Here is a monologue from the perspective of one of the Magi who came to worship the new King of the Jews. I was originally going to perform a simplified version of this, for an all all context last week but was flattened by a chest infection. It had no reference to the Jews in Babylon or the massacre of the innocents, but did start with the line guaranteed to win over an audience with a high proportion of children "My bum hurts!" I decided to ditch that for this version, which I am publishing today given the lectionary reading, although I am not preaching today, not because of illness but just because I'm getting a Sunday off. I am aware of the contrasting theories re the origins of the Magi, and whether they arrived just after his birth as nativity plays tend to suggest, or up to 2 years later (which seems to have been a long time for Joseph and his new family to have been hanging around Bethlehem. But I'm not getting into any of that here... pull at too many lose threads in the nativity stories and the whole thing might just unravel...
Wise men!? Wise up!
There are times when I wonder whether we have wit enough to take shelter from a sandstorm… And we have seen plenty of those on our journey… 2 years! 2 years it has taken us to get here… 2 years since we noticed that new star in the sky and it was suggested that this was the sign for the long promised Messiah… Christ… King of the Jews…
There have been Jews living among us in Babylon for centuries, and although many returned to their ancestral lands years ago, there has remained a thriving community there… Indeed many of their finest scribes and theologians live among us. They, like us, appreciate being gathered together with people of learning gathered from across the known world… And as people of learning, we Magi like to understand the beliefs of other people, other religions… Well some of us did… there some who argue that all other religions were blasphemous purveyors of lies and should be exterminated… But one of the things you learn when studying other religions and nations is that every faith has people like that…
We had studied their scriptures and knew of this promised saviour who would come to re-establish the legendary Kingdom of David, in the name of his God, whose name is so holy that the Jews never utter it…
And as I said, some of my colleagues believed that this new star was the sign that this divinely anointed King was about to be born… Many of us were curious and wanted to see if we were right… Some who were close supporters of our own High King were delighted, because if this were true then upheaval in the Roman’s puppet Kingdom of Judea would cause chaos for our oldest enemies… Religion and politics… they’re not easily separated…
Anyway, a number of us head for Judea to see this new King of the Jews for ourselves… We bought some suitable gifts and joined one of the regular caravans that make the long trek from lands of spices to the east, through our lands, northwest along the Euphrates before heading south west through Palestine and Egypt… I was saddle sore shortly after we left our home city… I’m a priest and astrologer not an explorer or merchant. It could only have been worse if we had used camels as some suggested, rather than the horses that we had chosen… Never trust a camel. They’re only fit for desert raiders.
It was a dangerous journey, through disputed territories, and difficult terrain… We crossed rivers and mountains and deserts… And a number of different border Kingdoms that were an unofficial buffer zone between our own Empire and the Romans. Our guides and the merchants we were travelling with kept us safe and told us how much money to pay to ease our way over each frontier. You were never sure who to trust… But eventually we crossed over into Roman territory… The border guards told us it was a difficult time to be travelling in this part of the world because the Roman Emperor had called for a census and everyone was on the move heading back to their home towns… So the famous Roman roads were packed…
It was with relief that we arrived in what the Jews call their “Promised Land.” But that was when we got things badly wrong… Someone suggested that the obvious place for a new King to be born was in the Royal palace in Jerusalem… But others were sceptical… on two counts… they said that the current King may have called himself Herod the Great but that he didn’t have a great reputation… More than one of his own children had allegedly died on his orders and he was only on the throne because of the backing of the Romans… Second they pointed out that the prophecies said the new King was to be from the line of King David and Herod wasn’t even a proper Jew…
But those “wise men” arguing for Jerusalem won out and we went to the palace asking to see the new born King of the Jews… This put the palace steward into a spin… and he headed into the inner sanctums of the palace to confer with the current King… We heard a lot of shouting as we waited in the ante-room, including the King saying “First the Romans, now the Persians – is everyone trying to undermine my rule here!?” But a few moments later we were summoned inside to find Herod the Great grinning at us like a fat ravenous jackal, bidding us welcome and asking us to tell him again why we were there… To tell you the truth I had a bad feeling then… I trusted him less than I trust camels…
But after our spokesperson had explained all about the new star and the purpose of our journey, Herod called his advisors to him and they had a private conversation after which he summoned us to him again and said that his scribes had told him that the prophets said that this new rulers was to be born in Bethlehem, the home town of King David… At which some of our group said “We told you…”
After getting us to tell him exactly when this new star had appeared, Herod then told us to go find the child and then come back and tell him where he was so that he could go and pay him fitting homage. None of us believed a word of that… but although truthfulness is prized in our faith, all of us promised faithfully that we would tell him everything, just in order to get out of there alive.
It isn’t too far from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and as we approached King David’s tiny home town once again we saw the star that had started this bothersome journey…
It seemed to be stopped over a particular house, so we stopped there too… It was far from a palace as it was possible to be… a local flea-infested inn… Ridiculous as it seemed we knocked and asked if a child had been born there recently, and the innkeeper said yes before asking us to wait outside… For the second time in a few days we were left listening to what was being said beyond a closed door… There was no shouting this time but it was still easier to hear, because the walls and door were much thinner than in the palace.
The innkeeper told his guests that there were a group of rich foreigners outside wanting to see the child… He said we looked like kings… I suppose he had never seen a real King… and having seen King Herod I would have been happy to never see another King again… A woman said to let us in, but the innkeeper said there were far too many of us… so he would let us in three at a time… I was one of the first three and we brought in the gifts… a small golden cup to mark his kingship, frankincense which they use in their temple worship and myrrh which is used to anoint kings… although these heathens also use it to anoint dead bodies… they don’t expose their dead to be stripped clean by carrion birds, but contaminate mother earth by burying decaying flesh in the ground.
But this was a time to be thinking about new life rather than death… so we thought, and there in front of us was this new born King…. He was actually lying in an animal’s feeding trough… Why I do not know… But despite the humble surroundings there was something about the whole situation that filled me with a sense of awe… We all felt it I joined my 2 fellow magi in prostrating myself in front of this supposed child King… How he would ever become King from such humble beginnings I did not know…
Three by three we all went in to see the child… I saw some grizzled old Magi coming out wiping tears from their eyes… others coming out shaking their heads puzzled at what it all meant, with a few saying it was all a bit of an anti-climax…
But it wasn’t the end of the journey… As I said we had promised to go back to Herod and let him know where to find this baby… But one of our group said they had been warned in a dream not to return to Jerusalem… so we headed south towards Hebron and Beersheba before turning west for the Great Roman Sea and the coast road north… Although none of us appreciated the extra distance that was adding to our already long journey…
But it was when we reached Ashdod that we heard that Herod was looking for us… that maddened by our non-return he had sent a death squad to Bethlehem looking to kill us and every child that had been born since the star that had summoned us had appeared in the sky two years before…
It was then that some suggested that maybe we should have told Herod where this child was… just let one child die instead of all of them… and instead of us… To which I said “Maybe we should have anointed the child with myrrh in preparation for his death rather than his coronation?” But no-one thought it was funny… And I can understand that…
The fate of that child is in the hands of his God. It’s not our fault… We did what we were prompted to do by the stars and scriptures and dreams…
The only thing we did wrong was when we trusted our in own wisdom and went to Herod. Some wise men we are…
Shalom
Comments