As I explore the unexpected places God showed up in our story of Christmas, I think the most unsettling to our modern sensibilities how God was revealed to the Magi. It is one of those stories that we often try to explain away. We ignore the text that names these visitors to the Christ child as Magi and translate them as the more acceptable “wise men.” It makes for cute evangelistic cards that proclaim “wise men still seek him,” but it ignores the unexpected way God showed up.
Scholars aren’t certain, but tradition holds that the Magi were the actual historical Magi from Persia. Followers of the teachings of Zoroaster, they looked to the stars for wisdom. If they were official Persian Magi, then their tradition would have had access to the religious writing of the Israelites. For after the exile when the Persian emperor Cyrus permitted the rich and elite Jews who had been exiled by the Babylonians to return to rebuild Jerusalem, many of them chose not to go. They were the elites of the land – the royal families and the scholars; the comforts of an established society that valued their wisdom was far more enticing that roughing it in a backwater province that had been left in ruin. So it is a near certainty that these scholars of Judaism interacted with and shared their knowledge with the educated elite among the Persians. Even if the Matthew gospel included the story only to convey the idea that all nations will worship Jesus, it still suggests the same meaning – God shows up in other cultures and religious groups.
That is the part that freaks people out a bit and why the revelation is so unexpected. In our modern attempts to domesticate the story, we either ignore who the Magi were or we explain them away as converts to Judaism. We have allowed our expectations of how we assume God to work to remove the power from this story. God showed up unexpectedly not just to those who were told that an anointed one was coming, but also to those truth-seekers following a different path. Truth was revealed through their culture and their religious practices – and this is part of our Christmas story.
To even talk about this is unexpected. The exclusivity of Christianity has become a totalizing thing for most Christians. Insisting that Jesus is the reason for the season often has less to do with a commitment to Jesus as it does a rejection of other cultural practices. Hearing how God shows up in other cultures is unexpected because it is the last thing people often want to hear. But God does not play by our rules (thankfully). God shows up where God desires to show up. We have the testimony of the Nativity story to affirm that truth, perhaps we should stop letting it unsettle us so.