FOR EPIPHANY: THE ETERNALLY LATE FOURTH WISE MAN...

(Not to be confused with the old Henry Van Dyke story, "The Other Wise Man.")

The French writer Michael Tournier wrote a wonderful treatment of the “fourth wise man” legend in his 1982 novel, “The Four Wise Men.” (In the event you think you might actually read this novel, I would suggest you stop here and go do that; otherwise, read on.)

The last two paragraphs of the book have stayed with me over the years, and I offer them on this January 6th as a kind of Epiphany devotional. Here is a brief set-up: The fourth wise man, Taor, Prince of Mangalore, was late in setting out, and the other three had no choice but to start without him. Once he does begin his journey, he meets with many delays and misfortunes, the greatest of which is being imprisoned in the salt mines of Sodom. His travails and prison sentence take such a toll of time, that, having set out in search of a newborn baby, he is not able to pick up the trail until 33 years have passed; he is now an old man. But he does pick up the trail. Released from the mines, and having learned from a fellow prisoner that the baby grew to be a prophet named Jesus, who blessed the poor and spoke of peace, Taor sets off and makes inquiries along the way. He hears one report after another, he is getting closer. Finally, he learns that on that very day Jesus and his disciples are having the Passover meal at the home of one Joseph of Arimathea, and that he may be able to find him there if he hurries. After some vague directions, he comes upon the room. Here are those concluding paragraphs:

“The room was empty. Once again he had come too late. People had eaten at this table. There were still thirteen wide, shallow goblets, each with a squat foot and two handles. In some of the goblets there were still a few pieces of the unleavened bread which the Jews eat at Passover time in memory of their fathers’ flight from Egypt.

“Taor’s head reeled. Bread and wine! He reached for a goblet and raised it to his lips. He picked up a piece of unleavened bread and ate it. Then he toppled forward, but he did not fall. The two angels, who had been watching over him since he left the salt mines, gathered him into their great wings. The night sky opened, revealing a sea of light, and into it they bore the man who, after having been last, the eternal latecomer, had just been the first to receive the Eucharist.”

The Four Wise Men, Grand Staircase
National Monument, Utah

LOVE, LIGHT, AND LIFE...

Proclaiming the news of the Christmas gospel is a daunting assignment for a preacher. Many of us ask ourselves, "What can I add to this old, old story?" For a number of years my response to this challenge has been to attempt a Christmas sermon in verse. When preaching, I try to read these sermons fluidly, without undue attention to the line endings dictated by poetry. 

This is a verse sermon I wrote for the Christmas after September 11, 2001. The themes, alas, still seem timely. Perhaps--this side of heaven--they always will.

I offer this as my blog Christmas card, with thanks for reading, and a prayer that all will hear Good News in this season.

When God to the nothing said
   let there be light,

There was nothing … nothing to
   make a world bright.

There was no one to see it and
   no one who heard,

Except God – for the source of that light    was God’s Word.

The light wasn’t starlight or moonlight or sun

But the radiance to be everything, everyone.

The light was creation – the beginning of

Life, and a universe, made out of love.

It is love that has made you and love that made me;

God, with a word of love, called us to be.

In the dawn of that day when the morning stars sang

It was God’s song of love with which all heaven rang.

But how can it be that our tiny green world

Would even be noticed as space-time unfurled.

Not only noticed, but dear in God’s sight.

Love means that nothing is small in God’s light.

Love, light, and life: it’s the poem of birth;

Love, light, and life: it’s the portrait of earth –

Earth as God made it and saw it was good,

A good place to live in – a world neighborhood.

A neighborhood world with God’s light to share,

Plenty for everyone – water and air.

But some of the plenty we wanted to keep,

And hide under cover of darkness so deep.

So we came to love darkness, why would that be?

When light is a gift given so we can see.
People loved darkness instead of the light –

Walked from the brightness of day into night.

Hid, so our deeds would be covered and dark,

And tried to pretend that the tiniest spark

Of the light of God’s judgment could not seek or find

Where we were hiding. How blind we were blind!

