Strange and important gifts at Epiphany
From Bishop Martin ...
I once knew a little boy who learnt Christmas carols before he could read. He learnt them by listening to the singing of people around him. He was convinced that the gifts which the wise men brought with them for the baby Jesus were: “gold, mare and Frank-sent-this”!
When we know that the gifts are really gold, myrrh and frankincense, we’re not necessarily any the wiser. Gold we can understand. Gold would come in very handy, especially for a young family soon to become refugees in Egypt. I suspect we could all imagine what we would do with an unexpected gift of gold, especially with our world- and personal-economic situations being as they are. But what would we do with the presents of myrrh and frankincense? What for that matter would a tiny baby, or even his parents do with them?
Well actually, these gifts are more symbolic than they are practical. Gold is well-known as a present fit for a King. How much more opulent or expensive could you get than a heavy lump of gold? This present isn’t so much intended as a boost to the bank balance, rather it serves as a pointer to the royal pedigree of the tiny baby sleeping in a cattle trough. Even though his parents are ordinary people from an ordinary town ‘up North’, the visitors from the east recognise Jesus for who he is – the child born to be King – and they bring him gold.
Then the frankincense and myrrh are symbolic gifts too. Frankincense was burned during worship in Jesus’ day. The smoke drifting thickly upwards was seen as symbolic of the prayers offered up to God. As the prayers of the people were offered to almighty God, so the scent of the incense would fill the building, and would hang on peoples’ clothes afterwards as reminders of the prayers they had prayed. The wonder and surprise of Christmas is not that our prayers have found their way to God, but rather that God has found his way to us. Almighty God stoops down to earth and allows his love to become flesh and blood. The new-born child visited by the wise men is God in human form, God expressed in terms we can understand. This child would grow up to be the man who could speak God’s words, could perform God’s acts and who could love with God’s never-ending love.
Then finally, the gift of myrrh. Myrrh was used in biblical times to embalm the bodies of dead people. A strange present to give to a new-born baby, you might say. But remember it is a symbolic, not a practical gift. So here is a pointer right at the beginning of Jesus’ life that his death was going to be an important part of who he was, that he was born to die for others, that his death would be the ultimate expression of God’s love and God’s concern for all humankind.
The gifts that were brought for the Christ-child by the wise men (who had travelled so far from the East) were strange gifts, but they are important gifts. They point forwards to so much. They point forwards to the young man who would walk the length and the breadth of the Holy Land speaking of God, doing God’s things, sharing God’s love, pouring himself out for the sake of the whole world, defeating death and bringing new life. These strange gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh speak of the Prince of Peace, they speak of Emmanuel ‘God-with-us’, they speak of God’s ultimate sacrifice and victory. But these strange gifts only point towards the most important Christmas present ever – that is the gift of God himself, God in human form, God in your life – He is a gift who is still offered today, to us all.
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