We should start by acknowledging that there’s very little we know about the three wise men except what Scripture tells us: they were from the East; they were magi, quite possibly involved in astrology or Zoroastrianism and known for their vast knowledge; and they weren’t too proud to follow a star and a dream. That’s it. The rest is left to our imaginations.
But with those details, it’s indeed possible to imagine what they might have been like. And this is what the good Anglican Dorothy Sayers does in her radio drama The Man Born to Be King, produced and broadcast by the BBC during World War II. In keeping with tradition, the three magi are named Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. Caspar is described as old, learned, and wise, “a little withdrawn and aloof,”[1] as Sayers puts it. His is the “wisdom of the intellect.” In contrast, Melchior is younger, practical, and concerned with “the wisdom of the bodily senses.” And Balthazar, although young, is a mystic who’s interested in the relationship of humans to God and God to humans, and his is “a wisdom of the heart.”
We know how the magi get to Bethlehem. They get there by starting with what they know best: the heavens. They follow a star that they inexplicably know is the star of the one born king of the Jews. And we’re told where they end up: at the manger, with Mary, Joseph, and the Christ child. We know, too, that there’s something unusual about the wisdom of these magi. While their heads might be in the heavens, trying to decipher the stars and make accurate predictions based on natural observations, these magi are wholly different from Herod’s wise advisers. Although Herod’s men can at least figure out that Bethlehem is the likely birthplace of this child-king based on Scripture, beyond that, they seem to have no desire to go any further. And through an odd act of divine providence, the magi are aided in their quest to find Christ through the machinations of the ruthless, cunning Herod.
In Dorothy Sayers’s play, the wise men arrive at the manger not only with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but also with three riddles. The first king, Caspar—who I imagine is rather like Dumbledore in Harry Potter—says something surprising for a wise old man. When Mary acknowledges her humble status as she greets magi, Caspar responds, “Alas! the more we know, the less we understand life. Doubts make us afraid to act, and much learning dries the heart. And the riddle that torments the world is this: Shall Wisdom and Love live together at last, when the promised Kingdom comes?”
The youthful and practical Melchior has his own riddle: “order puts fetters on freedom, and freedom rebels against order, so that love and power are always at war together. And the riddle that torments the world is this: Shall Power and Love dwell together at last, when the promised Kingdom comes?”
And finally, the mystical Balthazar wonders how union with God can be found in a world of suffering: “Fear is our daily companion – the fear of want, the fear of war, the fear of cruel death, and of still more cruel life. But all this we could bear if we knew that we did not suffer in vain; that God was beside us in the struggle, sharing the miseries of His own world. For the riddle that torments the world is this: Shall Sorrow and Love be reconciled at last, when the promised Kingdom comes?”
These are certainly vexing riddles, but ones that aren’t unknown to us. These Gentile wise men who come from a distant, exotic land pose to a poor, uneducated Jewish peasant girl the difficult questions of a perplexed and hurting world. The riddles shared by both Jew and Gentile come to rest at the feet of the Christ child. And Mary responds by reducing everything to an answer that is both simple and yet one of the most challenging things to accept, especially for us moderns. She says that she understands “that wealth and cleverness were nothing to God – no one is too unimportant to be His friend. . . So I know very well that Wisdom and Power and Sorrow can live together with Love; and for me, the Child in my arms is the answer to all the riddles.” The answer is the Child. He—not knowledge, authority, or any other skill—is the answer to all our riddles.
Having taken their heads out of the skies, the magi come from afar, and their immense knowledge of a world in riddles is reduced to the truest answer in the universe. The Child they’ve come to meet is the answer to all the riddles. The magi have moved from the head to the heart. They have moved from finding answers to basking in mystery. And their only response to the mystery in the flesh is to bow down in worship before him.
Twelve days now after this Child was born for us, we, too, kneel in homage at his manger, bringing the riddles of our world and our lives. Some of us hold multiple academic degrees, have defended dissertations, and have more letters after our names than the alphabet contains. Some of us value law and order, keeping things in their place, and respecting the power of worldly authority. And hopefully all of us have hearts that break over suffering, imprisonment, and constant tragedy. But none of us, I imagine, is exempt from carrying a riddle to the manger this evening.
Our world is riddled with riddles if we want to be clever about it. We have arguably more knowledge about the universe, human bodies, and the environment than we’ve ever had before, and yet academia is deeply confused and the planet is in grave peril. We have weapons of defense and more prisons than you can shake a stick at, and yet we have tremendous violence that has infiltrated even our most sacred spaces. We have the gift of psychology and wellness programs, but we have broken spirits and more loneliness than ever before. And we bring all these worldly riddles, which seem intractable and unsolvable, to the manger, and we ask, like those magi, Can wisdom, power, and sorrow dwell with love in the promised kingdom?
We ask because so much of the world, which may also include us, is looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song goes. We’re looking for love in shallow relationships. We’re looking for love in workplace success or status or worldly authority. We’re looking for love because we’re aching with a deep hunger, but no matter how much human knowledge we have, we find that love still eludes us at times.
This love eludes us because it has continued to elude the world since it was first born so many years ago. From love’s first cry as a baby, power was revealed in weakness, knowledge in humility, and compassion in the courage of suffering. And if we only had open hearts like the magi, we might be more willing to trust a star and a dream, instead of our own devices. We might be able to say no to the antics of power, greed, hate, and perpetual suspicion. We might be able to imitate the magi and throw all our sophisticated learning to the wind, fall down on our knees, and worship.
I, for one, don’t believe that current statistics on belief and unbelief in God portray an accurate picture of people’s hearts. I believe most people are searching for what is true, good, and lovely, but most simply don’t know where to find it, because they’re looking in all the wrong places.
But this evening, Scripture tells us where to find love. We will find it only by being foolish enough to trust a star and a dream and to follow where they may lead, no matter how much we’re mocked for it. We’ll find love only by recognizing that the more we know, the more we realize we don’t know. We’ll find true love by moving from our heads to our hearts and seeing that love abides there, closer to us than we could ever imagine. And we fall down and worship this love—true Love—who is the answer to all our riddles.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eve of the Feast of the Epiphany
January 5, 2024
[1] Dorothy Sayers, The Man Born to Be King, 1943 (https://christspieces.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/sayers1943_the-man-born-to-be-king_01_kings-of-judaea_35-53.pdf)