The Wise Men came,
Three made their way.
To shower him with love as he lay in the hay.

That’s a line from a song by Dave Matthews called simply, “The Christmas Song”. It comes in the first verse; right after Jesus is born and laid in the manger. Dave Matthews puts the Wise Men there with the shepherds and the angels on Christmas Eve, just like almost every Children’s pageant and Christmas story you’ve ever heard. I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. In seminary anyone who refuses to put out the wise men in their nativity scenes until January 6th, or who refuses to use any Christmas lights other than blue until December 25th, was labeled a Liturgy Nazi. I don’t want to be a liturgy nazi. But I also don’t want to forget Epiphany: that day when we remember the Wise Men who came to Bethlehem, and what they saw there.

The Wise Men came,
Three made their way.
To shower him with love as he lay in the hay.

An Epiphany is a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something. It is a perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization. It is an “aha!” moment. An Epiphany is when you all of a sudden know something that you can’t believe you didn’t already know, because it seems so obvious now. We call it the “Feast of the Epiphany” because if we called it the “Feast of the Aha!” people wouldn’t think we were serious.

The Wise Men however, would have known exactly what we were talking about. They came a long way to find a New King, with only a star to guide them. They looked first at the court of King Herod, because where would you expect to find a king but at court, in a palace, on a throne? The New King wasn’t there though, because this king was not only a new king, but a new kind of king. So they went on. And they found him. But he was not what they were looking for.

The Wise Men came,
Three made their way.
To shower him with love as he lay in the hay.

Isaiah proclaims the coming of light in the darkness, the abundance of the sea, the wealth of nations, and a multitude of camels. He is clearly overwhelmed with the magnitude of what God has given him to say.

Paul writes to the Ephesians to assure them that they to are covered by the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Ephesians weren’t Jews like Paul was. A Jewish Messiah wasn’t much good to them under the old way of thinking. But Paul writes to tell them that the old way of thinking is now right out the window. He claims the honorable title of “least of all the saints” and he assures the Ephesians and all other gentiles (like you and me) in no uncertain terms that God sent a Son for them (us) too and that God had always planned to do exactly that. And then…

The Wise Men came,
Three made their way.
To shower him with love as he lay in the hay.

Do you see how Paul and the Wise Men are connected? Paul brought the gospel of Christ to the gentiles-to us. The Wise Men came from the East. They could have come from the North, or the South, or even the West. The point is that they came from somewhere else. They weren’t Jews. They came to see the king of the Jews, to flatter him with gifts, and possibly come to a political understanding. They came to see a King of people. They found a King for their hearts.
As the first Wise Man entered the stable he thought to himself, “Oh my!” The next, “Aha!” The third, “Of course. We should have known”. The gifts they brought were gifts fit for a king, not for a baby. They left the gifts anyway. They might have left the gifts because they knew this baby was not like other babies. This baby wouldn’t play in the myrrh or put the frankincense in his mouth. They could have left the gifts because they were all the they had to give. I think they left the gifts because they were just tired of carrying them. And in one shared moment of Epiphany, they all knew that they weren’t the ones giving gifts here anyways. The baby was.

The Wise Men came,
Three made their way.
To shower him with love as he lay in the hay.