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Good
morning! My name is Hannah, and I was King Herod’s spy. I wasn’t trained as a
spy, of course. A woman would never be trained as a spy. And I hate King Herod.
Everyone does. He’s cruel and paranoid and can turn on anyone at a whim. I was
just looking for a way out. You see, I’m a Parthian Jew. Not everyone trooped
back from Exile in Babylon all those hundreds of years ago. Some Jews chose to
stay in the East where everything was settled and civilized. We stayed away
from the desolate ruins of Jerusalem. My family was one of them--until my crazy
father brought his rug trade back here last year. I have spent the last 6
months determined to get back home, away from this dark land. I can’t stand it
here. It’s a land where loutish Roman soldiers leer at women in the streets. It’s
a land where Judeans cower in the shadows, hiding from the wrath of King
and soldier, and dreaming that God is going to save them.
I
gave up on God a long time ago. I was determined to get myself away from here
before my father married me off to some old merchant. I heard that caravans
from the East often stopped by Herod’s palace. So I hid away in an order of
carpets from my father’s shop that was bound for the palace. When I got there,
guess what I saw? There was a whole Parthian caravan milling around inside the
palace gates! It was my lucky day! There must have been at least 12 magi with
their camels and servants, goats and carts of food and supplies.
Magi,
by the way, are not kings. If you think that they are kings, you are getting
confused with Isaiah’s old prophecy from Scripture. Isaiah was writing way back
during the Exile, trying to convince people like my ancestors to come back to
Jerusalem and start over. No, magi are wise students of the stars in the
heavens and of the deep dreams within. They know things—mysterious things. Of
course, good Jews aren’t supposed to believe in idolatrous star-gazing and
magic-making. But I’ve always found the claims of magi intriguing.
I
heard these magi asking Herod about a new Jewish king, a child, that their
star-studies had revealed to them. In Parthia, they had seen a special star in
the heavens and had taken off in search of it. Imagine—to have the freedom and
the resources and the fierce curiosity to set off on a journey like that, just
to figure out some heavenly message. That’s exactly the kind of freedom that I
longed for. The magi must have been traveling for months in the wilderness to
get here.
Since
Herod didn’t have any new sons, he paled when he heard what the magi were
saying about a new baby king. You could have heard a pin drop in the throne
room. When the scribes sent the magi off to Bethlehem, I leaped at my chance.
Sidling up to one of the King’s ministers, I suggested to him that, with my
knowledge of Hebrew and Parthian, I could join the magi’s caravan as translator.
I could find this dangerous child-king for Herod. Of course, I didn’t really plan
to come back to Jerusalem with the news. I figured that I could hide away and
sneak back East with the magi.
So
off we went! The star beckoned us forward each night, glittering like a jewel
that you could grab if you could just get close enough. When we reached the
town of Bethlehem, the star seemed to glow more brilliantly. It seemed to drop
in the sky, too, sending streams of light right into the middle of town. The
magi, who had been chasing this thing for months, of course, began to talk
excitedly among themselves. They were waving their hands and acting like little
boys who had won at a game.
The
streets of Bethlehem are pretty narrow, though, so as we entered the town, it became
clear that the carts and camels couldn’t come with us. Without a second
thought, the magi paid an innkeeper to take care of them. They didn’t even
haggle over the price, they were in such a hurry to find this child. They only
took out a few sacks from their supply chest and gave them to a servant to
carry. “Presents for the new king,” I thought. “You can’t visit royalty without
gifts.”
The
beams of light seemed to be carrying us into the center of the old town, and
the streets began to narrow into alleys. The stench of human bodies became
over-powering, and the ramshackle buildings began to lean into one another. Ragged
men were peering around corners at our finery. This wasn’t good. What if God
had caught me in a trap, a trap of punishment for a disobedient daughter who
runs away from her father? What if the rabbis were right, and astrology calls
forth only fallen angels? Fear and doom and disappointment crept up from the
dark alleys like a fog until the starlight was almost invisible.
Suddenly,
one of the wise men grabbed my arm and pointed. A thin beam of light fell on
the flat roof of a tiny house, cutting clearly through the thick darkness. We
heard a baby cry inside. “Well, if it’s not a king, at least it is a child,”
was all that I could think. Nothing about this was making sense anymore. Before
I knew it, we were in the house, all squeezed into one tiny, low-ceilinged
room. The magi had to bend over just to come in. On the bed by a small window,
a young woman just my own age was holding a squirming child. Her tired eyes
looked up at us expectantly, as if she had already seen so many strange things
in her life that nothing could surprise her anymore. I felt sorry for her. This
was no great king, no messiah. This was a poor young mother with a crying baby.
I remember thinking that she was exactly what I was trying to avoid becoming.
Before
I could translate anything for the magi, a beam of light from that strange star
fell through the window and onto the unhappy baby. Was he ill? His blankets
were gray with dust. “Poverty and sickness,” I shuddered. “What are we doing
here following poverty and sickness as if they were precious jewels?!”
Suddenly,
as the light slanted in upon the child, he quieted. He looked up at us with piercing
eyes. His gaze made me warm inside, like a glass of strong wine. My fear melted
away. All of a sudden, I saw something moving in the light, angels perhaps? It
looked like angels were walking from the child up into heaven on the beam of
starlight. But they weren’t angels. They were human beings. I saw Roman
soldiers hand in hand with Jews. There were Parthians and Medes and many from
Asia. There were strange-looking people with yellow hair. There were crippled
beggars, even prostitutes in their gaudy robes. There were people (criminals,
surely) carrying what looked like golden crosses, although they couldn’t be
Roman crosses—it would be ridiculous to make a shameful cross out of gold. This
mix of people were all singing and rejoicing and glowing, almost as if they
were on fire with the light.[1] I started to burn, too, as the light grew
to take me in.
“You
are the light of the world,” I heard. Did the voice come from the baby? “Let
your light shine before others, so that they may… give glory to your father in
heaven.” In that moment, all of my resentment, my hatred, my drive to flee …
they all caught fire and burned, and I fell on my face before the light. The
magi must have seen the Glory, too, for there they were like me, noses pressed
to the earthen floor, foreheads in the dust, prostrate as before the Lord
himself. Then somehow, we rose, lifted by the sad, wise gaze of the mother and
the loving, burning gaze of the child. The magi pushed their sacks of gifts
toward the bed and backed out, bowing low.
We
stood in the street as dawn began to break and people began to stir. The
ordinariness of daylight was strange, compared to our nighttime epiphany. I
heard the wail of a mourner, crying for someone who must have just died.
“Poverty and sickness are still with us,” I sighed. And yet, everything is
different now. What I saw last night--in what must have been just a few
seconds--has made the world a different place. “Go get your camels and head
back East,” I warned the Parthians. “Go home and figure out what we have seen
here today. Don’t return to Herod—he must not know about this.” I watched them
turn and head toward the sun. As for me, I turned back home to tell this story,
forever captive to the light in the baby’s eyes.
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In our world, people are seeking, too. Like Hannah, we are
desperately searching for a meaning beyond ourselves. That much was clear in
Davidson Mesa. Like Hannah, we may be surprised at the places in which we find
that meaning. But God’s promise to us burns as brightly as two planets that
unite, again and again: “When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek
me with all your heart.” [2]
[1] With apologies to Flannery O'Connor for borrowing an image from her short story, "Revelation."
[2] Jeremiah 29:13
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