I know that I’m addressing a mixed crowd this morning, and I’m sensitive to what my non/not-so-Christian friends have to endure at Christmastime. But for the next 10 minutes or so, would you entertain the idea that the Nativity story actually happened? That’s an understandable leap for many, even for seasoned Christians, but live with me here for a moment: there’s a truth in the story that only lives if the story is true.
When we’re finished, you can return to your regularly scheduled ontology, and I’ll think no different of you, always thankful that you’re here each week.
In August of 1927, newly converted to Anglican Christianity, T.S. Eliot wrote The Journey of the Magi, a poem that attempts to pull his reader into what could have been the personal experience of one of the “Wise Men” in the Bible’s Nativity story
I read this poem for the first time last week, mentioned in a Sunday morning sermon (listen below). The ending gets into something I had never considered before:
“…were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.”
It’s interesting to note that the Nativity story doesn’t mention anything about the wise men being wealthy, nor does my armchair study on the financial portfolio of your average, everday μαγος. Nowhere in the passage are they called “kings” or “rulers.” Maybe us modern Westerners assume, since these guys are laden with expensive gifts, that they must be extremely powerful. Maybe they are, but given the context of the story, it might be that they’re not wealthy, but so overthrown by the idea of Judaism’s Messianic hope that they are giving a portion of their wealth that’s much larger than commonly believed. When scripture says “they bowed down and worshipped,” maybe they truly did.
Regardless, as Eliot alludes, the trip must have been a very long, arduous nightmare, even for the wealthiest traveller.
“…the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going 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.”
The story also doesn’t mention how long these men stayed. Once they dropped off their gifts, they were warned in a dream to steer clear of Herod, so they went home via a different route. The route they came in on must’ve been difficult, but most likely the easiest way. Anything different would have been much harder.
Why endure such a long, painful, risky ordeal only to lay a ton of money at the feet of a baby in a back alley surrounded by a handful of Israel’s greatest rejects, then leave? Aren’t they worried that the money will get stolen? Why not stay and try to find a lucrative role in the new administration? At least stick around for a few weeks and see what happens.
Was “worship” their only agenda?
It might be that the magi believed that this baby would somehow be the most powerful king the world had ever seen. That’s what the Jews believed: one day a king – Messiah – would come, conquer Israel’s enemies, and set up a government to rule the entire world:
For a child has been born to us, a son given to us, and the government will rest upon his shoulder, and the wondrous adviser, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, called his name, “the prince of peace.” ~ Isaiah 9:5
“…I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” ~ psalm 2:1-9
This expectation wasn’t limited to the ancient Jewish world. Roman historian Suetonius, in De Vita Caesarum wrote:
“There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief, that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judaea to rule the world.”
For Israel, “King of the Jews,” meant “King of the World.” It might have meant this for the magi as well, driving them to worship a foreign king like none of us have ever worshipped, expending their time, energy, safety, and wealth in a way that would seem alien to us.
Upon enterting Judea, the magi went straight to Israel’s sitting king to ask him where the real king was. When they approached Herod, they used words that implied knowledge of the Jewish prophecies about how/when/where Messiah would be born. “Where is the one born King of the Jews?” they asked. “For we saw his star in the east.”
“Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. …The wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come… And all from Sheba [east of Israel] will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord.” ~ Isaiah 60:1-6
“I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near.
A star will come out of Jacob;
a King will rise out of Israel.” ~ Numbers 24:17
You have to wonder what they expected to see. In their minds, “king” meant palace, wealth, opulence, great thrones, a huge army, and a spiritual backing from the heavens. In this part of the world, religion and regime were always closely tied together – if this king was to be king of the world, there would be a deity presiding over him, more powerful than any god previously considered, rendering all other religions subservient at the least.
You can imagine their expectation, and what died inside when they reached Bethlehem’s cattle yard. No palace, not food, no luxurious accommodations.
Yet they still left a ton of money. They still bowed. They still worshipped.
They believed.
They believed before, in an ancient near-eastern system, in gods that dealt in power, wealth, position, sex, and politics, not unlike the Jewish system under Herod.
If you’re a religious person, you know that your religion isn’t just something that speaks into purely spiritual, metaphysical things, it shapes how you view your world, how it works, and what your place in it might be. These were religious men, make no mistake, and the debacle of the manger – the one they whole-heartedly embraced – didn’t just annihilate their view of religion and regime, it affected everything.
