Will you go the distance? A Question for Epiphany

Today (6th January) is the Feast of the Epiphany. In old language (Book of Common Prayer) it's titled The Feast of the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Put more simply, it's on this day that we remember and celebrate the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. We'll most likely be celebrating it in church tomorrow.

The 'wise men from the East' (Matthew 2.1) if the story has any historical validity, may have come from as far away as present day Iran. The various traditions and stories down the centuries put them from that sort of region. Marco Polo wrote of his having visited the graves of the wise men in a town in Iran. They may have been Zoroastrians. Whatever they were and from whatever culture they hailed, they were 'foreigners'; very much Gentiles; very much outside the traditions and culture of the Jews. But they'd seen a star, rising, a sign that in their culture was a portent of a new king. And the story says that they followed it.

I love the poem by T.S. Eliot 'The Journey of the Magi' -  'A cold coming we had of it. Just the worst time of year for a journey; and such a long journey: the ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of Winter,' is how it opens. If you haven't read it you should. (You can read it by clicking here and you can also listen to T.S. Eliot reading it) Because it leaves you, (well it always leaves me) like the wise men after their experience of meeting with Jesus; uneasy, uncertain, as Eliot writes - 'But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their Gods.' I believe that any true meeting with Jesus leaves you, in time, ill at ease, uncertain. And wanting to know more.

We have the impression that the wise men traveled a long way to see Jesus, a long way for that
encounter that was so important for them to experience. It had taken faith, faith in their own religion, faith in themselves, faith in the star. Their faith took them a long way.

And getting there they offered the baby 'out of their treasures' which they'd carried with them, gold, frankincense and myrrh. In faith they offered some of the best of what they had to this new king. Who was an infant living in a house rather than a palace. So that must have taken faith too, after visiting Herod's palace and finding the new king not there, to believe that  the infant they found in such lowly surroundings was a king. We don't necessarily find God in the places we expect, rather, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. And accepting that demands faith.

Our journey, taken in faith, looking for what we hope and expect is God, demands a lot - of faith. Sometimes we have to have the faith to suspend belief to find what we are looking for. And suspending belief is a sort of death. No wonder we are 'no longer at ease in the old dispensation.' Just as the Magi in Eliot's poem weren't sure whether or not they'd seen a birth or a death, so the new birth we are looking for, in ourselves in our encounter with Jesus, means a death too, of much we've
believed, hoped in, dreamed of.

And continuing in that new birth and making the long journey of maturing in the faith, demands perseverance and above all faith. Because it's a long and arduous journey. Don't be deceived. Spirituality is not about being 'spaced out' in your own space feeling good about life, the universe and everything. Spirituality is about giving you and your space over to God and His space. And it takes all you've got for as long as it takes. You've got to go the distance, just as the wise men did.