I’ve heard and read the story of the Magi visiting the infant Jesus* so many times that the words slide past me without registering anything other than a slightly bored familiarity. T.S. Eliot’s poem, which once upon a time startled me with its immediacy and particularity of detail, has now become yet another expected, regular feature at this last gasp of the Christmas season, the Feast of the Epiphany. Like Eliot’s aged narrator, who yearned for the ease of summer palaces on his long-ago, snow-filled journey, I wistfully remember those long-ago days of sunshine, when the light lingered in the sky until late in the evening and the only ice around was in my glass of tea. As I write this, however, winter is stiffening my fingers, the thick scarf wrapped several times around my shoulders and the heavy sweater beneath it barely managing to keep me from shivering.
In this gloomy state, my eyes slide down the page to the next part of the story, in which Herod, in his fear of being supplanted as king, orders the killing of all the baby boys in Bethlehem. When I was in seminary, many of my classmates were horrified at the notion that they were expected to celebrate the fact that so many families suffered on behalf of Jesus, while Joseph was warned in a dream to take him and Mary away to safety.
Now, I see echoes of the Massacre of the Innocents in the suffering of refugees at the borders of rich countries, in the harsh treatment of too many people of color at the hands of police, in the suffering of women and children whose needs and dreams are sacrificed on the altar of political power. I do not celebrate that innocent babies died so that Jesus could live, but rather that he lived so that more innocents might not die. In that violent time, so very like our own, Jesus taught the ways of peace, of love, of compassion. And for that, he was killed on a cross by the same powers that killed those children in Bethlehem when he was a baby.
So I return to those foolish Magi on a different path. I see now that they made a big mistake when they told Herod where they were going and why. It was only when Herod asked them to report back to him what they found in Bethlehem that they figured out what he was up to. Once they wised up, they decided to protect the child as best they could by avoiding Herod and going back home by another way. And that good news warms my heart, if not my hands.
- How do you find good news in old, tired stories?
- When have you had to fix an important mistake?
- When has your journey taken you in a different way than you expected?
–Deborah Sokolove, Seekers Church
