The Magi

Smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season, the media were aghast: The Archbishop of Canterbury had said the story of the Magi is a myth that should not be taken literally. I wasn’t surprised by the Archbishop, but I was amazed and appalled by the secular media who just don’t get the approach we Christians take to our sacred texts: We're not all fundamentalists who take such stories literally.

For many of us the power of the Magi story lies not in historical reason, but in its rich symbolism that has managed to thrill so many artists. Think of paintings by Giotto and Rubens, poetry by Auden, Chesterton, Yeats, and Eliot, and stories by writers like O. Henry.

The Magi may be dubious as historical facts, but they bear rich insights into the strange ways of faith. They make good on the promise of Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.”

Because the Magi journey in darkness. They are looking for the Christ child, but they do not have exact directions. They cannot travel by day, and have only a tiny speck in the night sky to lead them. Darkness and danger are more a part of their lives than joy and worship. And yet they keep walking.

They’re not at all like the shepherds. The shepherds don’t have to rely on a mute star. They have a chatty angel who gives them exact directions to the child. Everything works out precisely as they are told. At the end, they run off to tell the story to astonished and admiring throngs. The shepherds’ story is one of angelic revelation, joy, and proclamation.

Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d be a shepherd. But the fact is, I’m more of a Magi. Maybe you are, too. If so, we’re both in good company.

This past year, some of Mother Teresa’s personal journal became public. She wrote: “When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”

I don’t know if Mother Teresa was a saint or not, but one thing seems clear: She was a Magi. She journeyed in darkness, but journeyed nonetheless.

T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi” captures the harshness of the struggle here. In that poem, an old Magi looks back:

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.

This story of the Magi, perfect for a blustery January morning, illumines those moments when hope intersects with pain.

…set down
This set down
This

says the old Magi.

...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.

For Magi, in the larger fabric of life, birth is interwoven with death. This dynamic of change and growth sounds so romantic, looks so great on Christmas cards…until you go through it.

This past year, we’ve welcomed new children to our parish: Sophie and Ben and Kumari. All those giggles and sparkling eyes and squirminess—Can think of a better reason for joy? And yet, as their sleep-deprived moms will testify, their entrance into our lives brings a kind of death: Things will never be the same again. There are new demands, new sacrifices to be made for these children, things that might once have been possible are now on hold. In the larger fabric of our lives, birth and death weave themselves together. We are Magi.

And this past year, some of us journeyed into lives so much fuller and richer than we had previously imagined, yet that journey has meant letting go of the deadly illusions of addiction, and slowly, sometimes painfully learning how to live in a new way. Birth interweaves with death. We are Magi.

And for still others of us, the journey has meant the end of a relationship, the unexpected death of Manny, the loss of other loved ones either through death or separation. What these terrible losses will mean for us may not yet be clear. What is being born is not clearly seen. We are Magi who journey without a clear roadmap, with just barely enough light to guide us. Sometimes we journey with our knees wobbling and tears running down our face. But we keep going.

Maybe Dostoevsky overshot the mark when he said that “love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams,” but still he was on to something. Something Magi know. The journey can be hard. Love costs. Finding the child costs.

And yet we would not trade the journey for anything. Not for a moment. Not for anything. Because we are Magi.