certainly lived like a Roman and felt more comfortable with the Romans than with his Jewish subjects.

These political facts help explain why Jerusalem erupted into pandemonium when the Persian Wise Men appeared at Herod’s capital asking, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” St. Matthew’s next verse ranks as one of the greatest understatements in history: “When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.” Herod thought he had solidified Roman rule and settled the situation in Judea; now, several high ranking subjects from the Parthian Empire stood before him, asking where they could find the “king of the Jews.”

For Herod, the situation grew worse. Notice the last words of the Wise Men: “we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” Those last words regarding worship threw yet another wrinkle into the complex threads swirling around Herod. Herod knew the Persians didn’t worship men; they worshiped Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god. Herod heard the word “worship” and quickly understood  that, in addition to the threat of Parthian interference in the Roman Empire, the Jews themselves had another interpretation of the Wise Men’s words: Their Messiah had been born. The legitimate heir to David’s throne had arrived. Herod’s ruthless yet tenuous hold on his kingdom seemed on the verge of slipping through his fingers.

With all these factors churning in his mind, Herod quickly gathered all the Jewish authorities to demand where, according to the Scriptures, the Messiah would come. The Jewish leaders knew they had better find an answer fast. Given his mood, Herod would just as soon execute someone as receive an answer.

Have you ever heard someone in a pressure situation give an answer to someone demanding a question? The Jews didn’t merely answer Herod’s question; they gave him every tidbit of information they had found and prayed silently he would direct his wrath elsewhere. “They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: “And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.”’” I suspect a lot of Jews prayed that night thanking God Herod redirected his wrath elsewhere.

Herod’s instructions to the Wise Men provide a lot of insight into his methods of holding power. Instead of tagging along with the travelers — an act he could never have managed without word reaching Bethlehem — he instead sent the Wise Men on their way, but with a pious twist: “When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.”

Can you imagine the reaction of the Wise Men when they realized they were literally only 7 miles from their destination? After a journey of over 1,000 miles, they spent only a few hours finishing the trip. Then, when they found Jesus, “They fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.”

First, these men, worshippers of a pagan god, “fell down” before Jesus, the Child. The Greek words used in this sentence implies that the Wise Men recognized Jesus as more than a human king; they worshiped Him as God. As Zoroastrians, the Wise Men would never have fallen on their faces to worship a human. The Wise Men recognized, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, that they worshiped God Himself. St. Luke recorded that both Simeon and Anna recognized Jesus as the Messiah, but the Wise Men are the first people listed as worshiping Him as God.

Since they were coming to worship a king and God, the Wise Men wouldn’t have brought only a few gold coins and a couple of sticks of incense; they would have brought a fortune to present to this king. The gifts these men presented came just in time. Herod would tolerate no threat to his rule. St. Matthew recorded that, after the Wise Men left, “An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod.” The gifts provided by the Wise Men were sufficient to pay for the trip to Egypt (probably to Alexandria, the site of one of the largest Jewish population in the Empire outside Judea) and then cover the expenses of the family’s life there.

St. Matthew dutifully reported Herod’s response when the Wise Men failed to return to Jerusalem. Rather than try to find the Holy Family himself, Herod “became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.” About this time in his reign, Herod also executed his adult son Antipater for treason. When Caesar Augustus heard of the massacre of the children in Bethlehem and Antipater’s execution, he is reported to have said, “It is better to be Herod's hog than his son.”

Every time we read St. Matthew’s account of the Wise Men’s visit to Bethlehem, we face a host of questions. Why did these men consent to undertake this journey? Given their Zoroastrian origin, how did they recognize Jesus as God, the One worthy of their worship? Did their encounter with Jesus change their lives?

First, I believe the Wise Men undertook the journey because they realized something significant happened in Bethlehem. Remember the political situation I described earlier, and think of what these men faced when they approached the border with the Roman Empire. The Wise Men would have known the history between their country and Herod as well. Yet, they considered the calling of the star worth pursuing in spite of the dangers.

I think we sometimes act as if God would never call us to do anything dangerous as defined by our definition of danger. However, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German martyr of World War II, once said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” If you think God would never call you to do something beyond what you fell comfortable doing, you’re following a different god than the One who sent a star to guide Wise Men to His Son. God sent His Son, Jesus, to the world to die for our salvation. As our Lord, Jesus has called believers to participate in His redemption of humanity, and He reserves the right to send us where He chooses.

God also helped the Wise Men recognize the importance of Jesus’ birth. Countless children were born the day of Jesus’ birth, but Jesus’ birth by the Virgin Mary signified that God Himself had come into the world to fulfill the prophecies of the Prophets. The Prophets had foretold that God would one day send a Messiah to raise Israel above her enemies. Israel over the centuries mistook their enemies. Israel in Jesus’ day thought Rome and the Gentiles were their worst enemies. God recognized sin and death as the worst enemies of humanity. Jesus came into the world to give us victory over sin and death, a victory He announced to the world with His resurrection. We celebrate Jesus’ birth because of His resurrection.

There’s another point to the Wise Men’s visit with Jesus. When we read the prophetic books in the Old Testament, we find numerous prophecies foretelling that Gentiles would come to Israel to worship the true God. In a sense, the prophets foretold that the Wise Men would recognize Jesus as God and, therefore, as worthy of their worship. The prophet Isaiah wrote that God would send His Servant as “a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6; see also Isaiah chapters 61 and 62). The Jews had focused so intently on their own sufferings over the 2 centuries before Jesus’ birth they forgot that God intended to redeem all the nations, not merely their own. In Acts 2, St. Luke noted that “Parthians and Medes and Elamites”  were included among the foreign Jews who heard the gospel message on the Day of Pentecost and believed in Jesus as the Messiah. Perhaps some of those new believers at Pentecost had heard stories of the Wise Men’s journey over the decades and recognized Jesus’ name from the stories.

“Where is our King?” The question the Wise Men asked Herod remains the most important question we can ask. The Wise Men considered Jesus worth the trip of a lifetime. Your sin caused Jesus to come from heaven to earth. Jesus, the Lord of Creation, has come to redeem humanity and win victory over sin and death for us. Everyone who confesses Jesus as Lord, believing in His resurrection, receives the call of a lifetime: The call to serve in His kingdom, working to carry the gospel to a fallen world.