How Will We Know… what we know?
Isaiah 60: 1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
Isn’t it funny to look back at where you were earlier in life, and see that your life ended up in a totally different place than you would have expected? How would you know?
The trip wasn’t my idea! I was the one who didn’t want to go. I actually objected! Just pick up and leave to follow some strange light in the night skies? What possessed my ‘dear colleagues’? They were getting on in years and I had started to wonder if they still had it all together. Sometimes it felt like they were full of insight and the wisdom of experience, but other times they seemed to veer away from the pure science of observation we had been taught for so many years. Yes, they had studied the skies like I had, and we all knew something strange was going on. We had never seen or heard of a bright light like this – one that seemed to almost call out to us. But there must be a natural explanation – there always is – it just takes time to know and understand more. They were the ones more into astronomy than me, but if I must say, sometimes it moved with them into myth and legend, and astrology – believing that the positioning of the stars and planets somehow affects our personalities and the way events here on earth occur, rather than sticking to what we can know by research and observation.
As the younger one, I went along with their whole follow-the-star-journey idea. I guess it was a way of trying to figure things out, but it felt to me more like a wild goose chase. I was the one who always asked questions. It’s what got me to where I am. That really is at the heart of every discipline – literature, mathematics, history, even science and astronomy– to ask questions; to wonder about what we don’t yet know or understand; to notice small details; to look for patterns; to follow up observations with new questions and lines of inquiry. I’ve always trusted that asking questions will bring us, if not to final answers, to a place of understanding for the moment, and to the next set of questions that will open up. Sometimes I also asked those bigger philosophical questions of life. Why do we exist? Where did we come from? What is the purpose of our lives? What is next? What now? How long? Why me? How will we know, and how do we know what we know? All I know is that every time I studied the stars in this vast universe, I felt somehow small and insignificant. Maybe that is why I finally went along with the other Magi – just maybe we could figure out something together by following this star, if we kept asking questions. I even told them that this would be my role on the trip – to ask questions, and I would do some research along the way – what does the relevant literature, the ancient texts, tell us? What do we know about the stars and their meaning?
I found out pretty soon, I had a different role that just asking questions. I was the trip lackey! The harsh reality of this much travel hit pretty soon. There were practicalities that needed attending. We needed food. Camels needed watered… and umm… waste cleaned up from them. We struggled in each town or village to find a place to stay. We actually started to travel more at night, when no one was watching us and when we could observe the star, and then finding some back alley, or barn, or farm yard, or abandoned stone building to close our eyes and sleep during most of the day. But we always needed to be vigilant. We were the ones getting questioned? You aren’t from here are you? You are foreigners, outsiders, the ones to be wary of. Where are you headed? Why do you keep looking up into the heavens? What is your real intent? We tired of the questions and sometimes felt pretty vulnerable. We soon learned which smiles were suspicious and malicious and which were truly ones of hospitality and welcome – where we could pursue food and lodging.
The journey was very long, longer and harder than any of us ever expected. We assumed we would have found answers by now. Day led to night led to weeks led to months and months. That star just kept moving – no explanations. We were so far from home and anything familiar, so far from our comfort zones. I guess we were learning more and more about ourselves than anything, and about patience and waiting and vulnerability and the things that come slowly. The only hint we had came from reviewing all the relevant literature and stories and patterns and ancient writings, and that this star seemed to be a sign and pointed toward some sort of king that would be king of the Jews, maybe even a child? But it almost felt like we were being lulled to sleep – following a start that would never stop or reveal anything. And then we hit the big city – Jerusalem, the heart of the land of Israel. You couldn’t hide in the shadows here. Everyone wanted to know what we were about. We also figured that this was where the action would start and we might start to find some answers to our many questions. Was this the place?
Well, we were soon led to the very top – to King Herod – and we figured we were on the right track, although he didn’t seem to fit all the signs himself. Herod got out the welcome mat with luscious food and luxurious accommodations. We never expected such focus and attention, especially from the King himself. He kept asking questions about our trip and our destination and our intentions. Herod got all the Jewish scribes and chief priests around us, to interpret their Scriptures (this was new material to us) – and they came up with a theory about a child, and that this future ruler was to originate in Bethlehem. We had never heard of the place, but found out it was about a day’s journey outside the city. Herod was eager to send us on our way, and to find this child and report back so that he too could pay homage.
