Wise men from the East

Wise men from the East

Haiku of adoration

Wise men from the East,

so an old story tells us,

came seeking a king.

A child has been born

who will rule over Judah;

we have seen his star.

In Jerusalem

they make their inquiries.

Herod is alarmed.

Those who have power

become anxious at the thought

that they might lose it.

Calling a meeting

of the chief priests and the scribes,

Herod seeks answers.

Bethlehem, they say.

According to the prophet,

Bethlehem’s the place.

Go to Bethlehem,

and when you do find the child

come, report to me.

They locate the boy,

bow down in adoration,

and give him their gifts.

Gold for a king’s crown

frankincense to worship him,

myrrh for his dying.

Proving their wisdom

the men, having found the child,

choose a new way home.

© Ken Rookes 2018

Tales of wonder

Haiku of uncertain destination.

The tale is dodgy,

its historicity doubtful,

but still we wonder.

Driven by a dream

they seek the child of promise,

born to be a king.

They came from the east,

a vague description, at best;

those men of wisdom.

No maps, GPS,

their star takes them all the way

to Jerusalem.

They call on Herod;

(where else would you find a prince

but in a palace?)

Herod takes advice,

sends them off to Bethlehem;

asks to stay informed.

The child is threatened

by this late development.

God's plans are at risk.

Finding the infant

they offer their gifts: the gold,

frankincense and myrrh.

The gifts are laden

with meaning and importance

for a future king.

Having paid homage,

the pilgrims return eastward,

give Herod a miss.

The nations have seen,

the threat will be overcome;

the story rolls on.

© Ken Rookes 2017

Dealing with dark forces

haiku of ambivalence.

When light is coming

the dark forces congregate;

seeking to destroy.

A classic story.

The child of blessing, threatened,

survives the danger.

Like Moses, floating

on the river, the baby

lives to overcome.

Herod, the despot,

becomes his first enemy.

Will not be the last.

The angel returns

with a warning and advice:

Take the child and flee.

The land of bondage

becomes the place of refuge.

History reversed.

Back in Judea

the story is less pleasant.

Evil has triumphed.

The years pass, as does

the danger. The family

return to their land.

They choose Nazareth

in Galilee, to the north.

There they make their home.

© Ken Rookes 2016

The Wise men - Chesterton

The Wise Men
By G.K. Chesterton

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly…it has hailed and snowed…
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
(…We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly, humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain.

And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.

_________________

G. K. Chesterton, “The Wise Men,” in G. K. Chesterton Collected Works Volume X Collected Poetry Part 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 186-187.

- See more at: http://www.newreformationpress.com/blog/2012/01/09/a-poem-for-epiphany/#sthash.aJg7QRpk.dpuf

Epiphany colouring 2

http://printablecolouringpages.co.uk/?s=epiphany

The adult version of the Epiphany

The adult version of Matthew’s nativity moves quickly from the glad moment of the adoration and gifts of the magi to a darker, more ambivalent world of political intrigue, deception, and fear-induced violence. (There’s a reason we read Luke on Christmas Eve!) But if Matthew’s account is more sober, it is also realistic. We live in a world riddled by fear, a world of devastating super-storms and elementary school massacres, a world where innocents die everyday to preventable illness and hunger. In Matthew’s story of the visit of the magi – and the subsequent slaughter of the innocents in the verses to come – Matthew renders an accurate if also difficult picture of the world.

And that is what is at the heart of Matthew’s darker, more adult-oriented story of Jesus’ birth: the promise that is precisely this world that God came to, this people so mastered by fear that we often do the unthinkable to each other and ourselves that God loves, this gaping need that we have and bear that God remedies. Jesus isEmmanuel, God with us, the living, breathing, and vulnerable promise that God chose to come live and die for us, as we are, so that in Christ’s resurrection we, too might experience newness of life.

As Denise Levertov writes in her poem “On the Mystery of the Incarnation”:
It’s when we face for a momentthe worst our kind can do, and shudder to knowthe taint in our own selves, that awecracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart.

 

http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1509

They came

They came,

according to one ancient story,

looking for a child;

they found one in Bethlehem.

Leaving their gifts with the family

they shot through, back home to the east;

conveniently dropping Jerusalem,

and its palace, from their return itinerary.

They might have guessed that the old king

would get somewhat angry

when he discovered the broken promise.

Still, they’d be out of the country by then;

so would the boy, with a bit of luck,

not to mention some timely dreaming

on the part of his dad.

But for all the other families

in the little town of Bethlehem,

there were no sweet dreams,

just a nightmare.

With the easy wisdom known as hindsight,

it would have been better for everyone

had the men we call wise,

not made the trip at all;

their gifts were of little consequence,

and even yarn-spinner, Matthew,

didn’t manage to weave them

into the rest of his story.

