041218 Sermon Christmas
Return of a Magi (a dramatic monologue) I am “he”
I am one of the Magi or one of the “wise men” as we’re called…
I’ve been given a rare gift… the opportunity to re-enter our planet here some two thousand years later.
I’m flattered our memory has lasted for so long… We have a saying that “fame is as fleeting as a comet.” Well our fame as magi or wise men has lasted considerably longer than that.
But, I also see that there are many legends that have developed about us…
Last weekend, I walked into Oakridge Mall which was as crowded as some of the Persian markets of my time, walked into the Hallmark shop and noticed Christmas cards with some of which feature us Magi, but as you can just 3 of us…
We actually had an entourage of about dozen of us… the whole city and eventually even the King noticed us when we came into Jerusalem!
Your sacred book, the Holy Bible, describes us as being men from the east… in the original language it literally reads men from the land of “the rising sun.” One minister here in Vancouver wondered if we were from Tokyo, the city where he was born. That minister also probably thinks we took the subway from Tokyo to Jerusalem! In fact our mode travel was more similar to your sky train than the underground… we were up on camels… We were from Persia, near modern day Iran…
I also see that we were remembered as wise men. Were we wise?
We were experts in discerning the meaning of the stars. We were not only like your astronomers who could track the movements of the stars, we also like your astrologers--we could to determine messages of the stars.
I know that many Jewish people in our time would likely have seen us as idolaters and sorcerers—separated from the one true God because our character and culture.
But many people in our day respected us… We we’re not Kings as the Christmas carol we sung today suggests… but we were advisors to the Kings and we helped them to predict the future…
You believe in God, don’t you? Don’t you believe that the Supreme Being controls the movements of the stars and planets… and that the almighty one could encode messages in the heavens for us?
Stars helped found Rome and the stars predicted birth of Alexander the Great (I understand he has a movie now; Alexander had a star then and now a movie star) and Julius and Augustus Caesar had stars to predict their birth. Even Herod had his own star.
When the star of the Great King in whose honor we appeared… it stirred something deep within us…
As though compelled by a force far beyond us, we set out we set out to follow this star…
So, we set out at the worst of time of year (close eyes and imagine), the very dead of winter…
The weather was very cold…
I remember our camels became sore-footed, and there lying down in the melting snow…
The camel men were cursing… looking for liquor to stay warm
The cities were unfriendly…
The villages were dirty and charging high prices…
Wherever we went people said we were crazy… we were told we should turn home…
There times when we preferred to travel all night, sleeping in snatches…
Why did we travel so far… in search of this King? Why wasn’t enough to just to know the secret without having to be there see it?
Not even the stars had an answer. The stars said simply that the King would be born.
It was another voice altogether that said come--a voice as deep within ourselves as the stars are… deep within the sky.
But why did we go? I can’t tell you now, and I could not have told you then, not even as we were in the very process of going on the half year long journey. Not that we didn’t have a motive, we had many.
Curiosity, I suppose…
We wanted to see for ourselves this One before whom even the stars are said to bow down--to see perhaps if it was really true because even Magi have their doubts.
And longing… Longing… inexpressible and inconsolable, longing…
Why will a person who is dying of thirst crawl miles across sands as hot as fire at simply the possibility of water?
Why at this time of the year, will a poor woman spend all that simply to be with a love one…
Longing…
So we followed the star…
And the star led us to Jerusalem… we came to the market and started to ask "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." The people we spoke ran into market… could not help us find our way… we just live here, someone said! But our time in the market was not entirely “fruitless…”
Our questioning about a King of Jews being born bounced like a rubber ball into Herod’s Palace.
We were summoned by the local King of Jews, though Herod. Herod was King of the Jews, though he himself was not a Jew, nor a Roman, an Edomite was he.
Herod demanded we give him a demonstration…
(accent)
"'Beware of beautiful strangers, and on Friday avoid travel by water. The sun is moving into the house of Venus, so your business affairs will prosper.' We said this to Herod, or something like that, and of course it meant next to nothing.
