The story of the visitors from the east coming to Jerusalem inquiring after Jesus, reported in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew refers to the visitors as “Wise Men,” in the King James and Revised Standard Versions of the Bible that were most common in the church of my childhood. Later, when the New Revised Standard Version came out, the translation reverted to the English form of the Latin and Greek words. The NRSV uses “magi” which is the plural of magus in Latin. The word is mags in Greek. I think that the main reason the NRSV reverted to the more ancient form is that there was sensitivity to imposing gender when none was evident in the original text. Perhaps “wise ones” might have been an acceptable choice. Still, reverting to earlier languages is a time-honored way of making accurate translations.

What I miss about the use of the term magi, is the concept of wisdom in the earlier translations. In our time, we associate the term magi with another form that comes from the same roots. Magush is a skilled magician. While the original probably contained the association with the practice of magic, it carried an equal sense of a practitioner of astrology. Both magic and astrology had different connotations in biblical times. Magos is the name of a Persian priestly class. Persia which occupied roughly the territory of modern-day Iran, is among the oldest inhabited regions in the world. In the Bible it is sometimes referred to as Elam. It was among the most advanced cultures of its time before it was later conquered by the Sumerians and later by the Assyrians and again later by the Medes, and still later by Alexander the Great.

Clearly Matthew’s story of the visitors from the East is reported in part to emphasize that people of great wisdom, culture, and insight recognized the Messiah even though they were not of the Jewish faith. At the time the dominant religion in the area followed the Persian visionary Zoroaster (also known as Zarathustra).

I’ve come to think of those visitors as scholars - ones who studied a variety of natural phenomena, including the position of the stars and planets in the night sky.

Yesterday, as our worship service began with a children’s story in which the children of the church were invited to dress in costumes from the Christmas pageant, we were sitting in the pews and we often do, were writing notes to one another on the church bulletin. We began to imagine the wise ones from the east as members of an academic faculty. I referred to them as the “three professors.” “In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, professors from an eastern university came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews.’” Quickly my imagination began to annotate the traditional scripture.

I imagined that the professors included a full professor, an adjunct professor, and a visiting professor. That led to speculation around some of the teachers and professors who were a part of our academic careers. Since Susan and I both graduated from the same college and the same graduate school, we shared many of the same professors during our time as students. It seemed quite likely that a faculty meeting at our college would have selected Dr. John Bross, professor of Psychology. Dr. Bross, as a part of his academic studies analyzed dreams. He kept a complete journal of his own dreams for decades and taught himself to remember dozens of dream fragments and complete dreams each night. He also was an accomplished musician who served as organist in the church we belonged to during our college years. One of our treasured memories of him is him playing the organ accompanying the congregation while singing at the top of his voice. Dr. Bross always sang along with the congregation. He said it helped him with musical phrasing. He was the organist at our wedding 50 years ago. He also was a practical man. He was for years clerk of the Yellowstone Association of the United Church of Christ, where we were ordained. He would speed up meetings by suggesting possible motions that could be made. He taught me a lot about how to serve as secretary of any meeting, a practice that I employed much during my career. Dr. Bross might well have been selected to go check out the cause of the mysterious star that appeared in the night sky.

Of course, among the delegates would have to be a professor who had discovered the star. At our college it might have been Richard Walton, the professor who taught the introduction to science course, “Atoms to Stars” that I took my first semester. It was that course that convinced me to major in the humanities, but it was the enthusiasm of the professor for physics that engaged me enough to earn an A in the class. My fascination with the study of physics and my friendships with many who have made that their field, including professors of physics, throughout my adult life makes me think that Dr. Walton might be the kind of person to notice something in the night sky that had not been previously discovered.

For the third professor, my vote would probably be for Dr. Cliff Murphy, professor of philosophy. He wouldn’t have been an obvious choice at a faculty gathering. He was a bit quiet outside of his lectures which fascinated me, especially when we got him sidetracked on the history of philosophy. He inspired a lifelong love of the role of philosophical thought in me. I think his presence on the team might explain the presence of myrrh among the gifts. It is, after all, a rather obscure ointment, used in the preparation of human remains for burial. It seems like a very strange gift for a baby, but someone like Dr. Murphy wouldn’t have thought about the gift at all, his mind being in the clouds or in the dust of his books until the last minute, when he grabbed something - anything - to present when the time came.

It is a silly fantasy, but sometimes silliness is what keeps us interested and engaged with each other and the life of the church. Laughter is one of the treasures we share with great joy. If you were present at that imaginary faculty meeting long ago, which of your teachers would you have nominated?