Opening Thoughts:
It's easy to feel overwhelmed these days by so many fearful things unfolding and exploding, and so much chaos around us. The more glued we are to the images on TV and our online news feeds, the easier it is to imagine that chaos is the whole of the story.
Brian McLaren, in his book We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation writes this:
"It becomes more obvious the longer you life that all life is full of patterns. Reality is trying to tell us something. There's lost of mystery out there, to be sure, and no shortage of chaos and unpredictability. But there's also lots of meaning ...
Above and behind and beyond the sometimes confusing randomness of life, something is going on here. From a single molecule to a strand of DNA, from a bird in flight to an ocean current to a dancing galaxy, there's a logic, a meaning, and unfolding pattern to it all.
…. Of course, we often struggle to know how to interpret those patterns. For example, if a tornado destroys our house, an enemy army drops bombs on our village, a disease takes away someone we love, we lose our job, someone we love breaks our heart, or our best friends betray us, what does that mean? Is the logic of the universe chaos or cruelty? Does might make right? Do violence and chaos rule? Is the Creator capricious, heartless, and evil? If we had only our worst experiences in life to guide us, that might be our conclusion.
[But the Bible and our faith tradition] dare us to believe that the universe runs by the logic of creativity, goodness, and love. The universe is God’s creative project, filled with beauty, opportunity, challenge, and meaning. It runs on the meaning or pattern we see embodied in the life of Jesus. In this story, pregnancy abounds. Newness multiplies. Freedom grows. Meaning expands. Wisdom flows. Healing happens. Goodness runs wild.”
What McLaren says feels like good medicine for our time. And the title of the book – We Make the Road by Walking – seems a good one for Epiphany Sunday, when we remember the magi, the wise ones of Jesus’ day, who journeyed a long way to see and pay homage to the newborn messiah – the prince of true peace for all the world. We could use some of their wisdom, their wide vision and their long perspective today.
Reading: Matthew 2:1-15 (Contemporary English Version)
Jesus was born among the Jews, but his life and all the stories about it have meaning for all humanity. Among the stories the early church cherished about his birth, is the story of magi from the East coming to worship Jesus while he was still an infant.
Magi were like astronomers, who read the fortunes of the world in the stars. And what they saw in the stars when Jesus was born, was a sign of the salvation of the world.
When King Herod heard about this, he was worried, and so was everyone else in Jerusalem. Herod brought together the chief priests and the teachers of the Law of Moses and asked them, “Where will the Messiah be born?”
They told him, “He will be born in Bethlehem, just as the prophet wrote,
Bethlehem in the land of Judea,
you are very important among the towns of Judea.
From your town will come a leader,
who will be like a shepherd for my people Israel.’”
Herod secretly called in the wise men and asked them when they had first seen the star. He told them, “Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, let me know. I want to go and worship him too.”
The wise men listened to what the king said and then left. And the star they had seen in the east went on ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. They were thrilled and excited to see the star.
When the magi went into the house and saw the child with Mary, his mother, they knelt down and worshiped him. They took out their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh and gave them to him. Later they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and they went back home by another way.
After the
wise men had gone, an angel from the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and
said, “Get up! Hurry and take the child and his mother to Egypt! Stay there until I tell you to return, because
Herod is looking for the child and wants to kill him.” That night, Joseph got up and took his wife
and the child to Egypt, where they stayed until Herod died.
Meditation
‘A cold coming we had of it.
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey;
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
…
A hard time we had of it.
So begins the poem Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot.
We
know what it can be like to suffer a hard journey in search of something you
want to see in some place you need to get to, to see it. I think this is one of the things we really
like about the magi – that they travelled long and far to see and to celebrate
a gift from God for all the world’s salvation.
We three kings of Orient are
bearing gifts, we traverse afar
[o’er] field and fountain, moor and mountain
following yonder star.
Star of wonder, star of night,
star with royal beauty bright,
westward leading, still proceeding
guide us to thy perfect Light.
We too are used to travelling – of leaving home and making a trip in search of sights, famous places, some special place we’ve read about and really want to see while we still can. Of going to see friends, and spend time with people important in our life who live far away. Of travelling to find a good time, an escape from daily life and routine, a vacation.
In actual fact, of course, not all of us – maybe not even most travel all that much. And even those who travel don’t do it all the time. Mostly we’re closer to home. Just staying home, though, doesn’t match our culture’s image of the good life.
But I wonder … if one of the gifts of 2020 has been the imperative to stay home.
We cannot ignore the strain that social distancing places on us, nor the toll isolation takes on a human soul and spirit. And sometimes people just need to get out and get away – like in the current UK lockdown and curfew that commands people not to leave home except for work, medical emergency or to escape domestic violence.
But by and large might it be that one of the gifts of the pandemic has been the need and the encouragement to find what we need and to celebrate what makes life good, right here at home and where we are?
Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun and principal teacher at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, calls it “the wisdom of no escape” – the equally delightful and painful situation of “no exit,” and of having to see – and being able to see – the abundance of spiritual treasure and the richness of spiritual wisdom at home in everyday life.
It’s what Christian monastics ever since the time of Benedict in the 6th century accept in the vow of stability that they take – that their life will be lived within the limits of their little community, and that trips beyond can be taken only with the permission of their superior and only if they are in keeping with their monastic vocation. Because if they cannot find God and what they need for spiritual growth and fulfilment within the joys and challenges of their immediate community, will they really find them in restless travelling out there?
Christian mystics of all ages say, “God is here … right here where we are, because God is in all things.” Or to put it another way, God is here for us in the everyday and in the most ordinary thing, or God is nowhere.
And so I wonder: have we found over the past nine or ten months, and do we find now right where we are, what we need to be made whole? And what have we found?
It’s worth noting that the magi after their long journey, did not find what they thought they were looking for. When they got to Jerusalem and they stopped in at Herod’s palace, they really thought they were at the end and the goal of their journey.
And why not? They were looking for a long-awaited king who would be as mighty and gracious as the legendary David, who would bring peace and community to the world. He would be great and when the magi saw Herod’s palace and the temple nearby, which by all accounts at the time and since were magnificent, rich, overwhelming structures, who wouldn’t have said “this must be the place” and felt like the journey was over, and finally worth all the effort?
Except this turned out to be only a mis-directed stopover – one that Bruce Cockburn says, “got pretty close to wrecking everything” – because what they were looking for was not in the power-hungry court of a paranoid king, but instead in a little village up in the hills, in a stable, among poor and ordinary people, in “the cry of a tiny baby.” And it is in offering their gifts and opening themselves to him in that painfully ordinary place that they find what they’re looking for.
And when they go home, do they see everything differently there too? Do they see the rich and splendid palaces, the shows of power and status, the arrays of might and majesty, and the assumptions of the rich and privileged in their own land through changed and different eyes?
Do they find themselves more aware of the small places, more attentive the ordinary people, and more moved by the cries of the little and poor ones back in their homeland as well? See them and hear them as reminders and signs of how God’s gift is given, and how all the world receives what it needs for its salvation?
And of course, the story of them is really the story of us, isn’t it? Questions we ask of them are questions to ask of ourselves.
Where do we look for what makes life good? Where do we see God most promisingly present?
What cries do we hear, and what simple needs do we notice and attend to in the ordinary life right around us? Do we find in ordinary life, the part we are to play in God’s desire to make the world whole, and to bring peace and healing community to all the world?
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