To have told him anything of real value, we would have had to spend weeks of study, maybe even months, calculating the movements of the planets at the precise moment of his birth, and at the births of his parents, and their parents back to the fourth generation.
But Herod knew nothing of this, and he jumped at the nonsense we threw him like a hungry dog jumps on a bone.
He demanded more from us…
"'Go and find me the child,' the king told us, and as he spoke, his fingers trembled together so his gaudy rings rattled together like teeth. 'Because I want to come and worship him,' he said, and when he said that, his hands were still as death.
I ask you, does a man need the stars to tell him that no king has ever yet bowed down to another king? He took us for children, that sly, lost old fox, and so it was like children that we answered him. 'Yes, of course,'
As turn to leave, Herod passed a scroll into my hand. When we opened it we found the words from the Holy Book written by the prophet in Micah chapter 5 vs. 2. (open use S paper)
“But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.”
Were led by the star to Jerusalem, but wise though we were we did not how to proceed from there… it was sacred text that us leads them to Bethlehem.
After we read sacred text the star reappeared in the sky above Bethlehem… Filled awe and joy… we turn south to Bethlehem..
We came into a temperate valley smelling of vegetation…
There were three tree and a white horse galloped across a meadow…
Then we climbed the hill and came into the village of Bethlehem…
So finally we got to the place where the star pointed us. It was at night. We had expected a palace when we set out, but we came a sparsely appointed room… It was cool and our breath came like little puffs of mist…
The man and the woman, between them the King.
We did not stay long. We set our gifts down on the floor and left. We knelt down and worshipped…
We came to see a birth, but we saw on his head as clearly as a crown or a bat death, a terrible, violent death…
As sure as the earth beneath our feet, we knew that to bow in submission before Him would be to share that death.
"And now I ask you a question and God knows, I ask this of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, the truth beyond the stars… to live without Him is the real death, that to die with Him is the only life?"
I am one of the Magi or one of the “wise men” as we’re called…
I’ve been given a rare gift… the opportunity to re-enter our planet here some two thousand years later.
I’m flattered our memory has lasted for so long… We have a saying that “fame is as fleeting as a comet.” Well our fame as magi or wise men has lasted considerably longer than that.
But, I also see that there are many legends that have developed about us…
Last weekend, I walked into Oakridge Mall which was as crowded as some of the Persian markets of my time, walked into the Hallmark shop and noticed Christmas cards with some of which feature us Magi, but as you can just 3 of us…
We actually had an entourage of about dozen of us… the whole city and eventually even the King noticed us when we came into Jerusalem!
Your sacred book, the Holy Bible, describes us as being men from the east… in the original language it literally reads men from the land of “the rising sun.” One minister here in Vancouver wondered if we were from Tokyo, the city where he was born. That minister also probably thinks we took the subway from Tokyo to Jerusalem! In fact our mode travel was more similar to your sky train than the underground… we were up on camels… We were from Persia, near modern day Iran…
I also see that we were remembered as wise men. Were we wise?
We were experts in discerning the meaning of the stars. We were not only like your astronomers who could track the movements of the stars, we also like your astrologers--we could to determine messages of the stars.
I know that many Jewish people in our time would likely have seen us as idolaters and sorcerers—separated from the one true God because our character and culture.
But many people in our day respected us… We we’re not Kings as the Christmas carol we sung today suggests… but we were advisors to the Kings and we helped them to predict the future…
You believe in God, don’t you? Don’t you believe that the Supreme Being controls the movements of the stars and planets… and that the almighty one could encode messages in the heavens for us?
Stars helped found Rome and the stars predicted birth of Alexander the Great (I understand he has a movie now; Alexander had a star then and now a movie star) and Julius and Augustus Caesar had stars to predict their birth. Even Herod had his own star.
