Hey Jake, what’s that song we like to sing around this time of year about the wise men? [Jake plays “We Three Kings”] No, no, no! I mean the one about the fourth wise man! [Jake plays “Rudolph”.] THAT’S IT! [The next portion is sung.]
You know Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar (or Casper); kings of Arabia (or Ethiopia, we aren’t sure which), Persia, and India….but do you recall, the least famous wise man of all?
[Rudolf the red nosed reindeer] Artaban, one of the Medes from Persia,
[had a very shiny nose,] had 3 treasures for the Christ Child,
[and if you ever saw it] but because he missed the meeting,
[you would even say it glows.] he spent one for his travel woes.
[All of the other reindeer] All of the other wise men
[used to laugh and call him names.] made it and had gifts to spare,
[They never let poor Rudolf,] but Artaban the fourth wise man
[join in any reindeer games.] spent his to help others bare
[Then one foggy Christmas Eve] all their troubles and their woes
[Santa came to say,] while he searched for Christ.
[Rudolf with your nose so bright] In the end it did him in,
[won’t you guide my sleigh tonight!] but God’s light – it lifted him
[Then how the reindeer loved him,] into the light of Jesus;
[as the shouted out with glee,] that he sought all his life.
[Rudolf the red nosed reindeer,] Artaban the fourth wise man,
[you’ll go down in history!] you’re with God eternally!
Now, for those who have no idea what just happened, there was a story written in 1895 by Henry van Dyke called, The Fourth Wise Man. In this story there was a fourth wise man who was a believer in God who was late for the caravan because he stopped to help a person who would have died without his intervention. He then spends one of his three treasures on transportation and when he finally arrives in Bethlehem, the family has fled to Egypt and the others have gone home by another way.
It’s really a touching story, and I encourage you to read it or look for it on video (I believe he was played by Martin Sheen) because knowing how it ends doesn’t spoil it. You see Artaban ended up spending his whole life searching for Jesus, and all the while he used his treasure to help those in need. In the end, he sacrificed his life for the sake of another, and as he did he heard the voice of Christ saying, “Whenever you did this for even the least of my siblings, you did it for me.”
Now, I don’t want to diminish the gifts of the wise men in our story – although some have said that wiser women would have brought something more practical, like diapers – but every year, when we remember the Magi, I can’t help but think of Old Artaban.
Whether or not there were any other “wise people” in the story that we don’t know about – for surely there were, in fact, scripture doesn’t even say there were only three magi, just three gifts – the ones we know about, whose names are not actually recorded in scripture, probably thought that they were pretty special for making it to the manger on time. Who could blame them – especially after being warned in a dream to go home another way.
The thing I always wonder is, did they just go home by a different route or did they go home as different people? Did the experience of recognizing the presence of God most high change them in some way, or was it just some kind of great and wonderful experience that they could tell their friends about and feel good about? Would they have taken a selfie at the manger? “Feeling holy...might delete later.”
We’ll never know, of course, because it’s not really their story. They played a part in the story of God’s self-revelation through Jesus of Nazareth. They brought gifts to demonstrate not only who he was, but what he would do. Gold represented his lordship. Frankincense was a symbol of his priestly role, and myrrh was not only used medicinally but also for embalming those who have died.
Those are some strange gifts to give a young family, and they were given by strange people – people who were not bound by the covenant of God’s law but were instead compelled by the power of God’s love. With all that said, there are three things about the power of God’s love that I want to make sure we don’t miss in this story.
The first is that King Herod, and all of Jerusalem with him, was terrified by the prospect of God’s transforming love – just as people in power often are. The next is that God’s love doesn’t wait for the right people to respond, and the last is that God’s love directs all of creation, even that which we treasure, toward God’s glory.
I don’t know that I need to say too much about the way that God’s transforming love threatens those in power, but I know that it forces me to recognize the power and privilege that I have. I know that God’s love holds me accountable, and so I imagine that God’s love is still working on us all – as the new year dawns – to consider how we live and love and serve the Lord. I know that the Lord’s table reminds me over and over and over that I have work to do in the areas of brokenness in our world that impact others more than me by no fault of mine or theirs – unless I continue to ignore the divide because then the fault is on me.
Like I said, though, God’s love isn’t waiting on me to respond. There are others who can and will, even if I don’t. That means that the question is not whether or not I am wise enough, it is whether or not I am willing enough to respond to God’s love. God’s love doesn’t really require my wisdom at all, but being able to see that God is working in and through those that I don’t expect God to work through does.
In the end, God’s love is not really about our wisdom or our will to love. It’s about God’s desire to love us. We can’t earn it. We can’t beg, borrow or steal to get it. All we can do is respond. That’s why the Psalmist sang so long ago, “The heavens and the earth declare your glory!”
The breeze in the trees; the call of a bird; the cry of the desperate in the dark of night; even a cow just being a cow and chewing grass on a hill – all of these things declare the creative wonder of God. So, how much more glorious is it when those who could choose not to glorify God (that’s you and me) do it anyway? How much more glorious is it when we don’t and yet we are still received as God’s beloved children?
Being received in that way is what we mean when we say that we are saved, “by the grace of God.” The undeserved but undeniable love of God is what we are talking about when we say that everything is in response to God’s grace.
That’s why I believe this story tells us – pretty explicitly – that God’s love directs all of creation, maybe especially that which we treasure, toward God’s glory. Before you think of that as a cheap plug to support the church financially, I want to share an anonymous testimony from the past week. I had a member call me because she was concerned about what to do with her stimulus check.
We could debate all day what to do about the economy and who deserves or does not deserve these checks or whether deserving is even the right question in the eyes of God, but this not the time or the place for that. What matters is that this soul said, “I want to know how to use this check to help someone who actually needs it.”
Now, you would think I would have said, “Just send that to the church.” Certainly, if she had, we would use it faithfully and to God’s glory. Instead, I said, “There’s a group in town that is working to help those experiencing homelessness. Temperatures are very cold and all the shelters are closed due to COVID 19. Send it to ARCH Acadiana.”
My point here isn’t to fundraise or to debate the role of government or the church as an institution. My point is to say that the heavens are still declaring God’s glory and there are wise people who still seek the Christ. If I were a betting man, I would say that most of us are more like Old Artaban than any of the others.
Seeking the light of Christ is not a one-time thing. It is a life’s journey. That doesn’t mean that getting to those moments of clarity aren’t important. It just means that the path is full of opportunities to respond to God’s grace. It’s tough to say whether the magi were transformed by their one-time moment of clarity, but I hope they were. I hope it led them to the same type of journey that Artaban went on.
As for you and me, whether or not we made it to the manger on time, there is a moment of transforming love that awaits us at the table of Christ. It doesn’t matter what you have given or withheld in the past, for God has withheld nothing from you and or me for all eternity, so let us be wise. Let us be willing. Let us receive this moment for what it is and respond to it with all we have and all we are, this day and all that follow – and all to the glory of God. Amen!
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