Monday of the Third Week of Advent
Today’s readings concern blessings and curses. In our family lore my maternal grandmother placed a curse on a neighbor during the Depression who had turned her in for working on the side (she hung wall paper) while collecting the tiny government dole for her widowed self and her eight children. This in the era of no safety nets. Of course the curse was given in Gaelic.
In the family of Israel, there was another curse longstanding in the lore of God’s own. Today's reading from Numbers, featuring the curse that never happened, was an important source for Matthew when he crafted his version of the Christmas story, curse and all (Luke would write a very different version years later).
At the risk of racing to the Epiphany (on January 4th of this liturgical year) and at the cost of keeping a good Advent, it is helpful to note that the author of Matthew relied on Numbers 22-24 when committing his reed stylist to papyrus in the story of the magi. Thus, he used images well known to his Jewish-Christian audience.
It would have sounded like a familiar carol heard many times before: a wicked king manipulating a magician from the east to bring harm to God’s anointed. But our magi, like Balaam in Numbers, reject this sinister plot and they bless the child instead. The community for whom Matthew wrote would immediately connect this account to the one in Numbers.
Balak, the wicked king of Moab, wanted to bring harm to Israel as they trespassed on his land while traveling to the Promised Land. Balak hires Balaam the magician, a wise man from the East, to put a curse on the trespassers. But at every curse, God intervenes and Balaam speaks words of blessing instead.
As Matthew integrates this tale, wicked King Herod attempts to trick a different sort of “magi” from the east in a plot to discover where the Christ child is to be found. Just as magician Balaam rejected Balak’s scheme, so the Matthean magi refused another mad monarch’s blood thirst, worshipping the child and not revealing his location.
In Numbers, after three attempts to curse, Balaam finds God’s voice again, but this time, Balaam utters a more astounding proclamation: “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; A star shall come forth out of Jacob, And a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” The scepter, a royal staff, symbolizes a king and a star that will be the King’s sign. This would make perfect sense to Matthew’s Jewish-Christian community—it’s just what Balaam had spoken long before concerning King David. The magi are successors to Balaam in that they seek the true ruler whom Balaam foretold who for us is great David’s greater son, Jesus Christ.
The star still rises in the east and beacons Christians through the ages to seek the promised king. But be forewarned that this same sure star will rise where we least expect to find him — among the poor, the helpless, the destitute, the ignored, the hidden, the cold, those who have no advocate. So it was in the story of the magi in Matthew’s oft told tale. So it is for Christians in every time and place.
As for the neighbor cursed by my grandmother we were never sure of her fate. Suffice to say we will leave it to the justice of God to sort that one out.
—Timothy J. Cronin