Each week during Advent, Rick Court and Randy Petersen are getting together to reflect on one word that represents the Advent season! This week's word is "MAGI." Join in to be encouraged and help center your spirit on the reason to celebrate the season!
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.live! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
Each week during Advent, Rick Court and Randy Petersen are getting together to reflect on one word that represents the Advent season! This week's word is "MAGI." Join in to be encouraged and help center your spirit on the reason to celebrate the season!
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.live! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope. Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online. We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope.
Speaker 2:
Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Meet Hope podcast, and I'm here again with Randy Peterson. Hello, randy, hi. And as Randy knows and the listener, you're going to know in just a moment that we are continuing our Advent series where we're looking at some stories from the Christmas story, some characters, excuse me, from the Christmas story, and last week, if you didn't listen, last week we talked about the star, that prop that's in every Christmas presentation, always hanging from the ceiling and kind of an unsung hero, and so if you haven't listened, I want to encourage you to go back. But you can't have a star in the Christmas story without someone to see the star. And if you've ever been to any children's Christmas show or any choir presentation at Christmas time, you will know that there will always be kings, sometimes they're called wise men, sometimes they're called magi, and so we're going to be talking about those things for the next few minutes and Randy thanks again for being here.
Speaker 2:
So I want to read the scripture from Matthew, chapter two. It says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Judea, during the reign of King Herod, and then it says about that time some wise men from Eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking where is the newborn king of the Jews. We saw his star as it rose and we have come to worship him. All right, randy. Who are these guys?
Speaker 3:
Well, throughout the ancient world there was this practice in royal courts that kings would have advisors. I mean, it still happens today that every head of state has a bunch of advisors around them helping them to figure out what to do. In the ancient times, these advisors were often called wise men or magi.
Speaker 2:
Magi.
Speaker 3:
And they were of sort of a combination of spiritual advisor and practical advisor and sort of the spiritual part of it kind of spun off. So they would interpret the king's dreams. We have that with Joseph in the Old Testament who interprets the dreams of Pharaoh. We have that with Daniel in the Old Testament interpreting the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar and a vision that Belshazzar has. So this was common for these magi to have spiritual input into the lives of the kings. They would also study the skies and they became astrological experts and they had different meanings of what they saw in the sky and they would tell the king you know, the signs are good for you to start a new campaign and go and kill your neighbor or whatever I mean this is what happened.
Speaker 3:
Acquire new lands. Yes, and so some of this was. I mean, when I say spiritual, I don't I don't necessarily, certainly, doesn't mean Christian, doesn't mean godly, but in some cases they may have been in tune with the God, the creator God, and so, certainly in the case of Joseph and Daniel, we find that, that they were, and so they were probably part of a royal court.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and they were advisors to the king or a king but they weren't kings themselves.
Speaker 3:
And that's so we say we three kings of orient, our bearing gifts and so on. They throughout Christian tradition. We've said you're the three kings and there are particular Christmas traditions that talk about the kings. There's nothing in the scripture that says that they were kings. They were probably associated with a royal court and there is some question about where they came from.
Speaker 2:
Right, but hold on, because you said something we're going to get to where they came from, but you said there may not have been three.
Speaker 3:
Well, there may not have been three, there may have been two.
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 3:
We know there were more than one.
Speaker 2:
More than one.
Speaker 3:
But there's an old tradition that says there were 12 of them.
Speaker 2:
Really.
Speaker 3:
Okay, way too many to put in your Christmas pageant.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, because the king is always the last position that you hire on, I think.
Speaker 3:
That's right, and they don't have to say much.
Speaker 2:
So they just kind of walk in in their costume and give the gift. Sorry, I took us down that path, but you said that where they come from.
Speaker 3:
Well, so they brought three gifts gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Speaker 2:
And that's why we assumed three Exactly.
Speaker 3:
So the three. But that's a really sturdy tradition in the Christian church, so they've even named them, you know, kaspar and Belfaz.
Speaker 3:
Bar and Melchior that in medieval times, as they did Christmas pageants, they said okay, three gifts, three kings. And so here's the story. But that's not from scripture. We don't know how many of the Magi there were. We just know they brought three gifts, and so they may have come from Arabia. That's one theory, because frankincense and myrrh were substances that from plants that grew in Arabia, and that was the source of them. However, those substances were traded in you know, throughout the ancient world, and so it might have.
Speaker 3:
In fact, they were rather expensive, and so it might be that somebody in.
