An outsider so often sees instantly that which we have ceased to notice. In our everyday lives, we become accustomed to things as they are. We adjust to the shortcomings and abundances of our environment, so that we mostly just experience our lives as normal and ordinary.
***
The wise men from the East arrive not on the night of Christ’s birth but later, possibly several years later. They find Jesus not as a tender and mild newborn, but as a growing infant. It has been several years since Mary and Joseph have last received some kind of divine vision, and there may well be times when the Magnificat seems like a sentiment very far away. Their lives would have become normal after this extraordinary thing.
These unfamiliar outsiders pierce the ordinary and remind Mary and Joseph of what remarkable things are occurring, and offer what they can to prepare Jesus for what is yet to come.
***
We bless houses in Epiphany. We take chalk and mark the lintels of our doors to remind us that the ordinary places of our dwelling are also sites of encounter with the guest, the stranger, and even those precious others with whom we share our lives.
Offering hospitality to guests is an important practice, not just for the benefit of the visitor, but for the benefit of the host. An outsider can remind you instantly of how beautiful it is to live where you do, how wonderful your cooking is, and how good it is to be in your presence. However much you may practice gratitude and noticing the blessings of your life, you will never hear them as clearly as you do from the mouth of someone else.
Perhaps we even go so far as to practice false humility or to deny our gifts. Some of us, myself included, become fixated on that which we cannot change, and that which causes us distress. You may only notice the broken seals in the windows, the failures in your food, the awkwardness of your personality, but a stranger may see your abundance and your loveliness at once. It is important to let such blessings in, even if you have to do so very slowly. The world is full of gifts from God, and all of them are good, even as it sometimes takes work to see it. Let the gifts from strangers, visitors, and guests work on your heart whenever you can.
***
The gifts of the Magi are not easy blessings and they do not just arrive to remind Mary, Joseph, and Jesus of that which is pleasant and lovely and nice. We remember their gifts as symbolizing wealth, holiness, and mortality: all signs of what it really means to be a human being.
We are all gifted with lives in which we will have some strength, but not all, and in which we will meet the divine, but clumsily and darkly. To be a human being is one day to die, but there will be life, too. There is meaning to be found in our finitude. This is what Jesus has come to.
The Magi could well visit us all, even now, and remind us of what we have and what awaits us.
***
Herod wants something more than the gift of life itself. He clings to power and control, and for something new to happen in his midst is a threat. His own limitations are deeply disturbing. He uses clumsy lies to try to prevent real life from reaching him.
Herod cannot make use of the Other or these strangers to find his way back to his own humanity; there is no curiosity or healthy surprise in him, only a failed attempt to destroy that which he cannot understand and master.
The wise men have been changed by their pilgrimage, and they know exactly what Herod has in mind for them and for Christ, and so they go where the powers of the world will not follow, and return by another road.
We are called, too, to see the powers of the world in their impotent rage as pitiable humans, too, who are alienated from their very selves, their humanity, and who use violence to accomplish a fleeting and ultimately futile control. We must know when to return by another road rather than to comply with the authorities who would enlist us in their destruction.
***
In this season of Epiphany, may you come home to the deep gift of your own life, in all its quotidian and unremarkable glory. May you know the brilliance of your own light, which only strangers, visitors, and guests can show you. May you go where you are called, and offer hospitality to the Other who loves you. May you always and evermore know your humble and glorious blessings, right here and right now.