What they worshipped was vulnerable, dirty, outcast; the opposite of the power, position, wealth, and politics of the system that they now previously worshipped, the religion and worldview of their youth.
There is no room in the mind for the worship of power and the worship of whatever it was that was happening in Bethlehem that night. You can embrace one or the other, not both.
One has to die.
When wealthy, powerful men who have travelled so far to simply bow and lay a fortune at the feet of a baby in a cow stall – surrounded by people of ill repute in a sketchy part of town – you can bet that something just died, and something else, something much different, took its place.
In the winter of 1843, Charles Dickens published a similar story, one where the worship of power is violently dispatched so that something much more powerful can fill its void.
The first run of his book hit the shelves on December 19th and was sold out by Christmas eve. It turns out that humanity loves a good death and resurrection.
I read it every year.
There’s one scene that, far as I know, has never made it into any of the film adaptations. It’s the best scene in the entire book.
Just before the first ghost, Marley, departs, he invites Ebenezer (Hebrew for “stone of remembrance”) to look out the window, where ghosts of past jackasses are flying around in mourning and sorrow. One ghost in particular is wailing piteously because he is unable to help a wretched woman with an infant. He could’ve done it in life, powerless now.
Scrooge is confronted that night, over and over again, with the true power of a universe where he has played the simpleton. The ghosts can’t force Scrooge to change, that’s not how the universe works. They instead confront him with a different reality, the one that he’s spent his life defiant of. Scrooge might not be a religious man in the metaphysical, spiritual sense, but he has a religion and a subsequent worldview, nonetheless. If it doesn’t have to do with money, specifically his money, it has no purpose.
Scrooge wakes up Christmas morning, filled with the knowledge of a universe that doesn’t revolve around power, wealth, etc. Freed from his former religion, he’s ready to embrace something much more filled with life, ready to spend his time, money, and energy on what truly matters to this new world he’s been born into.
None of that would have happened apart from a painful, horrifying death.
T.S. Eliot ends his poem suggesting that his Magi experienced something similar:
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
The Gospel narratives are full of stories like these where someone is confronted with a new reality, one that flies in the face of the one that they formerly embraced and compels them to fall at the feet of true power, the kind that revolves around humility, mercy, grace, forgiveness, generosity, and so many other things that look like they won’t get you anywhere.
To his followers, Jesus is the true King of Israel, the Messiah. Jesus believed this as well, and just to rub it in he mounted a donkey and rode triumphantly into Jerusalem at the start of their sacred Passover festival. This, according to St. Matthew’s gospel, fulfilled an Old Testament passage that many believed prophesied the coming of Messiah:
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Upon entering the city, Jesus went to the Temple, fashioned a DIY whipping device, and violently assaulted this religion’s faith in money. The King gets to do that, by the way. According to Jesus, it was his family’s house to begin with.
News travelled fast, and Jesus was killed for his arrogant assumption. His followers hunted like criminals, wondering how they could’ve been duped into believing that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the conquering king, the one who was supposed to free all of Israel from it’s unholy bondage to Rome.
Then, if you can accept it, he rose from his grave.
From birth to death to re-birth, the life of Jesus begs us to reconsider our ontology, our understanding of the way things work, our allegiances to power, wealth, politics, sex, and the many ways we expend our life worshipping them so devoutly, embarking on long, painful, risky journeys, only to dump our treasure at the feet of nothing.
But to leave those “religions,” our allegiances to them will have to die a death that Jesus’ detractors simply couldn’t consider. Their allegiances were so powerful that they couldn’t recognize their own God, the Messiah that they too hoped would come soon.
I’ll argue that the life of a Christian is full of that kind of death.
But it’s not death that Jesus wants, it’s life, the kind that we’re all scratching and clawing for. To get there, we’ll have to violently assault whatever stands in the way. Regardless of whether or not we embrace religious things, we’re all worshipping, giving power to something. For most of us, to worship what’s truly powerful, our alien beliefs and the hope we place in them will have to die.
Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will save it. ~ Jesus in Luke 17:33
Borrowed heavily (stolen?) from a sermon
by Michael Hidalgo at Denver Community Church. Listen below
