The Story of the Other Wise Man – Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord

The feast of the Epiphany commemorates the arrival of the magi,
and their journey to find Christ can inspire us
to reflect on our own journey to encounter Christ in our lives.
Each of our journeys is unique,
and no one finds Christ in the quite the same way as anyone else.

The magi in the Gospel of Matthew found Jesus in their own way.
The names and numbers of the magi are not given in Matthew’s gospel,
but we think of them as a group of three,
probably because of the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Our tradition gives them the names Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior.

These three magi, or wise men, read and studied the signs,
and when they noticed a particular star at its rising,
they traveled far from their own land in the east
and they found Jesus in Bethlehem.

For some of us, our journey might be similar:
following clear signs, point A to point B.
For others of us, the path is different,
a more winding road.

Such was the case with the other wise man, Artaban.
You won’t find Artaban in the Bible.
His story is told by the author Henry van Dyke.

It seems that Artaban had studied the stars with his friends
Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior,
and he knew that a king was to be born among the Jews,
a King who would change the world.
So Artaban arranged to meet up with his three friends
and travel with them to visit this King,
once they saw his star.
In preparation, Artaban sold his possessions and bought three jewels –
a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl – to carry as gifts to the king.

One night, Artaban looked up and said,
“The star! The King is coming, and I will go to meet him.”
He had ten days to get to the rendezvous
and join his friends’ caravan,
so Artaban immediately got on his horse
and rode across fields of Concabar, past Selucia,
across the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
and finally arrived at Babylon at nightfall on the tenth day,
his horse exhausted,
just three hours away from his friends.
But what was this?
There was a man lying across the road, a poor Hebrew exile, almost dead,
in the grip of a deadly fever.
Should he turn aside, if only for a moment, to help this poor man,
and risk missing the caravan?
He couldn’t leave the man to die,
so Artaban jumped from his horse, brought the man water
and cared for him until the man recovered.
But, alas, he missed the caravan and his three friends.

Sometimes we think we may have “missed the boat,”
and we look back on the choices we have made,
wondering if they were right.

But Artiban was persistent.

However, he couldn’t cross the desert with only a horse,
so he sold the sapphire
to buy the camels and supplies necessary for such a long trip.
Fortunately, the Hebrew man he had saved
told him that, according to the prophets,
the King of the Jews would not be born in Jerusalem, but in Bethlehem.

So Artaban set off for Bethlehem, hoping to meet his friends there.
He crossed deserts, mountain ranges,
endured the fierce heat of day, and the bitter chill of night.
and finally arrived in Bethlehem.
As he walked through the village looking for his friends,
Artaban heard a woman’s voice through a doorway,
singing her baby boy to sleep.
When she noticed his foreign clothing,
she told Artaban of the three strangers from the far East
who had appeared in the village three days ago,
and how they said a star had guided them to the place
where a newborn child lay.
But the young mother also told Artaban
that the strangers had gone,
and the child and his family were gone too,
rumored to have fled to Egypt.

Artaban’s spirit was crushed.
He had missed his friends again, and the newborn King!

Sometimes our spirits are crushed.
And we feel unlucky or abandoned.

And then it gets worse.

For just then, soldiers arrived in the village,
and Artaban and the young mother heard shouts:
“The soldiers of Herod are killing our children!”
The young mother hugged her child tightly,
and crouched in the darkest corner of the room.
Artaban went quickly to the doorway and stood there, looking out.
A soldier came hurrying up the street
and saw Artaban in his foreign clothing, filling up the doorway.
Artaban said, “I’m all alone in this place,
and I am waiting to give this jewel to the prudent captain
who will leave me in peace.”
Artaban showed the ruby,
and the amazed captain pocketed the jewel and said to his men,
“March on, there is no child here, the house is empty.”

From Bethlehem Artaban traveled on to Egypt,
seeking everywhere and finding nothing.
When he got to Alexandria a wise Hebrew rabbi told him,
“The Messiah will be despised and rejected by many,
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
Those who seek him will do well to look among the poor and the lowly,
the sorrowful and the oppressed.”

And so Artaban traveled from place to place, visiting the oppressed.
Though he didn’t find the King, he did find many who needed help.
He fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and comforted the captive,
and his years passed swiftly by,
thirty-three years to be exact,
and still he sought the King of the Jews.
Artaban’s hair was now white, his face wrinkled, his body weary.

He had come for the last time to Jerusalem, still looking for the King.
It was the season of Passover and the city was filled with foreigners.
Artaban joined a group of people from his own country
and asked them where they were going.
They said, “We’re going to the place called Golgotha,
where there is to be an execution of two famous robbers,
and another, Jesus of Nazareth, a man who has done wonderful works,
but who has been sent to be crucified
because he said he was the King of the Jews.”

Nazareth? The King of the Jews!
Could it be?
Could it be that he had arisen but had been rejected,
and was now about to die?
And Artaban thought,
“Maybe I will at last find the King, in the hands of his enemies,
and will come in time to offer my pearl for his ransom before he dies.”

But just then a troop of Roman soldiers came down the street,
dragging a young girl.
She was the daughter of a merchant,
but her father was dead,
and she was being sold as a slave to pay his debts.

Artaban knew what he had to do.
He took the pearl and gave it to the slave.
“This is your ransom, daughter.
It is the last of my treasures which I have kept for the King.”

Suddenly there was a great earthquake,
and the walls of the houses shook to and fro.
A heavy tile fell from a nearby roof and struck Artaban on the temple.
He lay breathless and pale, in the lap of the young girl,
knowing that his quest was over
and that he had failed.

Sometimes we feel the same way, that we have failed.
We lose hope, we despair.
But we don’t always have the full picture.
In fact, we rarely do.

You see, then came a voice through the twilight, very small and still.
The young girl turned to see if someone had spoken from the window above them,
but she saw no one.
Then the old man’s lips began to move, as if to answer,
and she heard him say,
“Not so, my Lord, when did I see you hungry and feed you?
Or thirsty, and give you drink?
When did I see you a foreigner and take you in, or naked and clothe you?
Thirty-three years I have looked for you;
but I have never seen your face, or ministered to you, my King.”

The sweet voice came again, faint and far away,
but this time the young girl understood the words:
“Truly I say to you,
whatsoever you have done to one of the least of these,
you have done it to me.”

A calm radiance of wonder and joy lighted the face of Artaban
and a long breath of relief exhaled gently from his lips.
His journey was ended. His treasures were accepted.
The other wise man had found his King.

Not one of us travels the same road.
Some of us have led fairly straightforward lives of faith,
from point A to point B,
only to begin questioning in our old age.
Some of us were raised in the Faith,
and may have drifted away and then returned with new appreciation.
Some of us came to the Faith later in life,
after exploring many different paths,
or after suffering through difficult challenges.
We may have family or friends
who seem to be moving away from Bethlehem right now.
But even they are still on the journey,
and there is hope for them.

On this feast of the Epiphany,
each one of us is asked to reflect on our own search for Jesus.

What has your journey been like?
Where have you gotten lost or sidetracked?
Who has helped guide you back?
In what unexpected places or people have you found Jesus?
What treasures have you given him?
What has been your Epiphany?

[Click here to read the full version of “The Story of the Other Wise Man” by Henry van Dyke]

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