So hatred and darkness and death took the place

Of love, light, and life for the whole human race.

It’s what happens to you and what happens to me

When we walk in the darkness but think we can see.

Then came a day when God looked with the eyes

Of his heart, and he wept when he spotted the size

Of the storm cloud of darkness that covered the land

And smothered with night all the work of his hand.

“This is the darkness of death that I see;

Death is not what I intended to be

On the day of creation.” And his eye dropped a tear,

And God wept for a world filled with hatred and fear.

But God is light – in him there’s no darkness at all,
So he would not, not in anger, just watch his world fall

Away into darkness,  into eternal night.

“Love leaves no choice,” said God, “I’ll be their light.”

But God did not send down mere moonlight or star.

God came as a baby, to right where we are.

The light is among us, one of us, near,

The light is Emmanuel, God with us – here!

But don’t think that the light burned the darkness away,

All the powers of darkness then came into play

And attacked with full force when they learned of this birth.

(These powers work best when night covers the earth.)

“It’s only a baby,” the fearful king cried,

“And, like all the others, I’ll soon see him die.

A mother’s – a father’s love? How can that stand

Against armies of night that I’ll send through the land.”

So there is the picture: A small family

Who carry the promise that all will be free.

And more – there in the darkest of night

That family carries the light of all light.

Imagine if all of the sky – near and far –

Was nothing but nothing, except for one star.

It would seem, as you look, that the nothing will win,

But the light of that star is where God will begin –

Where God will begin to create light again.    

And the light will bring new life – and new life will win.

And the baby will grow, and the darkness will shout,

“Now he must die,” but the light won’t go out.

And a cross will be raised on the crest of a hill,

And a mother remember that night, and the thrill

She felt then, and the light all around,

And the promise she kept to herself, then the sound

Of the hammer and nails pierce her through,

And again it will seem that the darkness can do

As it will, and that light will seem so far away.

And she’ll weep for her child, for this man, for that day.

But the promise is true, and the life has begun

The life of a world newly born in her Son,

Newly born, so that never again can a grave

Contain all the light, life, and love that he gave.

And now, in our own day, when shadows have grown,

Again, the Word’s promise we claim as our own.

Hope seems to dim, and our day turns to night.

Come, dear Lord Jesus, and let there be light!

THOUGHTS ON THE INTERNET, SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY, AND MY NEW FRIEND, THE DUCK...

Although the date of this post, “Small Business Saturday,” is mostly coincidental, I hope there is a certain appropriateness and coherence to this report on some changes I’ve undertaken lately in the tech-consumer-social-media elements of my life.

You might wonder, “Who cares?” and why I’m bothering to tell you about these things, dear reader. To me, this blog is a conversation as well as my “journal;” I’d be very interested to hear how you are navigating these various channels that are carrying us into and through the Brave New World that is still very new to all of us.

Here are some recent resolutions, changes, epiphanies, experiments having to do with my interaction with the internet and its wider context, with observations on why any of this might be important:

1. I now use Amazon.com only as a last resort. Two strands have led me to this resolution: One is the issue of Amazon’s treatment of employees. (One aspect of this is the basis of a case before the Supreme Court right now.) This op-ed piece by Paul Krugman is a good overview of the role Amazon plays in the economy.

The other strand is the common-sense realization that the presence of a local bookstore and other retailers enhances the quality of my community and my life, and I need to support them to keep them around. There are, alas, no longer any bookstores in Faribault (they departed while I was clicking away on Amazon), but nearby Northfield has a wonderful new bookstore, “Content,” as well as The St. Olaf and Carleton College bookstores. These are now my "first resort," followed by Barnes & Noble (both brick-and-mortar and online versions) and other online booksellers.

My resolution, “…only as a last resort,” may sound wishy-washy, but for me to say “I will never use Amazon again” is almost as unrealistic as it would be to say, “I will never use the power company….” For many years I have been (at least) a weekly Amazon shopper, and the one-click option became like the chicken-pecking-the-button-for-feed attraction at the carnival. At this writing, I have not ordered from Amazon for about two months. Surprisingly ( to myself), I haven’t missed it. I hope they’ve noticed.

