As you read Matthew's version of the Christmas story you may notice that there are some things missing. There is no mention of the manger, no shepherds, etc. That's because when we do Christmas Pageants, we are blending the Gospel accounts together.Luke has the Shepherds and the angels, Mattew has the Magi and the star. Luke and John do not tell the story of Jesus' birth at all.
Is there anything wrong with blending the stories as we so often do? Not really, as long as we remember that is what we are doing. When we want to stude the passages we need to unblend them and let each Gospel speak for itself. It's not that Matthew's account is in some way "better" than Luke's or vice-versa, but they are very different for a reason. If we blend them we may miss the points the different evangelists are making.
Matthew starts with foreigners, the magi, and their experience. There are a lot of traditions about the Three Kings and where they came from. The most common names are Melchior, King of Ind (Arabia), Gaspar, King of Tharsis (Africa), and Balthazar, King of Saba (Persia.) But the Bible never names the magi or their homelands. In fact, the bible doesn't call them kings, or even say that there were three of them. All of those details were added many centuries later.
While the story doesn't say how many magi there were, there were three gifts, and each of them has a symbolic importance. Gold is a form of truibute given to a king; theu reminding us that Christ is "king of kings" though his kingship will be very different from what people are used to. Frankincense is a resin used as incense in worship. from ancient times, the smoke from burning incense has been a symbol of prayers rising to God. The gift of frankincense is a reminder that Jesus is our mediator, or he one who makes a new kind of relationship possible with God. Finally, myrrh is an aromatic oil used for anointing or embalming which reminds us of the scacrifice Jesus makes, giving his life for our sake.
What about the star the magi followed? Astronomers have wondered about what it could have been for a long time. We don't have any record outside of the Bible of such an event but that doesn't make it impossible. WE know that it wasn't (as was once thought) a conjunction of planets because there weren't any that were especially bright anywhere close to the right time in history. It could have been a comet, though it would have to be one that we have not yet catalogues. It could also have been (as scientist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once suggested) a distant supernova.
Then again, the magi were Astrologers so it may have been an astrological conjunction rather than a more dramatic explanation.
Despite a lot of effort and speculation, there is nothing concrete that science has been able to tell us about what the star was, or even to confirm that there was a star. But is we focus too much on the heavens, we miss Matthew's point in telling us about the star.
The word "Magi" is persian and means a scholar or an astrologer (the two were very much the same thing in ancient Persia). Magi is also used as a title for the priests of the persian religion of Zoroastrianism. This would have seemed odd to Matthew's Jewish audience who would have looked at foreigners and non-believers with suspicion, but this is Matthew's point.
Matthew is a Jewish Christian writing for a Jewish audience but he wants to make it clear that just being a "son of Abraham" is not enough in God's sight. His Gospel is about the new thing that God has done in Jesus which calls for a faithful response from everyone. If you are a Jew who responds faithfully, he asserts, that is the best thing to be. But it is better to be a foreigner or non-believer who responds faithfully to the coning of Christ than to be a Jew who fails to respond. For Matthew, the magi are the first in a string of faithful outsiders who challenge the insiders and believers to a higher level of faithfulness.
This is an important theme even today. We live in a world where many believers act as if owning the title "Christian", going to church, and proclaiming the name of Jesus are more inmportant than faithfully following him. We often see outsiders and non-believers following the words and example of Christ better than church-folk. The story of the magi (and Matthew's Gospel as a whole) should challenge complacent Christians to greater faith and committment to compassionate service.
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