© Ken Rookes 2013

Micah from Moresheth

Micah from Moresheth,

in the region of Judah,

gave us Bethlehem as the location

for the birth of the Messiah.

Perhaps he stopped by at the little town

on his one-day journey to Jerusalem

to do his prophecy thing.

He posed a challenge for gospel writers,

Luke and Matthew:

how to arrange for Jesus from Nazareth

to be born in Bethlehem, three days to the south.

For the one, it was a census; for the other,

fear, a massacre, and the return to a new home

after refuge in a foreign land.

For the one, the drama of a stable birth

with flights of angels and bewildered shepherds.

For the other, a fearful escape

and the vulnerability of refugees.

They each give us reason to pause

and reflect upon the strange purposes

of an even stranger God.

I wonder, if Luke was writing today,

might it be the homeless and the hopeless,

camped beneath a bridge, who would be

the subjects of the angelic invitation?

I wonder, if Matthew was writing today,

would he write of the kindness

of the people-smugglers

who helped the Holy family

reach their place of welcome and safety?

© Ken Rookes

Massacres of the innocent

In his birth stories, gospel writer Matthew

gives us the terrible tale sometimes called

The massacre of the innocents.

It seemed plausible at the time of writing;

this callously brutal act, ordered

by a despotic monarch

for the sake of preserving his kingship.

In more recent years

historians and scholars

have dared to ask the question:

did it really happen?

They point to a shortage of corroborating evidence

beyond the scriptures;

along with the Moses story,

and the need to solve

the Bethlehem – Nazareth conundrum.

Traditionalists, of which there are a few,

point to the character, or lacking,

of Herod the Great, a ruthless tyrant

who would tolerate no limitations

to his pursuit of power.

Without doubt he was capable

of ordering such a terrible deed,

as have been so many kings and rulers since.

In the last hundred years

there has also been no shortage of tyrant:

dictators who have cruelly

oppressed their own people,

tribal leaders who express their hatred

with guns and machetes,

presidents and Prime Ministers

who declare bloody, high-tech war,

on the slimmest of pretexts.

Few have dared

to directly target children,

but  these little ones have borne

more than their share of suffering.

Historical considerations aside,

it is good that this Christmas text reminds us

how the small, the innocent, the weak

and the vulnerable, have so often

paid the price demanded

by the wealthy and the strong.

And still do.

© Ken Rookes

© 2010  Ken Rookes

.

Fool’s gold

Appearing nothing like the noble kings

that stepped confidently in gold leaf

from countless medieval paintings,

the ones we call wise

looked like a group of merchant traders

who had trod the road many months.

Dusty but unwearied, they chased

their star-obsession west,

all the way to Palestine.

The palace had probably been a mistake,

but they agreed  that the Bethlehem lead

looked promising.

They laughed along with the strangers

with whom they shared their story.

“The rainbow’s golden pot

might prove less elusive,”

a wit had joked, some months into their travels.

True, they might never find the prince

at the silver star-journey’s end.

They were troupe of clowns,

persisting in futility,

knowing and willing,

recklessly complicit

in each other’s foolishness;

having long concurred

that it was better to pursue with hope

a heavenly folly,

than to live with caution and fear.

And should they find the child,

why, then they would laugh and worship,

and the whole journey

would be as the gold

they carried.

© Ken Rookes

For some.

The wealthy and powerful ones;

rulers, kings and major shareholders

do a lively trade in information.

They invest some of their ample resources

in finding out stuff, analysing trends and opinion,

and gathering whatever facts can be assembled

from their multiple sources

in order to gain advantage over everyone else.

Knowledge, they say, is power;

who would argue?

In his terrible nativity story, Matthew

presents us with the despotic Herod,

who, sensing a threat to his kingly power

in the unlikely birth of a child,

demands, of his royal advisors,

insight and opinion. It is his hope

that when the appropriate dots

have been successfully joined,

they will indicate a profitable course of action.

And just when,

he confidingly enquires of the wise strangers,

feigning concern for the success

of their crazy adventure;

did the star first appear?

Having sent the gift-laden travellers to Bethlehem,

in accordance with some long-forgotten oracle,

he awaits their return,

along with the specific details,

(parents, street name and number),

that they will supply.

He must have waited some time;

the successful pilgrims, as the story goes,

were recipients of further information,

and went home by another way.

The ever-pragmatic Herod was unconcerned;

it was a minor inconvenience.

Their answer to his earlier question

had been duly noted by his scribes;

it would be sufficient for his mathematicians

to make the necessary determinations

that would allow his troops to do their job.

The baby’s parents also received advice

that enabled them to choose a path to safety.

Not so blessed were other young children

in Bethlehem. Knowledge, they say, is power;

for some.

©Ken Rookes 2012