Kingship or Kin-ship?
A homily shared by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, January 5, 2025, Epiphany Sunday, “Remember.” series.
Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
Some of you may wonder why we still have the Christmas wreaths, tree, and Christ Candle lit today. The liturgical season of Christmas lasts for 12 days, from Christmas Day through the Epiphany which is on January 6th. So today, we are on the 12th day of Christmas. And tonight is the “Twelfth Night.”
“For most of us, Twelfth Night is the day we take down all the Christmas stuff and wrestle a desiccated tree out of the front door [if we haven’t done all that already!], but, up until the late 19th century, 12th Night was the culmination and grand finale of 12 days of celebration, feasting, and merriment, second in importance only to Christmas Day. Fires were lit in the fields and revellers would go from door to door playing practical jokes on their neighbors. Also known as the Feast of Fools, Twelfth Night echoed the ancient Roman mid-winter festival of Saturnalia, in which social order was reversed giving everyone the chance to dispense with normal conventions.” Some of you may know of Shakespeare’s play “Twelfth Night” in which the story is all about the inversion of normal classifications of gender, class, and sexual attraction—a nod to this long tradition of turning things upside down on the final night of the celebration of Christmas.
Food and drink were central in the celebrations of this holiday. The punch, called wassail, was consumed during Christmastime, but especially on Twelfth Night. Around the world, special pastries, such as the tortell and king cake, were baked on Twelfth Night. The celebration of Epiphany on January 6th is the day we remember the story of the magi who came in search of the baby Jesus. So if you ever wondered why there’s a tiny baby in the cake, there you go. Traditionally, if you are the one to find the baby in the king cake, you are given the title of “king” or “queen” for the day and have the honor of bringing the cake to the celebration the following year.
And it seems that those who searched for and found the baby Jesus on the first Epiphany also received the title of “King” even though they were not, in fact, kings. In the actual story in Matthew, there are only two persons designated as “king” (βασιλέως—basileōs in the Greek) and those are King Herod and the one whom the magi sought, the child rumored to be king of the Jews—Jesus. The word magi is from the Greek word μάγοι—magoi, a word of Persian origin that has referred to Zoroastrian priests since at least 520 BCE. So the Magi are not kings but rather learned holy men of a different religious tradition whose practice included astronomy, studying the stars for signs and omens. And [don’t blame the messenger,] not only are they not kings, “but they aren’t necessarily “three” either. The story mentions three gifts (or rather, three types of gifts), but doesn’t specify the number of people who carry them. The gifts themselves are telling, however: gold for a monarch, frankincense for a priest, and myrrh for one who will suffer and die.”
Early on, the story from Matthew got interpreted through the lens of texts like the one we received from Isaiah chapter 60 today: “Nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” Another text, Psalm 72:10-11, reads, “The kings of the West and the islands will pay tribute to him. The kings of Arabia and Ethiopia will offer him gifts. All kings will bow down before him and all nations will serve him.”
It makes sense that interpreters as early as the 40s and 50s of the Common Era would associate the magi with these prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures. And it’s OK for us to sing “We Three Kings” today, so long as we remember the rest of the story and why some of the details matter. So let’s talk about that…
First of all, a key theme in the Gospel according to Matthew is that God’s saving love and grace is not just for one tribe but is extended to all people. The story of the magi at the beginning of Matthew sets this theme in stark relief. These foreigners from a different religious tradition traverse from afar to seek out Jesus and to shower him with gifts. It was they who had keen enough knowledge of the stars to notice what was, for them, a signal of the birth of a great king. Adherents of the Zoroastrian tradition looked for a future savior figure who would bring light and righteousness to the world, similar to the Jewish and Christian concept of the Messiah. If the magi were indeed Zoroastrian priests, this shared concept of a coming savior could explain their interest in Jesus’ birth. Who knows? But, regardless, there must have been a great deal of hope that drove them forward on their way—that this child would bring goodness and justice and joy to the world—no matter where or from whom he came.