Speaker 3:
Persia or Babylon would have picked up some frankincense and myrrh at, you know, at a high market or something, and have had it available. My best guess is that they were from the territory of Persia or Babylon, both of which they're right next to each other, and they had a tradition going back to Daniel of having Magi there, and, and so that's where I would assume they were from. They talk about there's a word there from the east that they came from the east, and that would Arabia would work there, but so would Persia or Babylon there, and it might have been India, for all we know. It doesn't specify where they came from, but my, my best theory on that would be Persia or Babylon.
Speaker 2:
So so why does Matthew include, or what do you think as a reason for why Matthew would include, the wise men in his telling of the Christmas story?
Speaker 3:
I think Matthew had an agenda and I mean he was telling the Jesus story and Jesus was just amazing and there's a lot to say about Jesus. But one of the things Matthew was particularly interested in was the way that Jesus was enlarging the kingdom of God, that Jesus was welcoming in the outcasts, the foreigners, the outsiders, the people who were really rejected by the religious leaders of the time, the Pharisees, and so.
Speaker 3:
Matthew has a lot of stories of the Pharisees in opposition to Jesus and Jesus trying to pry the kingdom open and the Pharisees trying to slam the doors and that you know if you were an outsider they didn't want you. But Jesus kept saying no outsiders are. This is what God is about, and so that starts from Matthew right at the beginning. The first chapter of Matthew is something that people hardly ever read because it's a bunch of names. It's the family tree of Jesus.
Speaker 3:
And so you go through those names and what's fascinating is that there are four women in that listed Everyone else male, but four women are part of Jesus' family tree. All four of them have something that makes them an outsider, some scandal they were involved with. There are a couple of foreigners Ruth was from Moab, and Bathsheba is actually mentioned as the wife of somebody from Uriah, the Hittite from another country. So these were outsiders, foreigners that were part of Jesus' family tree. And so then you get to chapter two and suddenly we have the magi showing up from outside, from the east coming all this way to worship the king of the Jews.
Speaker 3:
And so it seems to me that Matthew is saying look, the whole world is coming to worship Jesus, that this is a big deal for you and for anyone who trusts in Jesus, that you're part of a world thing, not just a Jewish thing. And so he's prying open that world for outsiders.
Speaker 2:
And I wonder we didn't talk about this in rehearsal but I wonder if Matthew, having been a tax collector and having become an outsider, if that wouldn't also play into why he would make such an important point in the very first chapter and into the second chapter.
Speaker 3:
That's a really good insight. I think that's probably true that he was on the receiving end of insults from the Pharisees. I'm sure many times Like to be on the wrong side, yeah, and he was treated as an outsider himself, and so he was especially tuned in to the idea that the Jesus event, that Jesus' appearance on earth, his whole ministry, from the very beginning from his birth was something that was opening up the ways of God to outsiders.
Speaker 2:
And so we end this episode, the last one, and we're going to do the same of this. So what's the so? What so? Why? The story about the wise men and Matthew and Cleo? Then why would that be important to us in the 21st century?
Speaker 3:
Well, this is especially an important question here at Hope Church and I had the privilege of being part of the original core group. I was here at the beginning and from the very start we were a church that didn't want to be just another place for churchy people to go to.
Speaker 3:
We were especially reaching out to the outsider. If you knew nothing about church, great, come on in. If you have any kind of question about God, god wants to meet you and we know you want to meet God, and so this is a church for outsiders. And, rick, when you came to Hope Church, you just fit perfectly into that, because you have a heart for the outsiders, for the people who don't conform to the ways that people expect church people to act. No one here does yes.
Speaker 3:
And so this is our ministry here at Hope, in this community to reach out to people who would assume that they weren't welcome here.
Speaker 3:
Well, you are welcome here, so please come, please come and share the presence of Jesus with us, because Jesus specifically reached out to the people who weren't the churchy type, weren't the religious type. They didn't have all the right answers, but they had the questions and that's what Jesus was looking for. So if you're an outsider out there in podcast world listening to this, come on in, because this is what Jesus is all about.
Speaker 2:
And I would echo that and say if you are an outsider, or if you ever felt like an outsider, maybe the magi could be your avatar. Right, that's your, they're your people, right? Yeah, because they're outsiders who were welcomed in, flawed people, who are part of the plan to redeem the world. And so yeah, randy, great episode. I loved the insights and I hope you all listening did as well, and we'll be back next week for our final episode in this Advent series. So thanks, randy.