Baptism of Christ Mt. 3:13-17

January 8, 2017 Rev. Rona Kinsley

The Gift of Myrrh

Before I got heavily involved in churchy things, I didn’t really pay attention to the fact that the sixth of January was an important date in the church, a day called “Epiphany.” If I had done the math, I could have figured out that it was the twelfth day of Christmas, but I didn’t even know what that meant except that we sing a catchy song about it. It was also the day when my family took down the Christmas tree, but again I didn’t really know why. So you may be surprised to learn, as I was, that Epiphany was one of the most important festivals of the Early Church. In the earliest days of the church, the birth of Christ was celebrated on January sixth rather than December 25th, and Epiphany is still the principal Feast of the Incarnation in the Eastern Church.

Before I received the benefits of a seminary education, I had mostly heard the word “epiphany” used to describe a sudden insight, like the kind comic strip artists illustrate by drawing a little light bulb above a character’s head. This association of epiphany with light— as in “I have seen the light!”— is quite fitting. In the Early Church, the Feast of Epiphany was celebrated with a festival of lights, commemorating the light of the star which brought the Magi to the manger. But to use “epiphany” to indicate sudden understanding also relates to the actual meaning of the word itself. “Epiphany” comes from a Greek word meaning manifestation or appearance.

The events that we hear of in our scripture readings, during the season of Epiphany (which continues until Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent), were understood to be manifestations, or appearances, of God. And so, during Epiphany, we hear the stories of how God manifested to the people who witnessed the descent of the Holy Spirit on an unknown man from Nazareth who had come to be baptized by John, to the wedding guests at Cana, who were amazed when the son of their friend Mary produced the finest wine from common jars of water drawn from the village well, and to the Magi who followed a star to a rough stable in an obscure Judean town.

Matthew tells us that the Magi paid homage to the infant Christ and then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Presumably the Wise Men’s treasure chests contained a variety of wonderful and valuable things, so why these particular gifts? Tradition, as it so often does, has gone beyond the biblical text and assigned meanings to the Magi’s gifts. These meanings relate to ways in which Christians have understood Christ and why he came among us. Gold, that most precious of metals, was a gift fit for a king. Frankincense, an aromatic resin, was the major ingredient of the incense formula used in the Jerusalem Temple. Thus frankincense was a gift for a god. And myrrh, an aromatic gum used in
embalming, came to be seen as a foreshadowing of Christ’s death.

On the First Sunday after Epiphany— today— the church celebrates the Baptism of Christ. The gospels tell us that, immediately after his baptism, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he prayed and fasted for forty days. At the end of the forty days, he has an encounter with Satan, who offers him three temptations. The first is to satisfy his hunger by turning a stone into a loaf of bread. The second is to receive dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. And the third is to put God’s protection to the test, and cheat death, by throwing himself from the pinnacle of the Temple.

As I thought about the Magi’s gifts and Satan’s temptations, I saw that there was an interesting relationship between them. The Magi’s gift of gold, the gift for a king, like the first temptation, is an invitation to embrace wealth and control over the earth’s material resources. The gift of frankincense, the gift for a god, like the second temptation, is an encouragement to take power and to be honored and even worshipped by the people. The gift of myrrh, like the third temptation, points toward death. But here we find a difference between the gift and the temptation, for myrrh accepts the inevitability of death, while Satan tempts Jesus to circumvent death— to prove himself so special, God will not let him die.

So what did Jesus do with these gifts and temptations? The gospel record makes it clear that Jesus rejected the first two, with their seductive messages of earthly wealth and power. Throughout his ministry, Jesus had no home and apparently no possessions beyond the clothes he wore. Trusting that God would provide for him, he relied upon the generosity of his followers, the hospitality of strangers, and even some foraging and fishing, to meet his basic needs. At his death, the only material “inheritance” worth fighting over was the seamless tunic that he wore.

Jesus also shunned earthly power. When the crowd tried to make him king, after the feeding of the 5000, he slipped away and withdrew to a mountain by himself to spend time in prayer. In the parables that Jesus tells, “King” always refers to God the Creator, and Jesus makes it clear that his own power is not the power of this world.

But what about the third temptation— the temptation to deny death and to excuse himself from its inevitability? Just as he set aside the gifts of gold and frankincense, did he also refuse the gift of myrrh? Here we see that temptation and gift diverge for Jesus held out his hands and accepted the gift of myrrh. He fully accepted the necessity of passing through the narrow gate of death— the gate we all must pass through— a gate that, for him, would be fraught with pain and suffering.

