New Year's Eve Chinese dinner served up this fortune cookie nugget: "Wise men started out becoming that way by asking questions."
January 6 is celebrated in the church as Epiphany or Dia De Reyes (Three Kings Day), the anniversary of the arrival in Bethlehem of the Magi, the Wise Men from the east, who came to find and worship the newborn king, Jesus.
The fortune cookie prompted me to look again at these Wise Men, who I always assumed were called "wise" because that is how they were before they set out on their cross-desert voyage of discovery. But looking at the text again, and wondering about their seeking, I cannot help but wonder whether their wisdom came on the way, and through their willingness to question.
Questions like, "We have seen a new star in the east (when it rose), and we wonder what it might mean?"; and, when they arrive in Jerusalem at Herod's court, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?"; and after they find Jesus, "Although Herod has told us to report back to him the location of this child, ought we instead listen to that dream of warning we had, and so return home by another road?"; and after they return home, "What does this mean for how we live, for how we understand our world, for how we understand what our purpose in life may be?"
For me, faith has always been more about the questions than the answers, more about honest inquiry and less about settled dogma, more about marveling at the glimpses of the divine that seem as fleeting and as beautiful as a child's lightly-blown soap bubble and less about unquestioned and unquestionable tablets of stone.
The Wise Men remind me that perhaps wisdom is to be found on the journey of faith.
What do you think? If there is wisdom here, and if your safe harbor has become a little too safe, the cozy fireside a bit too cozy, can you imagine being open to following a star?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are welcomed, and encouraged!