In the Christmas story, the down-to-earth and the heavenly keep getting intertwined. The earthy ordinary gets mixed together with the cosmic. The everyday realities of relationships, politics, work, and child-birth get thrown together with the other-worldly, heavenly realm.
Shepherds are at work, earning a living . . . while a chorus of angels sings a birth announcement, proclaiming peace to the entire world.
A child is born in a cattle trough to peasant parents . . . as a brilliant celestial light illumines the place of Jesus' birth.
Mary and Joseph are humble, devout Jews who will be visited by strangers, Magi, traveling from an Eastern land.
The scene is both rooted in the local -- Nazareth journey, Bethlehem census, hillside flock-watching -- and also includes the rest of the world -- seers from a far-off land who notice a star and set out to worship the child.
The story is earthy, including donkeys, sheep, and cattle. It is also cosmic, including stars and angels.
It is, at the same time, humble and glorious . . . all held together in God.
All these seeming contradictions are held together in this single story of a birth of one who would come to be known as both "Son of Man" and "Son of God."
It seems important to me as I locate the Christmas story within me, that I not only find the earthy and ordinary within my inner landscape, but also realize that there is something expansive and "made-in-God's-image" within me.
Both the local and cosmic are held together, even in me.
The familiar and the other-worldly are both part of my spiritual DNA.
I am a child of a particular place, with ordinary parents named Dorothy and Jerry, who is a citizen of a particular country . . . and as well, I am a child of the world, God's child who is part of a global human family that transcends national borders and belief systems.
When I seek to live in only one of these realities, I find myself lopsided, out of balance. For example, if I only see myself (either first or only) as a citizen of the United States of America, I divide and separate myself from the rest of the world's population. Yes, I am a citizen of the United States, but I am a God-person first, identified more by my God-endowed personhood than by my national origins. I belong to a kingdom "not of this world".
One function of the Magi in the narrative of Christ's birth is to remind us that the story does not belong only to one people or another. Christ is not only for insiders. The Christmas story belongs to everyone of every race, gender, orientation, state of life . . . as does Christ.
For that reason alone, it is important to touch the Magi within us. For the Magi represent not only exploration, openness, and adventure . . . they also represent the foreigner within us, the part of each of us that stands outside and looks in, that does not belong to the status quo, that gets left out.
As even the Magi are invited into the birth story, so too is this alienated part of our lives invited to join the birth of Christ. The story belongs, not to one group or one belief system. The birth of Christ belongs to the everyone, to the world, to the cosmos . . . always and everywhere.
The inclusion of the Magi in the narrative says that every part of us is invited into the story . . . and that every part of the story lives within us.
For Reflection:
Consider some way in which you feel like an outsider or a stranger . . . some setting, perhaps, in which you feel you don't belong. Where in your body do you feel the sensation of being an outsider? Where does it ache? This may be one place where the Magi live within you. Sit still, in touch with that part of your being. Open yourself as much as possible to God's invitation to that part of you, including you into the birth of Christ. You don't have to force anything to happen, simply take what God brings to you in the silence.
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