William Chatterton Dix offers the most straightforward reading
of the gifts of the wise men in his carol As with gladness men of old. Gold,
frankincense and myrrh were “gifts most rare” – expensive, precious gifts fit
for a new-born king. Maybe this is all the gifts meant to these star-gazers.
Maybe not.
Did they travel around the world to pay homage to each crown
prince? I don’t think so. More likely, they opened their treasure-chests only
to the one born “king of the Jews” and maybe because they knew that this wasn’t
going to be a king like any other. But we don’t know.
Our own homage to Jesus Christ is of course not limited to
imitating what, if anything, we can ascertain about the adoration of the magi.
We hail Christ “Sacrifice, redeemer, saviour!” in the words of Michael Perry’s
more recent Epiphany carol Bethlehem, what greater city.
Christopher
Wordsworth’s carol Songs of thankfulness and praise focuses on "God in man made manifest" but does not mention the gifts. Jesus is known as “Prophet, Priest, and King” at his baptism and
as “Godhead manifest” at the wedding at Cana. The poet does not
claim that the “sages from afar” knew what we do, we who come to celebrate the birth as those who know the works
and teaching, the suffering and death, and the resurrection and ascension of Christ.
If we ourselves were to bring the Christ-child gold, frankincense and myrrh,
it would be gold to crown our saviour king, frankincense to worship our high priest
as God, and myrrh to embalm, in anticipation of his death like the woman
in Bethany, our sacrificial lamb as redeemer. This is a post-resurrection
perspective: “Glorious now behold him arise, king and God and sacrifice” – as Edward
John Hopkins has it in what is maybe the most famous Epiphany carol, We
three kings of Orient are. The gospel is of course written from a
post-resurrection perspective and the evangelist may have listed the gifts on
the view that the men gave better than they knew. Maybe, maybe not.
But we cannot give gold, frankincense and myrrh. Nor should we, Reginald Heber claims in Brightest and best of the sons of the
morning. He asks whether we should yield Christ “odours of
Edom, and offerings divine, gems of the mountains, and pearls of the ocean, myrrh
from the forest, or gold from the mine?” No, we would be offering these in vain, if
we tried to secure God’s favour thereby, he rightly points out. But what if we wanted to make gifts to honour him?
The author doesn't say. But the choice of “odours of Edom” may have been influenced by the often negative portrayal
of Edom in the Bible and “offerings divine” can remind us that none of these
gifts are manufactured in a full sense. Yes, work is involved in mining gold
and producing spices but these are gifts we find in creation rather than things
we produce, so of what value can they be to the one who made them in the first
place and can reproduce them in any quantity he likes? “Richer by far is the
heart’s adoration, dearer to God are the prayers of the poor.”
Our adoration and prayers must be matched, however, “with gold of
obedience, and incense of lowliness” because only then do we offer “truth in
its beauty, and love in its tenderness”. But if we do so, we can offer up all
or sorrows and worries as well, as John Samuel Bewley Monsell reminds us in O
worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
