We don’t know where the Magi came from, their names or even how many were in their party (although by the twelfth century three bodies had duly been identified and been carried to Cologne by Frederick Barbarossa from their previous resting places in first Constantinople and then Milan). And finally they get names – Melchior, Caspar, Balthasar; not to mention crowns, making them brother kings visiting a fellow potentate in search of a new-born prince.

Their anonymity is the point. In the biblical text they are simply ‘wise men’ (or conceivably women, I suppose). They are by implication ‘good pagans’; astrologers certainly, Zoroastrians maybe. They come ‘from the East’ – the land of sunrise. They come from over the cultural horizon, from the land of the exotic and the unknown. They emerge from the mists – or more probably the mirages and sandstorms – of Arabia. Small wonder that tradition equips them with camels for their (as the hymn would have it) traversing of ‘field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star.’

In medieval Christendom the Magi become personages, men of rank. But perhaps we should view them rather as Everyman, ciphers for our Gentile selves, pilgrim seekers after truth. Unsettled by the signs they have observed in the heavens, they find themselves – to their surprise, unwillingly maybe – setting out in search of the meaning of it all.

And at their destination they discover the new-born king not in a palace in the big city. The star stops over the little town of Bethlehem, ‘the house of bread’. The King of the Jews – a title we shall only meet again three decades later, on the lips of Pilate (Matthew 27:11) and as a label on Christ’s Cross (John 19:20) – is born in obscurity, in a humble house.

By their perseverance they discover – if they had not heard it already through the travellers’ grapevine – something unpleasant about the structures of power in their world and ours. They learn that Herod is a violent bully and a despot, a frightened old man on the cusp of losing his power and, indeed, his life (He died in 4 BC). He sounds quite a modern figure in some ways. Perhaps you can think of recent parallels.

Whether we imagine the ancient Magi as crowned or not, undoubtedly they find themselves dethroned. Their expectations are all up-ended. What is greatness, after this encounter? What is power? They are brought to their knees in the presence of a child and of his mother, rendering their homage to littleness, to infant vulnerability. Thus they give to him their strange, disturbing gifts: gold for a king, incense for a priest, myrrh for a prophet marked for death.

And then Matthew reports two other details that make their visit count. Firstly, these are people who listen to their dreams – people in touch with their hearts and their instincts – just as they are people who know how to read the signs in the night sky and the natural world. And so they understand the threat that Herod represents. Secondly, they act on their intuition. They change their plans. To quote Matthew’s final line: ‘they departed to their own country by another way.’

We never hear of them again – at least not until their bones are found, their backstories invented, three skeletons enshrined. They disappear back into the mists and mirages of history, leaving only their example and their questions for our generation.

Have I seen the light of a star, an unexpected sign of hope for something new in Christ’s Church – or maybe somewhere else? And if I have, has it made me get up and set out – or have I simply stayed put, half-interested, semi-detached, unmoved?

Where do I seek the infant King of the Jews, the Lord’s Anointed? And what sort of Kingdom do I really wish to see accomplished when I pray the Lord’s Prayer? Is my life invested chiefly in gold, status and appearances or do I face the myrrh of suffering and death? And what space is there for the incense of worship in my days?

Then again, what is my attitude to power and its abuse – both in the Church and in the world around? Do I shrug – ‘that’s just the way things are’? Or do I let my world-view be upended by this tiny kid. Herods we have aplenty in this pixilated post-globalised age of oligarchs. Are we meant simply (to coin a phrase) to suffer the slings and arrows of their outrageous fortunes, or should we seek to end their robbing of the poor? Two thousand years have passed since Herod’s death. Now it’s our turn to discern how Epiphany – the unveiling of the presence of the infant King – should change our attitudes and change our world.