Even more, Jesus lived with an ongoing awareness of his mortality. Time and again, he spoke of his coming death, and, time and again, the disciples didn’t want to hear it. How human the disciples were, how like us. Because I would guess that our response to the Magi’s gifts would be exactly the opposite of Jesus’ response. I think that if we were offered the gifts of the Wise Men, most of us would say, “Thank you very much, I’m delighted to have the gold and the frankincense, but you can keep the myrrh.”

Our world teaches us to value and seek wealth and power. In fact, having lots of both has become the primary measure of success in our society. At the same time, we try to live as if we are never going to die. We keep the dying out of sight in nursing homes and hospitals, and spend billions of healthcare dollars to extend our lives— just a little longer— even when their quality has become severely compromised and the end is clearly in sight. Our culture encourages us to be complete suckers for all three of Satan’s temptations, grasping for wealth and power— going for the gold and the frankincense— and denying our mortality— rejecting the myrrh.

Jesus was able to resist Satan’s temptations because of his complete trust in God. Our vulnerability to these temptations reveals a profound lack of trust in God. We don’t really believe that God will provide and care for us while we are alive, or that God will be there to guide us through the narrow passage of death into what awaits us beyond. But what might happen, how would it affect us, if, like Jesus, we decided to accept the gift of myrrh?

Rachel Remen, a physician who left a practice in pediatrics to work with people with terminal cancer, has written two wonderful books about her experiences: Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings. In the last chapter of My Grandfather’s Blessings, she shares these words of wisdom:

The view from the edge of life is different and often much clearer than the way that most of us see things. Life-threatening illness may cause people to question what they have accepted as unchanging. Values that have been passed down in a family for generations may be recognized as inadequate; lifelong beliefs about personal capacities or what is important may prove to be mistaken. When life is stripped down to its very essentials, it is surprising how simple things become. Fewer and fewer things matter and those that matter, matter a great deal more. . .One of my patients who survived three major surgeries in five weeks . . . told me that his experience had challenged his ideas about life. . . . He was stripped of all that he knew and left only with the unshakable conviction that life itself was holy . . . At the depths of the most unimaginable vulnerability he had discovered that we live not by choice but by grace. And that life itself is a blessing.

Those of us who read our Advent Study book, Learning To Fall, were astonished and moved by the blessing, and even joy, the author, Philip Simmons, found when his life was stripped down to its very essentials by ALS. What Remen describes so well is a change in point of view that I have heard over and over again from my own friends who have faced terminal illness. A few years ago, I received a Christmas letter from a friend who had been diagnosed with cancer. . .truthfully, I am in wonderful health, she wrote. I pay very close attention to what I eat, how I exercise, how I think, how I love. I pay attention as if my life depends upon it. Of course, my life depended on those things just as much before— it is the awareness that has changed, and for which I am deeply grateful. (Rev. Mary James)

It is the awareness that changes when the Magi place the gift of myrrh in our unwilling hands, and we confront the inescapable fact that we will die. At such a time we realize, as Hebrew Bible scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel has said, Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. Those who receive the gift of myrrh, along with realizing that life itself is a blessing, often come to see that what they thought was important doesn’t really matter, and that things they had disregarded or taken for granted matter very much. In particular, they find that the possession of gold and frankincense— of wealth and power— now proves to be very empty. There is so much more value in enjoying the love of family and friends, and knowing that they have made a positive contribution, in however small a way, to the lives of others. As Remen writes, Service is the work of the soul. We restore the holiness of the world through our lovingkindness and compassion. Everyone participates. It is a collective task. Every act of lovingkindness, no matter how great or small, repairs the world.

The sad thing is, it often takes a life-threatening illness, or the death of someone we love— the scent of myrrh— to bring about this change in awareness. But what if we decided that we wanted to change our awareness now? What if we wanted, like my friend, to pay more attention to our lives, now— to do more of the things that really matter, and to distract ourselves less with the things that don’t, in the end, really matter at all?

From the Magi who knelt before him, Jesus accepted the gift of myrrh. He was fully aware that he was going to die, and it’s clear that he knew what did and didn’t matter. So he lived a life of compassion and service, in deep relationship with God. He also lived his life fully, enjoying the beauty of the world around him, enjoying his friends, enjoying a good meal and a glass of wine, tasting, without apology, all the joy of life. He knew that Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. Perhaps we, too, can only really know this when we accept the gift of myrrh.

Amen.