Epiphany Reflection

The Journey of The Magi by TS Eliot

The poet Thomas Sterns Eliot was born in St Louis Missouri but moved to England as a young man. Whilst at Merton College, Oxford he became at first familiar with and then highly influence by the Anglican Bishop and spiritual writer Lancelot Andrews who was Bishop of Chichester and Winchester in the 17^th Century. It was through the reading of the works of Andrews that Eliot himself found his own faith although at first falteringly.

The Oxford of the 1920s would not be an easy environment to find faith. Following the work of A. .J. Ayer and his book Language Truth and Logic, the dominant intellectual climate was that of an aggressive atheism which claimed that since God's existence could not be proved by means which are verifiable then he cannot be said to exist therefore all religious language in particular, is nonsense. A challenging background therefore for a man of letters such as Eliot to embark upon a journey of faith. But he did embark upon that journey – not an easy journey, a cold coming he had of it - just the worst time for such a journey.

Eliot was baptised and confirmed within the Church of England in 1927 and espoused as had Lancelot Andrew an Anglo Catholic stance within Anglicanism reflected in the mystical and sacramental nature of his writings. The Journey of the Magi was written very soon after his conversion and his Baptism and may in part be read as a commentary on his own search for faith. The opening lines of the poem are an adaptation of the opening words of one of Lancelot Andrews' sermons entitled "on the nativity of Christ".

The journey of the magi is the story of a person who has come to faith in Christ – that who sees Jesus Christ as the revelation of God for himself and for all – but who yet has not come easily to that realisation. The journey is not just the journey of the magi, nor even Eliot’s own journey into faith. It is our journey – the journey of all those who seek for God and who seek the purpose and meaning to life that God and God alone can give to us.

The journey of faith is not an easy journey. A cold coming we had of it just the wrong time of the year for a journey, and such a long journey. For many of us the journey into faith and a deeper realisation of God in our lives is indeed long journey – a lifetime. And so it should be. There is always to more to realise about God – he gives us of himself in small portions - enough to be going on with. We shall never know fully him in this life. The dazzling light of the fullness of Gods glory would be far too much for us. The ways are deep and the weather is sharp says our traveller.

Yes, we long for understanding of the deep ways of God – especially when the sharpness of our environment makes life and the journey hard and painful. What about suffering ?– how does that fit in with the God of love revealed in the babe in the manger. God’s ways are indeed deeper that we can fathom – but even that can be a cliché in the cold weather of the perplexed and troubled soul. And what about that persistent and nagging voice which insists that this is all folly?

Well doubt and uncertainty are a legitimate and for some, an integral part of the journey of faith. Both can indeed lead to a more mature refined and lived in faith, a faith worth the name. But despite the questions and no easy answer, the journey and the quest must continue. But there are difficulties along the way. A hard time we had of it – hostile cites and unfriendly people – and that constant nagging voice ‘This is all folly’

Yes the road to faith can be a road characterised by barriers of one kind or another – the disapproval of people, their indignation with us or their astonishment that we are actually trying to find faith, that we believe these things and that they matter. Or their ridicule. Eliot's wife divorced him, and many would say she objected to his faith And the constant question that lingers in a rational world – it can’t be true faith is an illusion, a prop for the weak or it’s for the children, or the very old.

But if the journey of faith in the one true God as revealed to us in Jesus is continued – if we persevere we will with the magi come to that smelling of vegetation and a stream running through it. A place of rest The Garden of Eden before the fall. It is wonderful to rest afar a long and arduous journey. A warm fire, a welcoming embrace, a good meal, a gin and tonic and a comfortable place to sit and rest. A moment of calm and peaceful realisation time to look back upon the journey and savour the arrival.

The revelation which faith brings, as for the magi at the end of their journey, will likewise bring us into the presence of God. Bringing us into the warmth and the beauty of the love of God and the knowledge of his presence. But wait. There is something else. Three trees on the low sky. The vine leaves over the lintel of the cottage door. The three trees of the three crosses against the low dark sky of Calvary. Judas’s thirty pieces of silver. Soldiers playing dice for the clothing of the crucified Lord. The vine leaves over the lintel pointing towards the death of the first born of Egypt for the life of the people and the ritual act of the chalice of wine in the mass whereby the sacrifice of the Son of God is made present for his people.

This story like that of the story of the birth of Jesus in Matthews Gospel looks towards the end of the life of Jesus even as it relates the events at the beginning. In Matthews’s birth narrative we are introduced to the cruelty of  King Herod. The killing of the innocents presages the death of the innocent Son of God. The exile in Egypt points to the exile of sinful humanity in the foreign land of sin and evil and death – far from where we truly belong. And the place where the child lay is described as satisfactory.

Is that word an echo of the satisfaction achieved by the death on the cross of the Son of God? Satisfaction made to God through the death of his Son? Satisfaction made for that human sin and evil which mars our journey through life? No, not to satisfy an angry God. But rather the outpouring of the immense and fee love of God in the birth and in the death of his own beloved Son. Which is  more than satisfactory to cover and overwhelm all the sin and evil in the world and for all time.

Such outpouring is seen in a life lying in the manger and in a life given on the cross and points to the meaning of Eliot’s word about birth and death.

‘Where we led all that way for birth or death’?

Both life and death are transforming. Transforming one state of being into another. The journey into faith is both death and life and is thus radically transforming. We die to the old life – the old dispensations - and are no longer at home there. Life without God at its centre is no longer satisfying. The birth into a new life is the journey which we would do again and again – so set down, this set down this, we would do it again.

And so the journey continues. In the poem there is no Mary and Joseph, no stable or star – indeed no Bethlehem. This is the journey of the magi indeed but more importantly it is our journey. That transforming journey into life through the revelation to us and to all the world of the transforming love of the eternal God in the birth and the death of his Son Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Alpha and the Omega the beginning and the end. The beginning of the journey, the journeys continuing and its end.