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I had this uneasy feeling about Herod. He smiled too much. He said all the right words and asked the right questions, but something was off – something was going on under the surface. Isn’t that often the case, there is more going on underneath than what we see and observe with our eyes. Is that maybe a part of knowing? How do you know what you know? We couldn’t see the intentions, but our intuition was starting to tell us something sinister, something that didn’t match what was on the surface. I started to reflect on perspective and bias, and power and fear and what lengths people will go to, to protect their status. It was all getting pretty complex – this knowing.
So, before we knew it, we were off – to this little town of Bethlehem, tucked away in the shadows. The star was still there, and directing us to the town too. But then it suddenly stopped, and maybe it was just our night eyes, but it seemed to shine brighter than it had all along. It was over a little house, or maybe you would call it a hut. Not much to look at. Certainly not the palace or mansion we expected. More peasant than king. In that moment, everything was turned upside down for me – all my expectations, my predictions, my assumptions that this ruler would come from the halls of power. Here was this everyday couple, poor as could be, with a vulnerable little baby, offering what they did have – lots and lots of love, and the hope and promise this child would bring. It’s not much to go on, but it is enough… it is more than enough. I just melted. I was filled with this overwhelming joy, this emotion that spread through my whole body, that got underneath and behind my normal emotional defences that try to keep everything at an even keel. Something was happening to me that superseded my intellectual approach to life, that touched on something deeper, something ‘spiritual’ that I had never felt before. It was an epiphany – a sudden, yet deep knowing. We had found something, someone, that was going to change the world – and to change it through weakness, vulnerability, love, and vision – that strangely was more powerful than anyone or anything I had observed before. Could it be that this was of God? And that somehow, in a way more radical than my being could begin to understand, the divine was taking on human form for the sake of all humanity? My head couldn’t put it all together, but my heart certainly did.
Soon we were laughing and crying and sharing stories and dreams and hopes. We passed the baby around, each of us wanting to hold and rock him. It might have been 10 minutes, or might have been 2 hours. Time seemed to stand still. Eventually we remembered that we had gifts to give. One of us gave gold, a precious commodity, valuable, fitting for royalty, a king. Another gave Frankincense – an incense used for worship, for awe, and we certainly had entered a place of sacred worship in that little hut. God was present! I thought about it for quite awhile, but then I choose to give myrrh. Not the most obvious choice. Myrrh is a perfume, and most often used to prepare dead bodies for burial. Not what you think for a new birth. But I already knew there was something different about this child. Birth and death, new life and letting go would be very close to each other with this one. I was already beginning to grasp in myself that I had to let go, release my hold on so many of my assumptions, in a sense, die to myself, in order to truly live. What better way to symbolize all this than with myrrh – an aroma for death and life, a sign of anointing for a bigger purpose.
We left then, changed and transformed. I sit back now, years later, but with the memory of that day seared in my heart. I never was the same. We had been warned in a dream not to return to Herod – his true character now totally obvious. So we returned to our home country by another road. That is an apt metaphor for my life – taking another road. It is not always an easy road, but it has made all the difference. I still have so many questions and like to ask them. That has not changed and it is a good thing. But my questions take me on such a deeper quest. I still observe and use the best of my intellect and research and the science and evidence around me. But I also listen to my heart, my intuition and to my spirit. There is a wholeness here, an integration of all parts of who I am, to what is means to know – body, mind, emotion, and yes, spirit. I look at things from a new perspective that keeps asking what difference might it make if I keep the vision and example of Jesus in front of me. What might God be doing? – Mysterious and yet profound.
How do I know what I know? It is a deeper knowing, an experienced knowing, an unashamed wise knowing grounded in trust and love as much as facts and knowledge. It is a bit like that original light in the night sky. With our eyes we just see a bright white light, but there is much more going on underneath. The light can be reflected or refracted, it can look like the blue sky or the brilliance of a sunset. It can be separated into all the colours of the rainbow. It all depends on perspective, and on seeing what is underneath it all and letting it shine. As the prophet said, ‘Arise, shine, for your light has come.’ This is the light I found by following the light of that star, by taking that risk, by asking questions, and by following and following until I found the Christ Child – God Incarnate. Come, let us walk in the light.