by CCW | 9 January 2019 13:00
Christmas ends and Christmas begins! Such is the point of Epiphany, known as “The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles”; in other words, to the world. The central story is about “the magoi from Anatolia,” the wise men from the East coming to Bethlehem. With the coming of the Magi-Kings, Christmas goes global. It is omni populo, for all people. For Eastern Orthodoxy, Epiphany is Christmas. Such is the significance of what is one of the most intriguing and most beloved stories of Christmas.
And, perhaps, the most challenging. Why? Because it challenges so many of our assumptions about knowing. The Magi-Kings, as we have come to think of them, come from the east, following a star, Matthew tells us. How many and when exactly they came no one knows anymore than anyone knows for sure when Christ was born. Such things are hidden in what Prospero in The Tempest calls “the dark backward and abyss of time.” But the idea of the wise ones seeking to know is powerful. “They saw … they came … and they worshipped.” They present gifts, “sacred gifts of mystic meaning,” as one hymn puts it. The gifts teach. They signal something about the one to whom the gifts are given. The gifts are all part of the manifestation, the making known of the mystery of God with us. Christ is God, and King, and Sacrifice. Epiphany is Theophany, a making known of God.
This story which has so captured the imaginations of artists and musicians brings out the universal aspect of the Christmas story. What it offers is something for all regardless of our different faith or non-faith perspectives. In a way, the story shows the real meaning of education. The wise ones are the ones who seek to know and who are committed to learning. Students are those who embark on the journey of learning, a journey with their teachers who are also always students, always seeking to learn (otherwise they aren’t teachers!). The wise ones are in pursuit of truth before which they fall down and worship.
The story reveals a double journey: the journey to Bethlehem and the journey from Bethlehem. T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, The Journey of the Magi begins with a quote from the 17th century preacher Lancelot Andrewes about the difficulties of the journey to Bethlehem. “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.” His poem in many ways is an extended commentary on just that image. He interrogates the nature of all intellectual labours, all endeavours to know.
There are always questions. “Were we lead 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.” Such is the mystery of God and our encounter with that mystery in terms of human redemption. All our assumptions are challenged. Matthew tells us wonderfully and simply that “they departed into their own country another way,” to which Eliot adds “no longer at ease.”
This goes to the heart of education. It is the idea of being changed by ideas, changed by what we have been given to see. That means being no longer at ease, no longer content with our assumptions and attitudes, our complacencies and claims to certainty. That is the point of education. There is the possibility of being changed by becoming more thoughtful and more reflective. Such stories like the Magi-Kings have that power to awaken our imagination and to challenge our opinions and assumptions.
Which is why this story has attracted so much interest. In the Huron Carol, written in 1643 and which we sang in Chapel, the Jesuit priest, Jean Brebeuf, locates the Christmas/Epiphany story in the context of the Huron peoples, translating the story into the imagery of the aboriginal culture and Wendat language which had been given a written form while including the Latin “in excelsis gloria.” “The chiefs from far before him knelt/ With gifts of fox and beaver-pelt./ Jesus your king is born, Jesus is born, In excelsis gloria.” A wonderful cultural interaction that signals the universality of our common humanity in its engagement with the Divine. East and West are one in the quest to know and in the awareness of the limitations of our knowing. We are meant to be like those wise ones who saw, who came, who adored and who were changed by what they saw. Such is education.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2019/01/09/kes-chapel-reflection-week-of-9-january/
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