2. For the same reasons of enlightened self-interest (I want these shops to stay around), I will “Shop Small and Shop Local” as much as possible. I recently had a problem with my iPhone. I was able to contact a real human being at the online Verizon site, and she was friendly and patient with me, but in the end wasn’t able to help me. I took the phone to our local Verizon store, and the cheerful, no-nonsense woman behind the counter solved my problem in about three minutes. She also corrected my mistaken notion that coming to the store or visiting the web site amounted to the same thing. “We’re actually in competition with each other,” she said. Brick-and-mortar Verizon is now my go-to site for most cell-related items and issues.

3. I have gone back to paper-and-ink as my primary medium for book-reading. I have nothing against e-books (except for that Amazon thing), and I read them quite enjoyably on my iPhone Kindle app, especially in a doctor’s waiting room, etc.

Books.

But I recently had two thoughts that led me to this change: 1). When our grandkids see me reading a book, I’d rather have them witness me reading a book and not staring into a screen. 2.) I like books. I like having them around.

4. I will happily pay a reasonable price for on-line content that is important to me. (Newspapers, music, etc). At the genesis of the internet age, most publishers and musicians were ensnared by the “I ain’t payin’ for nuttin’” attitude which was the ethos of those early days—and still hangs on. But of course It doesn’t make any sense. In the news business alone—to name one example—we’ve all paid the price for this stinginess by the cutting back of news coverage in general, foreign correspondents in particular, and the substitution of 140-character tweets for in-depth articles. (Again, nothing against Twitter—in it’s proper perspective. Here’s one of my recent tweets: “After hundreds of pre-school readings: I prefer early Berenstain Bears—when Poppa is a hapless doofus—to the later preachy-teachy tales.” Deep.)

5. I am taking the following initiatives against online data-mining and privacy invasion. (In the ever-changing internet environment, who knows if these changes are worthwhile or futile.)

• I have changed my primary email from google.com to outlook.com. Outlook claims that they do not read e-mail content for the purpose of ad placement (as gmail does). Outlook is a Microsoft product, so it’s hardly a feel-good mom-and-pop replacement, but they are up front about stating that they target ads only according to zip code. I’ll take that trade-off. I am a Mac user, but I like the Outlook interface, and the easily-ignored ads are part of a clean-looking page. (And I can get an ad-free Outlook for $20 a year.)

• I have switched my search engine from Google to Duck Duck Go, an extension of my Safari browser. The Duck does not track web searches. It is serving me well.

• “Ello” is a new social media site that is ad-free and does not follow or track users. I am joining it as a kind of experiment—it will only be as good as the number of friends that I can convince to interact with me on the site.  Like many of you, I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. It is useful, but I mainly don’t trust it. It is clear that, as has been often pointed out, we users are the Facebook product, to be sold to advertisers. Like many of my generation, I stay with it for grand-kid photos (and, okay, I use it to lob the occasional bon mot), but I can’t wait to get off it. A researcher in a recent Atlantic Magazine article, "The Fall of Facebook," reports, “In three years of research and talking to hundreds of people and everyday users, I  don’t think I heard anyone say once, ‘I love Facebook…’”

• Just yesterday I discovered and installed “AdBlock,” another extension of my Safari browser. My Facebook ads are gone. My tastefully placed outlook.com ads are gone. Data-miners are no-doubt still mining, but I don’t see the ads!

POSTSCRIPT:

I continue to be mystified at how easily we have acquiesced in surrendering our privacy (I’ve certainly played my part in this). Germany in particular and Europe in general are taking a harder stand against the likes of Google and privacy infringement. As a result of a recent trial settlement, the court assigned a social media privacy expert to be a part of Google’s “team." In an interview on NPR, he said, “If I

walked into the neighborhood right now and went door-to-door asking, ‘Could I have photographs of all your children?’ I would either be arrested or physically driven from the house. And yet this is very close to what most of us are voluntarily doing online every day.”