Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphaneia, meaning appearance or manifestation. Manifestation is also a word that could use defining, it means a perceptible, outward, or visual expression of something. On Epiphany, we celebrate the manifestation, the tangible, visual expression of God’s presence with us through Jesus.
• The festival of Epiphany celebrates the arrival of the Wise Men to Jesus. Some Christian traditions however, celebrate the three great epiphanies, great revelations of God’s presence, on this day, the magi’s adoration of the Christ child, Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, and Jesus’ first miracle of turning water into wine.
• One epiphany (tangible, visible expression of God’s presence with us) that we experience is in the sacraments. When we remember our baptisms, when we take the bread and wine of communion, we hold a manifestation of God.
Matthew 2:1-12
• Though the wise men appear in most manger sets along with the shepherds, it is important to remember that the story of Herod and the magi is unique to Matthew, as the shepherds, the census, and “no room at the inn” is unique to Luke. Rather than attempt to harmonize these two very different stories, we should allow each to stand alone as indicators of the larger narrative of their writer’s unique perspectives. Luke’s Gospel focuses on outsiders, thus Jesus was born in a barn among shepherds. Matthew is concerned with the conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world, thus the emerging battle between King Jesus and King Herod.
• Matthew 1 started out by placing Jesus in the on-going story of God, from Abraham through David to Jesus. Now in chapter 2, the story is given place (Bethlehem) and time (the days of Herod the king).
• One of the few commonalities between Matthew and Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ birth is the location of Bethlehem. This is important because one of the Jewish objections to Christianity’s claim of Jesus as the Messiah was that Jesus was from Nazareth, whereas the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem (see John 7:42, “Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”) Matthew highlighted the importance of the question by having the very first word spoken by a human in the Gospel being a question about the location (“Where…” v. 2). Later in chapter 2, Matthew will clarify that Jesus, while born in Bethlehem, came from Nazareth, by having the holy family move there following their escape from Herod (2:24).
• The magis’ referred to Jesus as the “king of the Jews,” a reminder that Jesus is the next step in the promise of a royal line from David. It is also a foreshadowing of the crucifixion, when he will be crucified as “King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:11, “Now Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus said, ‘You say so.’” 29, “and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’” 37, “Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, ‘This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.’”).
• The characters in this story are often interchangeably referred to as “kings,” “wise men.” Or “magi.” Magi is a transliteration of the Greek word μάγοι, which means “wise men” or “astrologers.” The same word appears in Acts 13:6, 8 (When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they met a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet, named Bar-Jesus… But the magician Elymas (for that is the translation of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith), where it is translated as “magician” or “sorcerer.” The word magi designates a priestly class of Persian or Babylonian experts in astrology and the interpretation of dreams. In other words, Gentiles who, despite not having special revelation of God through the Torah, nevertheless come to Jerusalem following the light they have seen to worship the new king. The word “king” is not connected at all. The idea of the men being kings comes from a later application of Psalm 72:10-11 (“May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts. May all kings fall down before him, all nations give him service”) and Isaiah 60:3 (“Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn”) on the story.
• We also don’t know how many of them there are, despite the song “We Three Kings.” The number of them is never listed. All we know is they brought three types of gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. More important than the number is what the gifts reveal about the recipient. Frankincense and myrrh are both expensive aromatic gum resins, not native to Palestine, that were used for a variety of religious and medical reasons. Those, along with gold, would be gifts for royalty.
• The magi see the star “at its rising” or “in the east” (depending on which ancient manuscript you read). Either way, the idea is to unite gentile pagan astrological hope and Jewish biblical promise. Ancient pagan beliefs associated the birth of a new ruler with astrological signs. Jewish tradition related the hoped for Messiah to the “star out of Jacob” (Num 24:17, “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near—a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel”).
• There are lots of historical reasons why Herod the Great was not the hoped for king of Israel. For starters, he was not Jewish, he was an Idumean (descended from Edom, one of the ancient rivals of Judea). Also, he was backed by Rome, having established himself as king by military conquest of his “own” people. The people wanted a Jewish king who was not beholden to Rome. But Matthew was less concerned about Herod as a historical figure than as a representative for the kingdom of the world, which is in conflict with the coming kingdom of God. Herod represented the resistance of the world to the divine kingship of Jesus.
