Of screens doors and wandering kings

It was about 4 B.C. -- in this case, fours years before children -- when my wife and I discussed replacing a screen door. Screen doors usually come in two sections, the top half being a screen to let in the cool air while keeping out the bugs, and the bottom being a piece of glass or plexiglass, the better for cats to scratch to ask to come in. My wife told me she wanted a one-piece door, a novelty I had never heard of . "Everybody has one," she said. "No way," I rejoindered. "We'll be the only ones that have one, and it will look stupid!" Like many marital arguments, this one went round and round on for a while until I said, "OK. Let's take a walk and see how 'everybody' has a one-piece screen door!" Naturally, and in spite of a history to the contrary, I expected to prevail.

And so went we went. And wouldn't you know it, but every third home on our street had a one-piece screen door. Sure, it wasn't "everybody," but such doors were far from being non-existent! I didn't know they existed, and so I never saw them until my eyes were opened.

This Sunday, we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, when the "three wise men" (who were not necessarily three, nor wise beyond astrology, nor men) brought gifts to the Christ Child in Bethlehem. But what set them off on their journey? The magi, priest-astrologers from Babylon, were students of the stars. Not in the Neil deGrasse Tyson sense, but in the back-of-the-paper-comics-pages sense. They would have mapped the heavens with reference to events and peoples on earth -- this constellation for this nation, and that planet for that human trait, such as love or martial spirit. But then, as now, this was all make-believe. If a comet blazed by or a nova appeared, the magi and their kind would have attached extravagant meaning to it. Two planets passing near each other in conjunction (a humdrum happenstance in a flat solar system with planets in orbit) would have got the astrological community buzzing. A triple conjunction would have had them in near delirium.

But something set them off, and it's not for me to say whether it was a celestial happening that we can recreate with our computers, or some other bit of arcane gobbledygook that only the magi understood. But off they went to Judea, where the heavens bade them go.

But where in Judea? Ah, that was the question. They knew the nation affected by the change announced by the stars, but little else. So, to the capital city they went. Jerusalem, home of King Herod the Great. He, the builder of great seaports and citadels. And the man who razed the Temple, which was showing its age after 500 years of constant use, in order to build a new Temple to God's glory and his own. Herod was also a paranoid ruler who, over the course of his reign, had one wife and several sons executed for allegedly plotting against him. It was to the court of this Herod the Great, mad and ailing, that the magi appeared one day, seeking directions to a newborn king of the Jews.

For all its peril, the visit to Herod in Jerusalem was unavoidable. The stars had brought the magi only this far. But surely, the locals would have information that would bring them the rest of the way. And so, these dusty and unimpressive travellers visited Herod's court. It defies imagination that Herod saw them personally. They were not royalty, nor where they travelling on behalf of a monarch. Yet whether Herod or an underling gave them an audience, they made contact with some sage who combed the Hebrew scriptures and his own memories. A messiah (a meaningless title to a Babylonian priest) was expected. He would come from the severed stump of Jesse's lineage -- Jesse, the father of the illustrious King David of old. David had come from the hamlet of Bethlehem, 6 miles down the road. Then, there was an obscure throwaway passage from Micah, that gloom-and-doom-and-restoration prophet of seven centuries past, about a ruler coming from Bethlehem. Circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but no more so than the stray movement of lights in the skies. Enough to merit investigation.

Herod does not seem to have taken the magi seriously. Based on their later movements, he does not even seem to have had them watched by his secret police. They blended in with the throngs of Jerusalem's dwellers, took the road to Jerusalem and reached the place in a few hours. There, they located a bewildered and probably terrified Mary and Joseph and left small tokens. Whether they thought they had located the child is unknown. Who knows how many other households they visited? Matthew tells us they were warned in a dream to avoid a return to Herod, but it's just as likely that Herod didn't bother with them. They left Judea, and disappeared into obscurity and myth.

There are those who tells us that Matthew invented this story -- the weird, wandering star; the gold, frankincense and myrrh; the goyish travellers -- or that he got it from a source who invented it. Maybe. But the story has God's fingerprints all over it. People are moved, quite literally, and apparently of their own accord. Their day-to-day business crosses paths meaningfully with others on life's seemingly random road. They undertake journeys in search of one thing, and find another of much greater value. Sometimes, they recognize what they have found immediately; oftentimes, not until years later; frequently, not at all. They seek a king, but find a poor child tended by peasants. They seek court and glory, but find a dirty stable. The magi's subsequent silence on the matter (they did not publicize who they had found) suggests that they did not understand it fully or at all. But they have done their part, perhaps unwittingly. A favored child had been honored; a destiny of kingship, divinity and brute mortality had been acknowledged.

