History will play games with you, if you’ll let her. Sometimes she starts with strange juxtapositions. That’s the case on the sixth of January when the great Trumpite riot of 2021 coincides with the Christian feast of the Epiphany. That’s the celebration of the journey of three magoi, astronomer-astrologer-futurologists who travelled from the vestiges of the once mighty Persian empire looking for a king and ending up in a stable. Magoi weren’t kings but they kept their eyes on power, and thought about it in surprising ways. For them real power was part of the order of things out there in the universe. So they squinted at the stars in the heavens, crunched numbers on an abacus, decided something big was about to happen in Judaea, a new ruler, perhaps, one who could displace the quisling regime run by corrupt collaborators with Rome. If that domino fell, how many others might follow? It was worth checking it out.
Suppose, then, instead of relegating this story to the Christmas pageant or making it an occasion for a Twelfth Night frolic as we could in pre-Covid days, we approach it as a meditation on power.
The story occurs only once in the canonical gospels, the one by Matthew (chapter 2., 1-13). Ιt’s easy to guess why Matthew might have been attracted to the story, since according to later tradition he was a former tax collector, that is, was an ex-extortionist and collaborator with the occupying Romans. He was a “publican” and surely hated for it, until he found his life shattered by a Holy Man who people thought might be made the king of an independent Jewish state. Like the magoi Matthew was drawn to thinking about power, heavenly and not so heavenly.
In his story the magoi bring gifts worthy of a king, but they said, it seems, not a word. Then they returned home “by another route,” to avoid telling what they had found to the quisling king of the region. Matthew, you see, wrapped his story about the visit of the magoi in a garish melodrama leading up to the slaughter of every young child in the realm. That’s another kind of power, not attuned to any cosmic order, but all-too familiar on earth.
To these magoi, however, real power was rooted in the nature of things, specifically in the order of the universe. To last or amount to anything its holders had to be attuned to that cosmic order, or as ancient writers were more likely to say, to “the heavens.”. That is what lets the magoi predict things and, I suspect, shape their individual lives
. The magoi had no monopoly on this idea. It's not just a coincidence, I believe, that something similar turns up in the prayer Matthew reports Jesus taught his followers to use (Matthew 6, 9 - 13). In it God is a father but a cosmic one, someone to whom one should exclaim – to paraphrase- , “ Let your kingdom arrive! Let your will come into being down here on earth, the way it does in the cosmos.”
The “Lord’s Prayer” occurs once more in the canonical gospels, Luke 11 2 -4 There it lacks the language about a heavenly father whose will is to be at work on earth as it is in the heavens. Luke, in other words, omits the talk about a tie between earthly needs and regularities out there in the universe, , Such terminology is specific to Matthew. Perhaps he remembered hearing it because it resonated with him, while others forgot all about it.
Matthew’s story, in other words, might be thought of as a meditation on power, real and suppositious and on its roots, cosmic and otherwise. It’s also an invitation to think again about power, something we might all benefit from.
In any event, it’s hard to imagine a view of power more contrary to this than that of those who on January 6th shouted their curses and trashed the Capitol on behalf of a man obsessed with one kind of power.
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-- A lot to argue about here. Let's hear from you.
Suppose, then, instead of relegating this story to the Christmas pageant or making it an occasion for a Twelfth Night frolic as we could in pre-Covid days, we approach it as a meditation on power.
The story occurs only once in the canonical gospels, the one by Matthew (chapter 2., 1-13). Ιt’s easy to guess why Matthew might have been attracted to the story, since according to later tradition he was a former tax collector, that is, was an ex-extortionist and collaborator with the occupying Romans. He was a “publican” and surely hated for it, until he found his life shattered by a Holy Man who people thought might be made the king of an independent Jewish state. Like the magoi Matthew was drawn to thinking about power, heavenly and not so heavenly.
In his story the magoi bring gifts worthy of a king, but they said, it seems, not a word. Then they returned home “by another route,” to avoid telling what they had found to the quisling king of the region. Matthew, you see, wrapped his story about the visit of the magoi in a garish melodrama leading up to the slaughter of every young child in the realm. That’s another kind of power, not attuned to any cosmic order, but all-too familiar on earth.
To these magoi, however, real power was rooted in the nature of things, specifically in the order of the universe. To last or amount to anything its holders had to be attuned to that cosmic order, or as ancient writers were more likely to say, to “the heavens.”. That is what lets the magoi predict things and, I suspect, shape their individual lives
. The magoi had no monopoly on this idea. It's not just a coincidence, I believe, that something similar turns up in the prayer Matthew reports Jesus taught his followers to use (Matthew 6, 9 - 13). In it God is a father but a cosmic one, someone to whom one should exclaim – to paraphrase- , “ Let your kingdom arrive! Let your will come into being down here on earth, the way it does in the cosmos.”
The “Lord’s Prayer” occurs once more in the canonical gospels, Luke 11 2 -4 There it lacks the language about a heavenly father whose will is to be at work on earth as it is in the heavens. Luke, in other words, omits the talk about a tie between earthly needs and regularities out there in the universe, , Such terminology is specific to Matthew. Perhaps he remembered hearing it because it resonated with him, while others forgot all about it.
Matthew’s story, in other words, might be thought of as a meditation on power, real and suppositious and on its roots, cosmic and otherwise. It’s also an invitation to think again about power, something we might all benefit from.
In any event, it’s hard to imagine a view of power more contrary to this than that of those who on January 6th shouted their curses and trashed the Capitol on behalf of a man obsessed with one kind of power.
--
-- A lot to argue about here. Let's hear from you.