• The “chief priests and scribes” (v. 4) play a similar role to Herod in representing Jesus’ struggle with earthly leadership.
• In v. 5-6, Matthew has the religious leadership quote Hebrew scripture to Herod to tell where Jesus was for a couple of reasons. 1) Because in Matthew’s time, most of the resistance to Jesus came from religious leaders who claimed he couldn’t be the Messiah because he was from Nazareth, not Bethlehem. This verse affirms the birthplace of the Messiah and places Jesus’ birth there. 2) To portray the religious leadership as hypocrites who know the messianic promises, but do not follow them.
Mark 1:4-11
• John the Baptist did not bring the repentance that heralded God’s judgment. Rather, John’s preaching brought forth repentance and an anticipation that prepared people to recognize Jesus.
• Jesus’ baptism by John seems out of place after all of John’s talk of Jesus’ greater status. The other gospels work around this in various ways, and since Mark’s is the earliest, it probably reflects the historical tradition the others tried to obscure. Jesus’ baptism by John suggests that Jesus associated himself with the need to gather the elect and prepare for the Lord’s coming with a gesture of repentance.
• Unique in Mark’s Gospel is that the descent by the Holy Spirit is visible only to Jesus. The readers are shown his identity while the rest of the characters in the narrative are not.
• The description includes lots of apocalyptic symbolism—the open heavens (Isaiah 63:19), the descent of the Spirit, the divine voice. These continue the opening theme of Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophets.
John 2:1-12
• This is the first of Jesus’ “signs” (signs being the word used for miracles in John’s Gospel). Describing Jesus’ miracles as “signs” makes viewing this as an epiphany, as a revelation of Jesus, even more understandable. Especially in John’s Gospel, Jesus’ signs/miracles are not about the action itself, but about what the action reveals about the identity of Jesus. Placing the miracle at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry demonstrates everything Jesus will offer.
• Jesus’ response to his mother sounds harsh or rude to modern ears, but it is more disengagement than rudeness. Addressing her as “woman” plays down their familial relationship with a more formal title. And “what concern is that to you and me?” may have been a common expression, again to create distance.
• “Hour” (hora) in John’s Gospel is used to refer to Jesus’ death, through which he will be glorified. In the beginning of the Gospel, during the time of Jesus ministry, it was not time for his glorification. (7:30, “Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come,” 8:20, “He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.”) The resurrection of Lazarus marks the turning point in John’s Gospel, after which Jesus began his movement to the cross. (12:23, “Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” 13:1, “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father,” 17:1, “After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.”)
• Jesus’ mother’s words to the servants to “Do whatever he tells you” (v. 5) echo Pharaohs words about Joseph in Genesis 41:55 during the famine in Egypt. Like Pharaoh’s confidence that Joseph could solve the problem of food scarcity, Jesus’ mother is confident in Jesus’ ability to provide whatever is needed.
• The description of the miracle itself begins with a very close description of the jars. Stone jars (as opposed to earthenware) is important because they wouldn’t run the chance of not meeting levitical standards for cleanliness. Even with the size of the wedding, everything about v. 6 is overdrawn, from the description of the jars, to their size, to the amount of space dedicated to describing it. The narrative technique echoes the size of the jars to emphasize the vast scope of the miracle. A similar expansiveness is found in the feeding of the 5,000 (John 6:1-4). There is a superabundance in Jesus.
• It is interesting to note that while Jesus did use jars used for ritual purification to turn water into wine, he did not change water used for ritual purification. Rather the jars stood empty, waiting to be filled. Jesus is not undoing Jewish law; he is creating something new in the midst of it.
• The question of where the wine came from (v. 9) is an important one, as it leads to a reoccurring theme throughout John’s Gospel of the question of where Jesus comes from. Throughout the Gospel, there is conflict between Jesus’ knowledge that he is from God and the ignorance of others (similar to the priests/scribes in the Matthew 2 story earlier).
• V. 10 speaks not just of the amount of wine, but the quality. In the Old Testament, an abundance of good wine is often a symbol of the joyous arrival of God’s new age. This miracle then is not just revealing Jesus, but revealing the opening of the new promised age of the kingdom of God.
• The Greek word for “first” in v. 11 is arche (the same word used in John 1:1, “In the beginning…”). It signifies beginning, rather than first in a sequence, which would be prote.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
O’Day, Gail R. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
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