On Queens & Kings: Epiphany Thoughts

It’s Epiphany Eve!  Technically.  Although that’s not really a thing.  Nevertheless, tomorrow is the feast day of the Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas.  It’s the day we remember the arrival of the Magi at the manger, although scholars believe it would have taken them about two years to get to where they were going.  

I’m reminded of what New Testament scholar Mark Allan Powell has to say about the magi. Powell notes that the writer of Matthew’s gospel, where this story of the Magi lives, never says that there are three of them, or that they were wise or that they were men.   

And yet, how is it that we’ve let tradition, and not scripture, name them as Melchior, Caspar, and Balthasar and this is the story we have come to believe?  (Note:  this lore first appeared in the sixth century and became popular in the 12th century.  Along with the term “king”.)  

I’ve told the story about  three “wise men” in my own life: Omar, Jamal, and Kevin, who moved me when I relocated for my first call.  

In high school I had three great friends who were very wise and we helped each other survive those years.  So Rita, Linda, and Diane could also be  magi.

I now have three great friends who are also very wise and we help each other survive this time in our lives.  Katy, Julie, and Deanna….also magi.  

And I happen to have three of the wisest children around….Greg, Robert, and Taylor…..magi. 

Because the magi knew to follow light.  Their wisdom existed in being able to read what was happening, follow a light that acted like a guide….like fog lights in a thick fog….landing over the infant Messiah. 

 Landing over love.  

Pausing to praise and worship and adore the child and then, being wise enough to heed the advice of a dream and return home by another way.  

It’s a story of tenacity and tenderness and terror, when the magi go following a light in the sky.  There’s an unjust and insecure leader of government (hmmm) who is also the villain (also hmmm).  There’s the holy family who must have had some measure of curiosity about these strangers bringing gifts suitable for anointing the dead.  And there are all of the untold encounters they must have had along the way.  

In the Church year, we move to a short season of Ordinary Time after the Epiphany and before Transfiguration.  In this season, Jesus is revealed to us as Messiah over and over again in the assigned lectionary readings.  It is a drumbeat of a reminder that the Messiah came and that light shines and that darkness, despite all evidence to the contrary, did not overtake the light.  It still hasn’t.  Despite all evidence to the contrary.  Let’s hang onto that, dear ones. 

✷✸✷

There are two poems that I love for the Epiphany, both a similar take on the theme of the magi being Queens, not kings, which is, after all, entirely possible.  

The Queens Came Late

The Queens came late, but the Queens were there

With gifts in their hands and crowns in their hair.

They’d come, these three, like the Kings, from far,

Following yes, that guiding star.

They’d left their ladles, linens, looms,

Their children playing in nursery rooms,

And told their sitters:

“Take charge!  For this

Is a marvelous sight we must not miss!”

The Queens came late but not too late

To see the animals small and great,

Feathered and furred, domestic and wild,

Gathered to gaze at a mother and child.

And rather than frankincense and myrrh

And gold for the babe, they brought for her

Who held him, a homespun gown of blue,

And chicken soup - with noodles, too-

And a lingering, lasting, cradle-song.

The Queens came late and stayed not long,

For their thoughts already were straining far -

Past manger and mother and guiding star

And a child aglow as a morning sun-

Toward home and children and chores undone.

                           -Norma Farber from When It Snowed That Night

Wise Women Also Came

Wise women also came.

The fire burned in their wombs

long before they saw

the flaming star in the sky.

They walked in shadows,

trusting the path

would open

under the light of the moon.

Wise women also came, 

seeking no directions, 

no permission from any king.

They came by their own authority, 

their own desire, their own longing.

They came in quiet,

spreading no rumors, 

sparking no fears to lead to innocents’ slaughter,

to their sister Rachel’s inconsolable lamentations.

Wise women also came, 

and they brought useful gifts: 

water for labor’s washing, 

fire for warm illumination, 

a blanket for swaddling.

Wise women also came, 

at least three of them, 

holding Mary in the labor, 

crying out with her in the birth pangs, 

breathing ancient blessings into her ear.

Wise women also came, 

and they went, as wise women always do, 

home a different way.

-Jan Richardson