January 5, 2003
By Jack Price

Series: Asset Management and the Search for Self

“We three kings of Orient are. Bearing gifts, we traverse afar.” The hymn we sang is also one of the passages of scripture we will consider – the coming of the three magi to Bethlehem from Matthew’s gospel. Today is Epiphany Sunday, the Sunday of the Church Year when we remember the coming of the three kings to see the baby Jesus. Tomorrow is actually the day of Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas. All the pipers piping and drummers drumming are in place and those mythic, mystical, magi have arrived at the manger in Bethlehem. The wise men were astrologers. They were called “wise” because of their skill at reading the future in the stars.

These Wise Men brought with them three very famous gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. We picture these three, riding their camels to Herod’s palace to ask directions, then on to Bethlehem in time to complete the manger scene. This image has developed over years of telling and re-telling this story. The implied presence of camels and the famous gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh had a familiar ring to the fairly conservative Jewish-Christian community for whom Matthew’s Gospel was written. “Wise men from the east” calls to mind a story from the Old Testament book of Numbers in which two wise men named Balak and Balaam come from the east to curse the Hebrew people. In Numbers 24:17, Balaam says “A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel,” one of the messianic prophesies. These two Old Testament wise men are connected to Matthew’s magi and the birth narrative about Jesus.

The gifts the magi brought point to another Old Testament passage, Isaiah 60:1, 6: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” In verse six, here come the camels and two of the gifts, “A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.” The magi, like the camels in Isaiah, brought gold and frankincense to symbolize the royalty and great importance of Jesus. Their coming means the Messianic age is dawning, when Israel is restored and the people freed from their imprisonment.

What about the myrrh? Remember the camels from Isaiah came from the east, including from the land of Sheba. When the Queen of Sheba came to meet King Solomon, son of King David, having heard reports of his great wisdom and wealth, she was so impressed that she brought gifts including gold and precious spices. In 1 Kings 10:10, the Queen of Sheba brought to Solomon “a great quantity of spices; …never again came such an abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.” The most popular spice from Sheba was myrrh, used for perfume, beauty treatment, scenting of clothes, and embalming. This last use would have been particularly appropriate since Matthew’s gospel was written well after Jesus’ death. This Messiah, a king who compares to King Solomon both as a son of David and as a great king would taste death, represented by the gift of myrrh.

The gifts of the magi were very valuable and highly symbolic to those who first read Matthew’s Gospel. To that Jewish community in the late first century of the Christian Era, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the gifts of the magi would have resounded themes of Israel’s restoration, return from bondage, release from captivity. They would have heard a theme of hope that God was still with them and for them. Above all, these were symbols of adoration of the Christ; all nations embracing God’s promised salvation embodied in the manger infant.

What do these gifts mean for us? In addition to themes of liberation and salvation, the idea of gifts recalls the apostle Paul who, in his first letter to the young Corinthian Christians, spends an entire chapter on the nature and value of spiritual gifts. Paul says, there are “a variety of gifts, but one Spirit.” We are like the various parts of “one body.” He lists some of the spiritual gifts: speaking wisdom, speaking knowledge, faith, healing, working miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpreting tongues.

Closely related to spiritual gifts is God’s calling: called within the church to be “apostles, prophets, or teachers; called to exercise deeds of power, gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues.” All do not possess the same spiritual gifts or the same calling, but all do possess gifts and all are called by God to ministry. And there is something more.

Paul urges the Corinthians as he does us to “strive for the greater gifts [and] a still more excellent way. In the familiar 13th chapter, he reveals what the greatest spiritual gift is. “If I speak with the languages of heaven or earth and have not love, I make only worthless noise. If my faith is great enough to move mountains and my altruism and courage enough to give up my life, but these deeds are done for less than the motive of love, there is no value in them. There are many spiritual gifts. There is faith. There is hope. There is love and the greatest of all the spiritual gifts is love. The greatest gift that can be brought by king or peasant is love.

Love gives because its desire is to give, not because it “ought” or “should” give. God’s gift of love calls forth love and life from us. Faith that is “life-giving” comes in response to God’s true love. Such faith enables us to love each other in a way that begins to reflect God’s love for us. Love is the spiritual gift that belongs to each of us. Its strongest desire is to call forth and nurture the spiritual gifts of the ones we love. God’s stewardship is to love extravagantly and to give abundantly. In our faith journey, financial stewardship is a doorway into the stewardship of all of life. Love enables us to discover our “gifts.” Life challenges us to invest our giftedness. Our attitude toward money reveals our faith.

The relationship between possessions and our ability as human beings to love is frighteningly close. I confess money means a great deal to me in terms of my sense of self-worth in a society that measures human value in dollars and cents. Perhaps this is true for you as well. Money means a lot: security, access to health care and relative safety in retirement, access to education, and the flexibility to have choices concerning where we live and how we spent at least our leisure time. And there is a subtle tendency to relate financial prosperity and professional success with receiving God’s blessing and God’s love. Having money means being able to get “neat stuff” and “stylish clothes.” It also means being able to realize our dreams and give substance to hopes for our children. Money means so much to us. Finances represent freedom.

Financial security is a great temptation for us, as it was for the affluent of Jesus’ day. Affluence is not a bad thing. Money is a gift we have for ministry. But affluence brings temptation. The more security we borrow from the things we have, the less we look for security to God. The more our self-worth is based on our “net worth,” the greater the temptation to borrow “self” from our stuff. Do you have a fair amount of debt? In this society, most of us do. Perhaps you even ask yourself that fateful question: “What’s in your wallet?” More risky than even credit card debt, however, is the debt we accrue by borrowing self-identity from the things we own and the things we achieve; the “self” we borrow from everything connected with our money.

Effective commercials equate using certain products with being happy, with feeling fulfilled as a human being. We don’t really believe what they tell us, but at some deep level we do look for something outside ourselves to tell us who we ought to be, how we ought to feel, and who we really are. The good news we celebrate and share is that God places within all persons the gift of our true identity. Our task is to embrace and nurture that gift.

Stewardship then is not so much a matter of saying “No” to the lesser gods that surround and tempt us as it is saying “Yes” to the self God creates each of us to be. The answers to our quest for meaning that come to us from the love of others and the insights we discover around us, awaken God’s true love and our true nature within. We discover our true selves when we learn to love and to give freely. It is said:

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine as children do…
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give to other people permission to do the same. (source unknown)

O’Henry wrote his famous story The Gift of the Magi to help us understand a deep truth about stewardship in God’s economy. The couple in this story, two young people each without sufficient funds to buy a meaningful gift for the other, secretly sell their own most valuable possessions, she her beautiful long hair and he his prized pocket watch, in order to be able to buy their beloved a beautiful Christmas present. The gifts they each purchase would have been ideal, but now seem completely inappropriate. She bought for him a platinum chain for the pocket watch he no longer owns. He bought for her some jeweled combs for the lovely hair that has been sold. How foolish they seem, yet how great the gifts they give because they give what is most valuable out of love for the other. This is the gift of the magi

The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men – who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days, let it be said that of all who give gifts, these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

Teach us, O God, to give the gift of the magi: to love extravagantly, to give abundantly, and to live expectantly in the spirit of Christ. Amen.