When the star of the Great King in whose honor we appeared… it stirred something deep within us…
As though compelled by a force far beyond us, we set out we set out to follow this star…
So, we set out at the worst of time of year (close eyes and imagine), the very dead of winter…
The weather was very cold…
I remember our camels became sore-footed, and there lying down in the melting snow…
The camel men were cursing… looking for liquor to stay warm
The cities were unfriendly…
The villages were dirty and charging high prices…
Wherever we went people said we were crazy… we were told we should turn home…
There times when we preferred to travel all night, sleeping in snatches…
Why did we travel so far… in search of this King? Why wasn’t enough to just to know the secret without having to be there see it?
Not even the stars had an answer. The stars said simply that the King would be born.
It was another voice altogether that said come--a voice as deep within ourselves as the stars are… deep within the sky.
But why did we go? I can’t tell you now, and I could not have told you then, not even as we were in the very process of going on the half year long journey. Not that we didn’t have a motive, we had many.
Curiosity, I suppose…
We wanted to see for ourselves this One before whom even the stars are said to bow down--to see perhaps if it was really true because even Magi have their doubts.
And longing… Longing… inexpressible and inconsolable, longing…
Why will a person who is dying of thirst crawl miles across sands as hot as fire at simply the possibility of water?
Why at this time of the year, will a poor woman spend all that simply to be with a love one…
Longing…
So we followed the star…
And the star led us to Jerusalem… we came to the market and started to ask "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." The people we spoke ran into market… could not help us find our way… we just live here, someone said! But our time in the market was not entirely “fruitless…”
Our questioning about a King of Jews being born bounced like a rubber ball into Herod’s Palace.
We were summoned by the local King of Jews, though Herod. Herod was King of the Jews, though he himself was not a Jew, nor a Roman, an Edomite was he.
Herod demanded we give him a demonstration…
(accent)
"'Beware of beautiful strangers, and on Friday avoid travel by water. The sun is moving into the house of Venus, so your business affairs will prosper.' We said this to Herod, or something like that, and of course it meant next to nothing.
To have told him anything of real value, we would have had to spend weeks of study, maybe even months, calculating the movements of the planets at the precise moment of his birth, and at the births of his parents, and their parents back to the fourth generation.
But Herod knew nothing of this, and he jumped at the nonsense we threw him like a hungry dog jumps on a bone.
He demanded more from us…
"'Go and find me the child,' the king told us, and as he spoke, his fingers trembled together so his gaudy rings rattled together like teeth. 'Because I want to come and worship him,' he said, and when he said that, his hands were still as death.
I ask you, does a man need the stars to tell him that no king has ever yet bowed down to another king? He took us for children, that sly, lost old fox, and so it was like children that we answered him. 'Yes, of course,'
As turn to leave, Herod passed a scroll into my hand. When we opened it we found the words from the Holy Book written by the prophet in Micah chapter 5 vs. 2. (open use S paper)
“But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.”
Were led by the star to Jerusalem, but wise though we were we did not how to proceed from there… it was sacred text that us leads them to Bethlehem.
After we read sacred text the star reappeared in the sky above Bethlehem… Filled awe and joy… we turn south to Bethlehem..
We came into a temperate valley smelling of vegetation…
There were three tree and a white horse galloped across a meadow…
Then we climbed the hill and came into the village of Bethlehem…
So finally we got to the place where the star pointed us. It was at night. We had expected a palace when we set out, but we came a sparsely appointed room… It was cool and our breath came like little puffs of mist…
The man and the woman, between them the King.
We did not stay long. We set our gifts down on the floor and left. We knelt down and worshipped…
We came to see a birth, but we saw on his head as clearly as a crown or a bat death, a terrible, violent death…
As sure as the earth beneath our feet, we knew that to bow in submission before Him would be to share that death.
"And now I ask you a question and God knows, I ask this of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, the truth beyond the stars… to live without Him is the real death, that to die with Him is the only life?"
posted by Shigematsu at 9:47 PM
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