Giving Like Magi
a sermon based on Matthew 2:1-12
by Rev. Randy  Quinn

Most of you know exactly what it’s like because you’ve done it before.  But if you’ve never done it, you can probably imagine what it’s like.  You take the time to purchase some gifts – special gifts; maybe several gifts.  You carefully wrap them and pack them into the trunk of the car.  Then you choose clothes and pack them into suitcases and squeeze them in and around the presents.

The hardest part might be making sure the kids have their suitcases packed – as well as whatever games and books they may want to take with them.

When everything is packed, you “hit the road.”  You may be going to “grandmother’s house” or you may be going to see your brother-in-law.  You may make the entire trip in the car; it’s also likely you will find yourself changing from car to bus or train or even airplane.  The cost of the gifts may become insignificant compared to the cost of transportation, depending upon how far or how long you will be traveling.

How many of you have ever done that?  How many have never done that?  Most of us have at some point in our lives.  We may plan our trip to coincide with Christmas, but it may also be an early or a late celebration because the costs of plane tickets are so high – or there are other places and other family celebrations we have to attend.

Maybe for you it was a different kind of celebration altogether.  On my way back from Ft. Worth in December, for instance, I spoke with someone who had gone to Dallas to help celebrate a friend’s 60^th wedding anniversary.  They flew down in the morning and came home that same evening.  I don’t know what kind of presents they took with them, but there wasn’t any luggage to worry about with that kind of a trip!

But there is always planning involved.  And always some expense.

It’s probably safe to assume, though, that when you pack your suitcase, you already know the people you are going to visit.  You know the recipients of the gifts you bought, wrapped, and packed.  And there is some excitement on your part as you anticipate their surprise when the presents are opened.

But, have you ever gone through that much effort for someone you didn’t know?  (I will give them time to think about it while I look for someone who may have done that.)

All week I’ve been thinking about gifts and gift-giving.  I’ve been trying to figure out why we give them and to whom we give them.  It’s almost always to or for someone we know; someone we love.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a birthday, an anniversary, a wedding, or even a baby shower.  We almost always know the recipient.  We might even look forward to the “thank you” card.

In fact, other than things like “Christmas Angel” Trees, I can only think of one time when we give gifts – rather than money – to people we don’t know; can you think of any? The only exception I could think of is a house-warming gift to someone who moves in near us – a way of welcoming a stranger into our community or neighborhood.  The hope is that we will become friends with them, but we don’t know them when we give them our gift.

So, what does it mean when we realize the magi came from far away, carrying precious cargo with them, and leaving it with someone they’d never met?  They clearly spent some time planning, including packing gifts for this baby, a baby whose name they didn’t know.  In fact, they didn’t even know for sure where the baby was to be found!

We know about the gifts they left, but have you ever wondered what kind of traveling expenses they had along the way?

They went to an extraordinary effort to bring their gifts – more than many of us have ever done.  So what does it mean that when they leave Bethlehem we never see or hear from them again?

I know that most of our mental pictures of the magi come from hymns and children’s plays rather than the scriptures.  I know, for instance, that we don’t know how many of them there were – even though we always speak as if there were three of them.  We call them “wise men” or “three kings,” even though the Greek word Matthew uses to describe them is more akin to “magician” or “astrologer.”  And I know we don’t know if they walked or came on horseback.  We like to think they came by camel, but it may be they came on the back of a donkey.

The scriptures leave many voids that poets and storytellers have been all too happy to fill – and those pictures affect what we hear when we read the story.

But in every picture in my mind, in every hymn I can remember, there is agreement with the scripture that the magi came a long way to present some gifts to the baby before going home – albeit by a different route.

But there is no evidence that the event changed their lives.  They simply came, presented their gifts, and left.  And all week I’ve been wondering why we give gifts and to whom we give them.  Are the magi the norm or are they the exception?

I have no doubt that the reason Matthew tells us about themagi is to invite us into the story, to invite us to travel whatever distance may lie between us and the child.  The story of the magi is an invitation to bring our own gifts, whether we know this baby or not.  We bring them to the one who was not only born “king of the Jews” but is also the one who can give us eternal life.

In the Financial Peace University classes we’ve been holding in Winchester, we heard Dave Ramsey tell us last week that the reason God wants us to give is because we were created in God’s image – and God is a giver.  God gives us life.  God gives us grace.  God gives us Jesus.

Giving is one of those things that make us human.

Think about it.  No other animal freely gives gifts.  A mother bird may feed her babies in the nest, but she doesn’t give them a pair of goggles when they’re learning to fly.  A dog may be trained to retrieve something or bring something of value, but no dog goes out of its way to find a gift and present it to us.

When we give, we are being human – truly human.  In fact, it can be argued that to hold on to things, to not give, is to deny what God intends us to be.

Look at King Herod.  He feigns interest in the child; there is no real attempt to give the child anything.  Contemporaries of Herod who knew that he had put his own sons to death in order to protect his throne, made the ironic statement that it would be better to be a pig in his Jewish home than to be one of his sons!

He denies his own humanity.  Rather than giving, he prefers to take.  He clings to what he has – as if God had not been the true source of all that he has.

Are we more like the magi or Herod?  To whom do we give and why?  Are we selfish or selfless in our giving?

Throughout the season of Advent we used an offertory prayer based on a hymn we rarely sing.  Turn in your hymnals to In the Bleak Midwinter.  It’s # 221 in your hymnal.  Let’s read the words of the final stanza together in unison:

What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give him:  give my heart.

I don’t know what Christina Rossetti had in mind when she wrote those words back in the 1870’s, but as I have been pondering the gifts of the magi this year, I hear an invitation to join them in giving what gifts I have as an expression of my gratitude for what I have received.

Let’s pray:

God, teach us to give like the magi did.  Help us not cling so tightly to the gifts you have given us that we become like Herod.  May our giving spirit reflect your grace to the world around us.  We pray in the name of the One who gave his life for us.  Amen.