We three kings of Orient are! Bearing gifts we travel afar.

This Sunday we celebrate Epiphany, and the final visitors to the infant Jesus arrive – the three Magi, Wise Men, or Kings, depending on your bible translation and tradition. These three wise men were sages or magicians, astronomers who watched the skies and knew the wisdom of the ancients. When a particularly bright star appeared, they knew it foretold something very special, that God was sending His Son, and they wanted to see this miracle. Their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh symbolised three parts of this child’s nature and life. Gold to show he would be a king. Frankincense because he was also divine. Myrrh to symbolise his suffering and death, for this was used in preparing bodies for burial.

This is one of those bible stories which operate on many levels. Three wise men may well have appeared and caused great consternation in the royal court of Herod among the royal advisers and religious hierarchy. Their visit would have been long remembered by both the Palace, the Temple, and by the ordinary people who witnessed it. But perhaps for us the most important thing is not the literal story but what it is said to represent.

Just as the shepherds one the hillside, the very first to whom God sent angels to announce the good news, represented the poor and lowly of Jewish society, those considered of lesser value, so the three wise men represented the Gentile, the non-Jew. Gentiles were equally considered as outsiders, less loved by God, less important and valuable in God’s eternal scheme of things. Shepherds and foreigners were religiously “unclean” and thus not permitted into God’s direct presence in the Temple. And yet it these people to whom God’s messages come, and who are thus invited to be the first to know this incredible news.

What is this news? Nothing more or less than the fact that God loves us all, every single one of us. No effort or action on our part is needed for Him to love us. Race, religion, status are no barrier at all to God’s presence. We are God’s beloved children, and there is nothing He will not do to reach us – even to the point of becoming one of us, living a human life, and dying to bring healing for our wounds and relationships with God, with each other, and with the created world.

May the star burn brightly in our hearts this year, and may it be our guide as we travel in the love and light of God.

Revd. Talisker