It was a wonderful moment, beautiful and calm, and somewhat otherworldly. This bright big ball in the sky so round and clear was another world.
It was like a sign - a sign of something new about to begin.
Somewhere far away and long ago, some of the wise of the earth, perhaps astronomers, certainly sky-watchers, caught sight of a new light in the heavens. They saw at its rising a star. Its significance to them was more than ordinary.
They felt the world had order and purpose - that was reflected in the sky. And so they attributed to this star the role of herald, announcing the birth of one born to be king of Israel.
And so they set out from home, having prepared to meet a king. They brought along royal gifts - of gold, frankincense, and myrrh - and traveled to the city at the center of the Jewish world, Jerusalem.
There they were greeted by the great Herod, builder of the Second Temple, Hasmonean king, ruler and, truth be told, tyrant of Israel and client of Rome.
"Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?" they asked, "For we have observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage."
Oh, ah. How interesting. How wonderful. How nice of you to come. Glad you dropped by.
The Messiah? Born? Real? Now? What a threat! What would Herod do? What could Herod do? This could unmake all his achievements - for he was king in Israel, by Caesar's hand. The legitimacy of his rule was quite worldly indeed. The restless people of the Hebrews could easily be upset. If they knew the one prophesied had actually been born - the redeemer, the liberator, the hero who would lead them to freedom - then his rule could be doomed.
So he found out from his wisest advisors - where was the Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ - to be born? And they told him, Bethlehem.
On the quiet he got together with the wise men, the travelers from far away, and told them, Bethlehem: go there, find the child, and then let me know so that I too can go and pay him ... homage.
Something about this conversation must have bothered the visitors, who were after all wise men, for a restless night intervened and they went another way home.
They had come a long way already, and who knows what obstacles they had encountered. The twentieth-century poet T. S. Eliot has us imagine the journey of the magi (the wise people) as one over hill and dale through the cold of winter, encountering all the people and situations of the caravansary and the inn, the roadside wreck and the (at last) arrival. They found the child - and knelt and worshipped him. And their lives were changed.
Their lives – and ours - were changed, far beyond the change feared by Herod the Great.
The wise people found they could not go back home, not the way they had come. They could not go back that way because they were changed people. The old 'gods' - the old ways of worship, of living, the old ways of making sense of the world - no longer fit.
Something had died - some old way of being - because behold! Something new had come into the world and everything changed.
It had to.
The one they had found was light to the nations as well as glory to God's people Israel. News, not only for those faithful servants who had sought God's favor over the years and centuries, but for all people, from all places and nations and walks of life, now came of a redeemer, a sanctifier, a liberator.
So they went home, when they went, by another road - and as other men.
Journey of the Magi
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
—T.S. Eliot
We set out long ago and are changed by the journey. Encountering watering holes, an oasis; a caravansary, an inn; encountering strangers, finding companions on the way. Resisting the temptation to stop at the oasis - to ration the water, and to take note - there are only so many dates to go around. But eventually the water fouls and the dates rot. So on we go - and are changed, despite ourselves. We wish only to develop, to grow - but we will change, move on, and seek, seek Christ the Lord. And finding him, be satisfied - with what we have found - and yet not be satisfied in ourselves any longer.
For this Birth also means a Death - a death of the old ways of being. This first coming of the Christ presages a second. And so we experience a death, to our old selves - and feel in ourselves a second birth, into life in Christ, the resurrection life - the life that we know, that we knew, would come after death, begins now.
We are born anew because he is born - because he dies, we die to our sins - and we are born into eternity.
Three kings, wise men, journey west, into the sunset, bearing gifts, seeking Christ, following a star, finding - that Birth, that Death. The old ways no longer satisfy.
And so while the full moon rising on New Years Eve, and the sunset that came before it, show us the beginning of something new - a year, and the death of something old - the old year - there is a real rising and a real new thing happening every day all around us and once for all in Christ.
It is the birth of the life of the spirit - in us; in our world; and it happens, it begins anew, when Christ is born in our hearts.
Like the wise people who followed the star they saw on its rising, seeking the child born to be king, seeking salvation and good news for all peoples, we have a journey before us. It is the journey into Christ.
We are followers of Christ, his life our leading star as we follow on his way, as the wise people sought the one born king, he guides us on our way, calls us forward into new relationship with God, others, and our selves. His is the sign we follow - the sign that points to and beyond himself, to new life.
How do we take this journey? What should we do?
We begin to make our way down the road by taking responsibility for our own growth and development, as individual persons and as a community of believers. In the areas of emotional, intellectual, ethical, moral, communal, and spiritual activity, we begin to let Christ take over as the Lord, the king, in our own lives.
As a community we build respect, courtesy, truth-telling in love, honest seeking of the truth. How we deal with each other and how we reach out to the world begin to reflect the light of Christ. Our dealings with others, our ministries and mission outreach, begin to show the lordship of Christ in our lives as a Christian people.
The call to conversion, to follow Christ, the morning-star of the new creation, comes to full reality as we take our place in the larger community, the church and the world around us, and as we become responsible citizens and moral agents in the life of our town and nation.
How we follow that star - and how we reflect its light however dimly and obscurely, with whatever flickers of inattention or neglect, - how we follow Christ, begins to make manifest to those around us the reality of the good news: a king has been born, a light given to the nations and hope to the world.
We are carried forward in our death to the old and the birth into the new larger life, which comes to its completion in the one who began at Bethlehem.
Our identity as a people of God, of this particular congregation, is part of this new birth. What will we look like as we continue to become God's people?
We cannot return to the past, to be what we once were or wish we were, but we can become what we are called to be, to become God's people here on earth at this time in this place, with these gifts we have, and the gifts to come – the surprising gifts borne by unexpected visitors, like the magi of old – who bear their gifts to bring to kneel and pay homage to the one born at Bethlehem and born anew in each of us as we pray: come Lord Jesus.
Come and be our guiding star. Come be the light of the world made manifest in us. Make your home in our lives. And may we live at home in you.
Edmonds, Wash., January 3, 2010.
T. S. Eliot, "Journey of the Magi" (1927), Collected Poems 1909-1962 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963) 99-100.
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