One day, I hope to give an Epiphany homily on some other topic, but so far, I can never resist preaching about the gifts that the wise men bring: they are just so interesting.  These three gifts show who the wise men understand this child to be, and they show just exactly what it is that we are accepting if we choose to follow this infant as our King and Savior.  The magi would seem like real flatterers if they had only brought gold and frankincense, since gold is a gift fit for a King, literally, and incense is a gift fit for a God, also literally.  They would really seem like smooth operators trying to ingratiate themselves for some reason, except that they also bring myrrh.  That phrase is so ingrained in our minds: gold, frankincense, and myrrh: we’ve heard those three together our whole lives, that we forget that one of those gifts is very unusual and surprising.  Myrrh wasn’t mentioned in Isaiah’s prophecy; only gold and frankincense.  It’s important to acknowledge that myrrh is not a happy gift: it was an oil used for burial, embalming fluid basically.  That’s a surprising gift, but really all three gifts are pretty surprising for an unheralded, hidden, desperately impoverished newborn.  The magi didn’t bring diapers and formula, which is probably what they actually needed.  None of these gifts are practical, and one of them is so weird, it’s almost creepy. 

But here, in this odd assortment of gifts brought by these exotic philosophers, we have the entire life of Christ rolled into one profound act of homage and worship.  Despite his appearance as a weak and helpless baby, with unimpressive parentage, lying in a filthy cattle-trough, the truth is: this child is King (gold), he is God (incense), and he is the suffering servant who will lay down his life to fulfill his mission as savior of the entire world (myrrh).  This is what we’re saying yes to, when we choose to follow Christ as the Light of our lives.  We are following a King and a God who is willing to humble and abase himself again and again, starting right here and now, in helpless infancy lying in a messy disused corner of a barn, passing through those hidden years of his childhood and early adulthood, right down to the moment when he will be reviled, rejected, spurned, and murdered by his own creation. 

This irony, this paradox, this subtle magnificence: this is why Christ’s message of salvation spread to every corner of the world and continues to define billions of lives, even to this day.  Because Christ is not just another boring repetition of the same tired theme: just another small-town upstart who clawed his way to the top through sweat and guile, and enjoyed a modicum of influence and success before being tossed onto the scrap heap of obscure history and the slow drift into dilute legend.  That’s how most “influencers” go.  But not him.  He’s different.  His message and his movement remain sharp, fierce, intensely motivating, and profoundly influential to minds and hearts all across the world, 2000 years later.  Because in his identity, we find gold and frankincense, and myrrh.  Uniquely, the power he represents is not about avoiding or transcending or distracting from the difficulties of life; it’s not about somehow cheating the inevitable.  He doesn’t use his power or his divinity to avoid suffering and death.  He runs into them headlong.  He uses his power and divinity to enter into death and destroy it from the inside.  He uses his gold and frankincense to turn the myrrh from something gloomy and discouraging into sweet nectar of eternal life.  This is what his promise is.  He doesn’t promise a carefree life of earthly success to those who follow him.  The “prosperity gospel” is just not Christian.  He promises that our difficulties and sufferings, and even our death, which we will experience and which will be real, will not be meaningless.  We are not fools to follow him.  We are not simpletons for following him as our king.  We are not idolators for following him as our God.  And we are not delusional for following him as one who can make our sufferings meaningful.  He is King, he is God, and he is himself the eternal sacrifice.  This is what the wise men saw, this is what their gifts to him acknowledge, and this is what was manifested to all the nations of the earth. 

All of this profound meaning will come to fulfilment in the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, which we will have the joy to celebrate in the coming months.  As we now begin to pivot our religious imagination from the events of Bethlehem to the events of Jerusalem, we ask God to fill us with a spirit of faithfulness, of worship, and of love, that we may offer our own gifts of praise to the incarnate Word, all our life long.