the pagans got it right!

...my wife and i got our daughter a Fisher Price Little People Creche this year. We wanted her to be able to be involved with the season and to be able to play and interact with the Greatest Story because it is part of her family story.

It was honestly a riot! She did her best impersonation of "girl-zilla"...she'd pick up the inn and run around the living room looking at us through the windows, she loved playing "hide the baby" and most days the donkey was sitting on top of the manger where the Angel was supposed to be sitting...

But it did what I hoped it would, it made the story accessible to her and it made me think about it over and over as I would pick up the pieces and tell my daughter about them. The story she learned was a little different than you see on most cards. It was Biblically accurate (sans Herod's call to kill all male children 2 and under, although I did tell her that Jesus was born into great danger) And in the midst of all the chaos, order came. That's what Epiphany is about, God bringing order into chaos. And this year as I dug deep into the reality of the revealing of the King of Kings alongside my daughter, it became all the more real.

The store-front image of the kings bent over the Christ child in their fine robes and chests of precious gifts is about as realistic as my daughters camels! They didn't show up until Jesus was into his terrible two's (he was human!) and after a trip of four months or more that covered approximately 900 miles! And they didn't come to pay homage to Jesus as their personal king, they had come to pay homage to a great king. It was more of a visit of the state than a pilgrimage. But Matthew still sees this as one theologian writes; "an acceptable Gentile response to a genuine revelation, despite dubious means". These kings were pagans. They weren't Jews looking for their king, they weren't God-fearers who were born outside of the Covenant and came to see the child that fulfilled the prophecy. They were magician/sorcerer/sages who (along with their doubtless very large entourages) came to do what any learned person would have done when the Greatest King that was ever predicted to be was born.

And these pagans had it right, for their act of worship was more real than they ever could have imagined. They thought they were bringing gifts to flesh but made offerings to heaven, they had left their comfort to witness a King and came face to face with the Creator of Kings, they followed a star according to their calculations and met the One who calculated thier creation.

The pagans got it right, and the "church got it wrong"...Matthew 2:3 tells us that "when King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. This reference was to the Pharisees and the Sadducee's, the rulers who had aligned themselves with the Romans. Their power and position depended on Romes, and if Herod lost, so did they...for they trusted their ability at running the state more than they did God to deliver them...

The pagans got it right, have you?