home by another way (on epiphany)

In the winter, when the trees have lost their leaves, I can see the Mill Mountain Star from my window. What’s that? You don’t know what the Mill Mountain Star is? I guess your Appalachian town never thought to install an 88.5 foot tall metal star on the top of a mountain as a mid-century tourist trap, now did they? It was originally a marketing ploy, but people loved it so much that the Star is still here, 75 years later. It is, if you’ll pardon my bragging, the world’s largest freestanding illuminated man-made star. It’s why Roanoke is called the Star City of the South. And these days, there are mountain biking trails, picnic areas, a nature center and a ZOO all up there on the top of the mountain, accompanying the main attraction itself.

I grew up in the shadow of the Star, so I never really thought much about it until I tried to explain it to people who didn’t grow up near the world’s largest illuminated freestanding man-made star. It is a gigantic redneck monstrosity, and I love it. It’s home.

It’s the season of stars in the church calendar, when wise men from the east saw a new one appear and followed it 1,000 miles over field and fountain, moor and mountain from Babylon to Bethlehem to meet kid Jesus, the promised Messiah. I love the magi.

Did you know that they were probably Zoroastrians, followers of an ancient religion that still has 2.5 million adherents today? That their faith also included the expectation of a Messiah? That we have no idea how many of them made the journey, just that Matthew tells us they brought 3 gifts? That Matthew is the only gospel writer to include this weird little story about visiting foreign dignitaries?

But what I really love about the magi is how they protect baby Jesus from murderous King Herod. You know this part of the story, right? The wise men show up in Jerusalem and start asking around about a new baby king. Herod gets wind of their arrival and summons them, secretly, to his chambers. “A king, you say? But I am the king! When you find that kid, come straight back here and let me know where he is! I’m gonna take him…well, I…you know, tell me so I can…pay him homage. Yeah. Right. I want to worship him, too.”

And the magi, who are not idiots, having managed to read the signs in the sky, survive a harrowing 1,000 mile journey into territory not their own where people speak languages that they do not, just smile politely and leave Jerusalem. They find Jesus in Bethlehem and are overjoyed. They give his family some very expensive gifts, and get warned in a dream not to go back to Herod (as if they needed that dream confirmation after MEETING the guy). And so they go home by another road.

Which was not as simple as it appears in the text. There just weren’t many roads to begin with, and the magi were almost certainly traveling with a big group that would have had trouble leaving town without attracting attention. They likely had to find a back road that wasn’t as convenient, that didn’t have as much easily accessible water and supplies for their pack animals. Plus, the local king was on their tail, expecting their loyalty and their intel, and defying him would have endangered both their personal safety and their country’s international relations with the Roman Empire.

Something about the magi’s encounter with Jesus convinced them to abandon their privileged position as allies of Herod and stand firmly in solidarity with the poor, displaced family stuck in the backwater barn. Something about that experience emboldened these wise men to put themselves in danger in order to protect a snotty toddler and his family. Matthew doesn’t tell us what it was that led the magi to practice allyship and solidarity in this way, other than noting that they had a powerful dream. But Matthew does a bang-up job of describing the tyrannical power of Herod.

Herod, in this passage, is an overdrawn caricature of an insecure middle-manager. He is caught between the Jewish people, who he ostensibly rules over, and the tech bros - er, excuse me, the Roman Empire - to whom he has sold himself in exchange for the appearance of power. Herod is a ranting, fearful, violent and ineffective tyrant. And those guys, when they get put in positions of power, are DANGEROUS.

The magi, I imagine, size Herod up in less than a minute. They see right through his ploy to recruit them as his spies. They know how dangerous a guy like that can be. And so when they arrive at the manger, where their star has led them all this way, where the promised messiah is running laps around the barn because he is two years old and two year olds like to run laps around everything; when they encounter the living god right there in the backwater town, recognize that real power lies in real vulnerability, that the savior of the world has shown up not with guns blazing or swords brandished but as ONE OF US, fragile and breakable and hiding out from the wrath of that despotic bully in the White House - sorry, in the Jerusalem Palace - well, they know, straight away what they are to do. They immediately relinquish their position as privileged visiting dignitaries and become, instead, allies in the movement.

The magi kept Jesus safe from Herod’s wrath. Not only did they go home by another way, keeping their information from Herod and drawing attention away from the Holy Family, they also gave them expensive gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, gifts that almost certainly eased the family’s flight to Egypt, where they stayed for *years* until Herod finally died.

It’s a shame that we’ve reduced the magi to roadtrippers in weird robes with strange gifts, when they are, in actuality, a prime example of the ways that encountering the living god, the messiah, the Son of David, savior of the universe compels us to relinquish our privilege and position in order to become allies in the movement for justice and mercy.

And I always wonder: what did the magi do when they finally arrived home? Did they stay magi? Did they tell the story? Were their own lives upended? Did they even MAKE it home? We don’t know how their story ends. We just know that they followed the star, encountered the messiah, and made life-altering choices in order to be with him. Maybe that’s enough.