I love the wise men. They’re probably my favourite nativity characters (apart from Jesus, obviously). Why? It’s not just the sense of the exotic or their strange gifts, though that helps: the wise men remind us that the good news of Jesus’ coming into the world is for everyone – God meets all of us where we are, and leads the most unlikely people to worship him. And that includes people like you, or me.
We have to admit, though, that in some ways, they’re more like the Three Stooges than the Three Wise Men! Read the story with fresh eyes and you’ll notice: they go to the wrong place – they arrive in Jerusalem and have to be directed by others to Bethlehem. They speak to the wrong person – the one person who they really shouldn’t talk with about a new king is the terrifying old tyrant Herod – a man so gripped by a lust to cling on to power that he has already murdered most of his own family, his wife and some of her family as well, because he thought they were plotting against him. And when they give gifts, it’s gold, frankincense and myrrh, which – yes, have added meaning – but also were elements used in their magic.
And yet, by a mysterious combination of God’s loving grace and their faithful seeking, they are there – as heralds of the gospel, a gospel which, in the birth of the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, the fulfilment of all God’s promises, breaks the banks of the old river and floods the grace of God into the whole world.
As we reflect on their remarkable story over the next three days, today let’s notice one simple, but profound, thing – they came to worship: ‘we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him’ (v2). It might sound obvious, but in that one tiny detail we get a gentle reminder of one the most important truths of all. Jesus is many things to us, but our first calling when it comes to our relationship with Jesus is to worship him.
A wise old mentor once said to me: ‘Make sure to seek the Lord’s face before you seek his hand.’ In other words, it’s natural to want to ask Jesus for things. When we pray, we have lots of things we need help with – help for ourselves, help for others: we need Jesus’ hand of help. But first, we need to be close to Jesus, we need to gaze on his face, we need to worship him. Jesus is not just there for our shopping list of needs.
The wise men had, ironically, the great advantage of not realising they needed Jesus’ help with anything. They simply came first and foremost to worship him. That’s what led them at least 700 miles across the desert – or more likely, round the top of it – to see him, to spend time with him. And it’s the same for us: will we, today, this year, make that our priority too? To seek the Lord’s face first, and then to seek his hand?