Magi: Three Kings?

Caspar, Balthasar, Melchior. These “three kings of Orient are” found, complete with crowns and camels, in nearly every nativity scene. Yet if you look closely at the gospel account of the Magi (Mat 2:1-12), you won’t find these names. 

Actually there is no mention of how many Magi there were or that they were kings riding camel-back. This is a testimony to something some Bible Christians would like to deny: that all who read a text of Scripture do so in the light of some tradition, through some lens. If it is the right lens, it magnifies the text and allows us to get at its true meaning. If it is the wrong lens, we get a distorted image.

As modern celebrants of the "ongoing-ness" of the incarnation we have to hold these things gently and understand how faithfulness has found different expressions year after year, century after century.

I know early christians hungered for a way to tell the story of Jesus' birth so that the world was implicated. Paul's constant accommodation of gentile inclusion in his fledgling church is evidence of it.

That even a "worldly" wisdom was capable of understanding God's signs says a whole bunch about exactly that the incarnation was for us all.

 So we sing anyway and we celebrate our inclusion:

We three kings of orient are,  

Bearing gifts we traverse afar 

Field and fountain, moor and mountain, 

Following yonder star. 

Oh, star of wonder, star of night,  

Star with royal beauty bright. 

Westward leading, still proceeding, 

Guide with thy perfect light.