Day 18: Jesus is Worth Whatever It Costs

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star at its rising and have come to worship him.” MATTHEW 2:1–2

WHEN I WAS FIVE years old, my older sister, Theresa, explained to me that Santa was a myth, logically using the fact that our home in Florida didn’t have a chimney in which he could descend with the presents as proof that the whole “jolly fellow in a red velvet suit” thing was a farce. I, of course, went to bed that night devastated. But I woke up with a jolt several hours later to the sound of hooves and jingle bells on the roof directly over my head, followed by a very loud, “Ho, Ho, Ho!” I bolted out of bed and raced into the living room where my mom was sitting calmly on the couch, and proclaimed enthusiastically, “Mama, Santa is ON OUR ROOF!” She responded, “I know, honey.” Then she told me to hurry back to bed before he saw me. And my belief in Santa Claus was restored for another season.

I was ready to receive the truth about Mr. Claus the following year at six. But I didn’t find out it was my mom’s baby sister, Aunt Darlene, who’d clomped across the roof masquerading as Santa until I was a teenager. And by then the fact that she’d climbed up on our roof despite her extreme fear of heights because she wanted to help restore my shattered childhood hope was even sweeter to me than the fictional account about the fat guy with flying reindeer!

At the risk of messing with your favorite nativity scene that’s lovingly displayed each December, we’re going to explore some facts about the wise men that will hopefully be sweeter to you than the fictional account about them. Their moniker “wise men” comes from the Greek word, magoi, from which we get the English transliteration magi. They were from Persia/modern-day Iran, and contrary to tradition and holiday lawn ornaments, there weren’t actually three of them (notice how our passage today simply says “wise men from the east,” with no mention of how many). The number three was adopted in early Christian culture in light of the trio of gifts they brought Jesus, not a number that was historically ascribed to their Middle Eastern men’s club! Furthermore, those lovely lyrics bellowed at Christmas Eve candlelight services the world over, “We three kings of Orient are,” aren’t factual either because there are no records of them being royal. They were wise, but the Bible doesn’t say they were kings.

What we do know about these wise guys is that they witnessed an astral phenomenon (some scholars surmise it was a comet) prophesied about in the Old Testament (Num. 24:17). I think it’s really interesting that rabbinic legend says that on the night Abraham (who we know as the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) was born in Mesopotamia, there was also an unusually radiant astral projection seen by wise men known as Nimrod’s astrologers.13 If that’s true, then that would mean a bright star wouldn’t be seen as some new thing; rather, something that had a storied past and deep meaning in ancient history—which would make a lot of sense of why these magi dropped everything to follow it.

Since the journey from their homeland in Persia to Israel is more than one thousand miles (which would’ve taken them a long time to walk/ride camels), they don’t belong in nativity scenes alongside the shepherds. They couldn’t possibly have made it to Jerusalem for Jesus’s birth in time. But when they finally—after slogging through seemingly endless sandy miles and then being detained by a paranoid nutjob named King Herod—found themselves in front of the Christ child, they fell on their knees in worship and were both overwhelmed and overjoyed!

Then, when they recovered enough to remember their manners, they gave Jesus three very costly gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh, each of which has symbolic significance.

• Gold was (and still is) very expensive and was used extensively in the making of temple religious objects and furniture to represent royalty.
• Frankincense is an incense or perfumed oil that’s harvested by slicing a rare tree from the genus Boswellia (these trees are still found in Southern Arabia and Somalia) and then collecting the milky white resin, which is where the name comes from because the Semitic root word of frankincense means “white” or “pure.”
• Myrrh comes from the bark of a small, especially odiferous tree and it was mingled with wine to be used as an anesthetic and was also used in preparing a body for burial.

In short, gold symbolized the kingliness of Jesus because of its value. Frankincense symbolized that He wasn’t just a random king, but God, to whom worship is due because it was the purest incense burned in the temple. And myrrh symbolized Jesus’s humanity because it could be used to make His pain on the cross less dreadful and His burial less repulsive. King. God. Human. All wrapped into one. A person like that is worth any and every gift we could bestow!

I don’t have a set of wise men in the nativity scene I carefully arrange on a side table in our living room every year on Thanksgiving afternoon. Instead, I have a custom-made, cast-iron set of magi that I keep on display 365 days a year to help me remember that they left their homes and their jobs and their families to seek the Savior for a very, very long time. (Based on Matthew 2:16, which states that after Herod realized he’d been tricked by the magi he became enraged and decreed that all Jewish males from the age of two and under were to be killed, their journey may have taken two years.) In addition, I keep a tiny vial of frankincense oil right next to them as a tangible reminder that nothing I have is too costly a gift for the King who willingly laid down His royal scepter and chose to be born in a barn so that we could be redeemed.

• HOW LONG WAS your journey to find Jesus? What and/or whom did you have to leave in order to seek Him?
• HOW COSTLY HAVE the gifts been that you’ve figuratively laid at Jesus’s feet? Each of the wise men’s gifts conveyed something about Him. What have your gifts, past or present, conveyed about Him?