Matthew 2:1-12-- Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh

A joke making the rounds a few years ago suggested that if the wise men had been wise women, they would have known enough about childbirth to provide dinner for Mary and Joseph, wash the dishes, and sweep the stable. And they would have brought useful baby presents– diapers and baby blankets, for example– rather than the strange, exotic gifts mentioned in Matthew's gospel.

But were the gifts of the wise men really so useless to the baby Jesus and his parents? In the January 2013 issue of Sojourners, Martin L. Smith cites a medieval interpretation attributed to St. Bernard which assigns a surprisingly practical purpose to each gift: the gold was to relieve the family's poverty; the incense, to alleviate the stench and bad air of the stable; and the myrrh, to soothe the child's skin and drive away vermin. In other words, Smith explains, "the Magi's gifts are not exotic luxuries, but practical relief aid." The holy family is living as many poor peasants still do today-- in cramped quarters shared with animals and their excrement. The baby's health is at risk in these unsanitary conditions, and he "has a rash because the manger is crawling with fleas."

As Smith points out, this Epiphany story urges us to see Christ's kinship with the millions of poor children today whose lives are at risk because our social order is not just enough – even 2000 years later– to meet the basic human needs of every family for economic sufficiency, adequate and sanitary housing, and basic health services.