But for a few lines written in Greek by a first-century nonentity named Matthew, the story would have ended there -- fulfilled, but another secret held in the mantle of God's boundless memory. Yet this secret got out, and amuses, frightens and nourishes us still. As does the greater revelation of God's love and kinship held in the developing mind of a tiny infant wrapped against the cold in a drafty stable in Bethlehem. And like a one-piece screen door, this treasure, once it has been seen, beckons forth from everywhere and everyone..

Looking for the real hacker

North Korea offering to look for the SONY hackers is a lot like O.J. Simpson offering to find the real killer of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. Hey-oh!

Christmas Carols and literalism

My choir is practicing Christmas carols, which brings to mind how literally our carol writers have taken the gospel stories of the nativity.

Star in the East? Check.
Birth in Bethlehem because of a Roman census? Check.
Angels in the heavens? Check.
Fulfillment of messianic promise? Check.

Some scholars tell us that Luke (angels, census) and Matthew (Magi, star) were probably not telling history in the nativity narratives. Instead, they may have been using fanciful language to express the birth is divinely ordained, intended for the entire world, and thus significant.

Who knows?

In one sense, it doesn't mater whether the birth of Jesus occurred in Bethlehem or Nazareth or somewhere else. His birth's significance was that it came to unnotable people who lived in poverty in a politically and economically oppressed corner of the globe. Jesus was a nobody, something that the gospel writers might not have been able to wrap their heads around. And maybe they were right; selling the idea of a Messiah who had no claims to his title --neither through nobility of birth, lineage, place of birth or signs at his coming -- might have been a hard sell through the ages.

But I continue to be struck with the ordinariness of Jesus. He was born to unremarkable parents. His hometown was so small it did not even show up on maps. His schooling might have been rudimentary. His worldview would have be constrained by the ignorance of humanity in the period. He believed the religious slant that was common in his day -- that a messiah was coming and the Son on Man was about to arrive on the clouds of heaven.

Given all the commotion purported to have happened at his birth, it is remarkable that Jesus lived the next thirty years in obscurity. But did his life make any less difference because the herald angels might not have sung at his birth? Would his views on true worship of a loving God be any less meaningful if no one brought him gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh? Would God's plan be nullified were his mother not a virgin?

I am largely indifferent to Mary's virginity, and to all of the rest of the ornamentation that has been draped over the Nativity stories. If they happened as recorded by the evangelists, then wonderful. But if Jesus's birth took place in a dirty hovel in Nazareth on a cold and unlit dirt floor, his life and teaching would have no less value to me.

Can ye watchers be ye holy ones?

Hard to believe that it was just this week that a gunman held hostages in a Lindt cafe in Sydney. Now, that story is completely gone from the news, overtaken by the kerfuffle over whether Sony should have taken "The Interview" out of US movie theaters due to threats from hackers. Earlier, we were treated to reports of the murder of 100+ Pakistani kids at the hands of the Taliban. Thanks to Pope Francis, President Obama and Premier Castro, the US and Cuba are ready to normalize relations.

It's been a busy week!

I kept pace with the Sydney siege via Twitter and live feeds from the Australian media. I guess that makes me a news voyeur, something of which I am neither proud nor ashamed. I'm just following my fascination with a breaking story. You could easily argue that I could have been doing far more important things -- like helping at a homeless shelter or leading protests about police violence -- but I sat in my warm home, searching clips about far away tragedies.

Is there some value to this?

On the down side, you could argue that my time could have been spent better elsewhere. I had Christmas cards to write, presents to wrap, floors to clean, people to visit. On the upside, I guess you could say that I was bearing witness, filling my head with history for the time when these stories will have been completely forgotten.

There is value in remembering.

If you follow politics and the news at all, and see what people have to say about it on social media, you quickly learn that many, many people have very limited memories. They forget what their political party did in the recent past. They forget the position that their representatives held just weeks ago. This lack of memory makes it easy for them to accept whatever political attack is being made against those they dislike. It makes it easier for them to accept media falsehoods. It makes them easier to control.

In recent days, I have heard Senator John McCain blast Obama for establish diplomatic ties with Cuba. But that's exactly the position that McCain had espoused not that long ago. I have heard politicians and TV guests (including one former US vice president)  claim that torture was legal, without mentioning that its legality was proclaimed by those with political motivations to do so. I even heard on TV presenter claim that George Washington condoned torture, when history shows that to be a lie.

I would probably feel better about myself if I spent more time doing direct charity. But is there no value to seeking truth? Is there value to being the pest who calls bullshit when the truth is slanted or ignored?

I guess I am trying to justify myself and my preferences. I hope that at the judgment, being a guardian of truth will be enough to tilt the scales in my favor.

Keep dumb in Christmas

Will all the dumasses in the America PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop claiming that they can't say "Merry Christmas" anymore? It's not like you see them in church anyway.

 

 

And please park your hatred of foreigners at the door. Sheesh.