And also, importantly, the magi come to the holy family not as conquering kings—not asking for anything, not threatening anything, not forcing anything, but rather they come in humility, kneeling before the child, and offering their best, their richest gifts, as a blessing. We won’t ever know exactly why the however-many magi made their journey, but what a story!
As we begin this new sermon series, “Remember,” a good story is a great place to start. Our stories—family stories, personal stories, faith stories—shape us and give us a sense of identity and belonging. But it’s not just remembering our stories that is important, it’s how we remember and tell our stories. People all over the world tell the story of Jesus, but how do they tell it? How do they interpret it? One of the beautiful things about the so-called “mainline protestant” Christian tradition is that generally speaking we have been trained to listen to many interpretations of the same story, to study deeply the context in which the scripture was written, to question the texts, to put ourselves inside the text to listen for new insight, to do word studies and pay attention to new discoveries from archaeology and other sciences that impact our understanding of the story. This means that over the years, I have shifted or edited my understanding of different stories in the Bible—some of them multiple times! This doesn’t mean that the truth of the story changes, but rather that my perception of that truth continues to deepen and grow. Further, listening to others’ insights into the stories, based on their lived experience, culture, and context also deepens our capacity to receive more of what the story has to teach us.
And so paying attention to the details about this story of magi helps us broaden and deepen our understanding of the story. And that, in turn, affects our sense of what it has to teach us. As we remember this story today, we are reminded that part of the richness of our spiritual tradition comes from the engagement and witness of those outside our own spiritual tradition. Among our spiritual ancestors are likely Persian (modern day Iranian) Zoroastrian priests. They model for us what it means to truly seek God’s saving grace. They are seekers, journeyers, paying keen attention to signs and whispers in their dreams, studying the subtle movements of life and of creation to remain focused on the source of hope and of life. They journeyed in a time of great danger and political scheming and oppression. Yet they found what they sought. They found whom they sought and were filled with overwhelming joy.
These spiritual ancestors of ours were given the name of “kings” to fit into an older story. And over the centuries, powerful people—yes, even kings—have certainly bowed down before Jesus in wonder, thanksgiving, and praise. But the story we tell today is not the story of magi who were or wanted to be kings, but rather of magi who had the opportunity to choose what kind of king they would bow down to.
Their choices were Herod or Jesus. They could have chosen worldly power and favor. They could have returned to Herod and given him what he wanted. They could have ignored the dream that warned them off the jealous, murderous king. But instead they chose the one who had all the power of God within him but none of the worldly trappings of power; the one who, from the beginning to the end of his life, used divine power only to give love, to do justice, to share the good news of God’s mercy, to be in solidarity with the poor and downtrodden, to turn the worldly ways of power and all the conventional ways of understanding human relationships upside down to create greater mutuality and freedom (the original 12th night reversal!). The magi chose the king who, in his humility, courage, and love drew people together in a new kind of community based not on human identity, but on our identity—all—as children of God and heirs of the promise. The magi sought the baby who teaches us that we’re all kin, all one family, beloved of God—no matter who we are or where we come from or anything else.
This is the story that we tell. And we, like the magi, have choices to make about what kind of king we will follow. In this time when so many in our country appear to support or desire or seek an absolute ruler that doesn’t follow any rules and who is bent upon the destruction of those who would threaten him, those of us formed in the story we tell today are led to resist any leader who flaunts pride rather than wise humility, who values appearances and manipulation over the truth, who serves the self rather than the common good, who seeks kingship rather than kin-ship.
Today, our story urges us to remember who we are, who it is that has come among us to light our way, and that our way, like that of the magi, is to journey together, to seek God’s saving grace, pay attention to what beckons us toward Christ, to study the subtle movements of life and of creation that inspire us to continue the journey, to remain focused on the source of hope and of life. Even as we journey in a time of great danger and political scheming and oppression, we will find what we seek, we will find whom we seek and the promise is kin-ship all along the journey and, ultimately, overwhelming joy.
