Matthew 2:10-11, When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
We’ve got to talk about these gifts. A very strange assortment for a baby, don’t you think? Like everything else in the birth narrative of Jesus, they are highly symbolic and highly theological. That doesn’t make them any less true, but as God has been organizing this story for hundreds and hundreds of years, we must allow the strangeness of these gifts to be absolutely what God had in mind when he thought of us reading it 2000 years after Christ’s birth.
They start off easy enough. Gold would be a gift made for kings, and we know the wise men were searching for a king of the Jews. In 1 Kings 10, when the Queen of Sheba brought gifts to King Solomon, an event that prefigures these wise men coming to seek the King of the Jews, she brought gold. it’s still strange to bring to a baby - a child cannot appreciate gold - but it does show that the wise men were thinking big picture here - he would a king forever.
The second gift is another repeat of the gifts brought from Sheba to Solomon - frankincense. This fragrant spice would be used in kingly rituals, but also primarily in the practices of priests in offering a fragrant offering to the Lord. In the books of Leviticus and Numbers in the Old Testament, frankincense frequently accompanied offerings to the Lord, to be part of sin offerings and grain offerings at the tabernacle, handled by the priest in his role. Jesus would be our great high priest who would offer himself as the sacrifice for our sins. He serves a dual role of both priest and sacrifice, as the one who could be the mediator between God and man (he would be completely holy and could then stand before God on our behalf), and yet he would also offer himself as that sacrifice to atone for the sins of God’s people. So the first two gifts, gold and frankincense, point to Christ’s roles as king and priest.
And lastly we have the myrrh. This is by far the strangest gift at the party. If you take a look at John 19:39, you’ll find a clue. Here we see again the person of Nicodemus, who featured prominently in the story in John 3. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night as he was afraid of being caught inquiring of Jesus, as he was an important Jewish leader. Now he does not hesitate to the take the body of Jesus, taken off the cross by Joseph of Arimathea, to bury him. This would have been done in public for all to see. But Nicodemus no longer fears the repercussions, and moves to bury the body of Jesus. One of the spices in his large, seventy-five pound mixture is myrrh; in fact, it’s the first spice mentioned. Myrrh was used for the burying of dead bodies. What this means is that the wise men brought to the birth of Jesus something indicating his kingship, his priesthood, and finally, his death. We cannot have the meaning of Christmas without the meaning of Easter. There is no question then what Jesus came to do. Jesus was born to die.
Hymn for Reflection: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WryWS6jj7x0