magi

Day 23: God Hates Scale (Kind Of)

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On coming to the house, the Magi saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

-Matthew 2:11-12

The 2022 World Cup is built on a paradox: Global club football consolidates wealth in traditional white European powerhouses and is bad for the game, but global club football allows players to access merit-based playfields and build allyship relationships across countries and is good for solidarity and building coalitions of justice which, we hope, will one day tear down FIFA itself.

This paradox spins me in circles, like the Wise Men tracing a finicky star.

The Wise Men are in some ways throw-away characters, independently wealthy foreigners who dip into the plot just to ratchet up King Herod’s evil and highlight king Jesus’ omnipotence. And then they drop out of existence just in time to miss a massacre which, arguably, they caused. What the hell? Where is the moral? 

The Wise Men’s disappearance preserves the life of God Incarnate, but also causes a cascade of events that ends in the death of dozens (hundreds?) of Bethlehem’s baby boys. Were the Wise Men in the right? How do we reconcile the consequences? 

We live in a culture obsessed with doing everything “to scale”; this is what drives FIFA’s bull-headed move to expand the tournament in 2026. 

The more I read the Advent story this year, the more I hear Jesus’ birth as an argument against scale. Our ability to scale is so mismatched with our ability to perceive consequences. King Herod responds to the Wise Men by murdering baby boys at scale; Jesus does, eventually, bring down the Roman Empire and Herod’s kingdom, but only generations after Herod dies and Jesus dies, is buried, and resurrected. 

By whose hand does God’s kingdom arrive? In the Advent story, one faithful person’s choice cannot be disentangled from the other. There is no scale in Gospels, just a butterfly effect of justice arriving. 

It’s not that God hates scale; it’s that God does not ask us to scale. The Wise Men, in theory, have the power and resources to fund Jesus’ ministry from birth to untimely death. They could scale this story in another direction. But they do not stick around for Jesus’ life. 

They do their best to identify the right action, and are doubtless astounded by how the future spools out of their one decision to return by another road. It isn’t our job to scale; it is our job to do the next right thing. This is not a satisfying resolution to the paradox, but it is a faithful one.

Adoration of the Magi, by Andrew Walker (1959).

Day 22: Overjoyed or Over It?

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After the Magi had heard King Herod, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.

-Matthew 2:9-10

Confession: I am not expecting to enjoy the World Cup final. I am planning to watch it, but I expect to gain very little joy from it, because I watch with all the tension and expectation of someone who has assigned enormous significance to a moment that is unlikely to rise to the occasion. In my own metaphors, I’ve equated Lionel Messi to every people-pleasing overworked and underappreciated Millennial pastor and I want for him a victory because that, in its own way, feels like a “fuck you” to the broken system. If he loses, I will be very sad. If he wins, I will feel the creeping sensation that haunts every perfectionist after a victory: that it is never enough. This is probably not rational, but we passed the threshold for rationality a long time ago.

While finals are supposed to be the exciting culmination of a tournament, they are often injury-ridden and conservative games. Most finals are not that fun to watch. This is perhaps the hallmark of sports fandom, to submit yourself to a game that is unlikely to make you happy yet unthinkable to miss.

Christmas can be the same way. With all the expectation and anticipation, the day itself can feel like a tense spring of waiting for everything to unfold as perfectly as you’d imagined. We place such a big burden on these culminating moments. 

I envy the Magi their genuine, childlike joy when they see the star stopped over the place where the child was (probably not the stable, although it’s romantic to imagine so). Many adults struggle to find that kind of authentic, awe-inspiring joy in the Christmas holiday. The mysteries pile up over the years and turn into a to-do list of family and presents and bathroom cleanings. I am the sort of person that loves the holiday season and finds the holiday itself tedious. 

It is possible that a final is best experienced in the past or future tense, when we have the optimism to love it and/or the reality to make sense of it.  I take joy from anticipating it and I take meaning from remembering it, but in the moment, I am stressed and concerned. The joy arrives, but the joy is easiest to access in a different tense.

When you watch the final today, you don’t have to be like the Magi. You don’t have to be overjoyed. Let time work the joy into the moment. Find the holiday joy in the tense you can, whether that is past, present, or future.

A dozen players from the French national team smiling and surrounding Olivier Giroud, who holds the World Cup trophy, as gold confetti rains down.
In 2018, France celebrated like it was Christmas in July after winning; this year, they hope to make it Christmas in December.

Day #20: Curiosity

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…magi came from the east to Jerusalem. They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.”
-Matthew 2:1-2

Children of a certain age like to play the Why Game, asking, in response to every answer, “Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?” It’s a surefire method for annoying adults, but it’s also the child’s discovery of curiosity: there is always one more question to ask. The world is full of strange and wonderful things we’ve never seen and these children are realizing the only limit to curiosity is fatigue. As adults, we learn to reign in our curiosity, to mind our own business and set limits far before we’re fatigued. The magi remind us that curiosity is a strength and that we learn only as much as we make ourselves available to new learning. They are three grown men who have decided to shape their lives around the decision to not mind their own business. They live in a state of curiosity. Their curiosity begins with the highest level of power, in the court of King Herod, but they quickly realize that curiosity goes beyond our hierarchy, and to learn only from those in power is to learn only what supports the status quo. The magi allow curiosity to lead them to unexpected places, and discover the journey was more worthwhile than they’d ever imagined. Curiosity is the belief that the unknown, far from being terrifying, may hold miracles that will make your life fuller and more astounding.

Takeaway: Be curious in a new direction. Ask questions of someone you haven’t gotten to know; duck into a new place purely to see what’s in it.  Wonder. Explore. Assume God moves in the space between your ignorance and your knowing.

Gathering the Stones is providing 40 days of reflections on resilience during Lent. Check back for new reflections every day (except Sundays).