We three kings... the real story?

We three kings. I love the carol sung by the choirs just now. But here are some historical realities that add to the story.

There was probably a caravan of magicians travelling to find the babe-- not only 3 wise men. It was probably up to 3 years after the birth of the baby. Do the dates matter? Not at all to me.

The story is the lesson.

Gentile kings (leaders/ mayors/ magicians) came to find the baby. They followed a star. A comet? To me-- irrelevant. Here's the story. Gentiles from Iran/Iraq saw something in the sky that indicated a king was coming/ born in Israel. They probably had been taught about this over several generations from the information that either Queen Esther or Daniel the Prophet had deposited previously. Who is the king who is coming? Where is he? They believed he was the messiah, but beyond that, they were not sure.

They didn't know, but they followed the star. The star stopped 'above' the child. According to the biblical record, they travelled to Jerusalem. After all, kings should be born in a capital city. Not Galilee or Gaza. But also not Oslo or Salt Lake City. They came to Jerusalem. (Matthew 2.1) They brought him presents of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Takeaway: if Gentiles from Mesopotamia can believe in a Jewish king and travel to Israel to worship him, then maybe we Jews from Israel, New York, Sydney, Jo'burg, and anywhere else can stop to listen and discover if this Yeshua (Jesus) is actually of note. And is he to be worshipped? And is he our Messiah? Stop. Look. Sh'ma.

The actual story as recorded in the Bible:  "Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ² “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” ³ When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. ⁴ Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵ They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written ¹by the prophet:

⁶  ‘^aAND YOU, BETHLEHEM, LAND OF JUDAH, 

ARE BY NO MEANS LEAST AMONG THE LEADERS OF JUDAH; 

FOR OUT OF YOU SHALL COME FORTH A RULER 

WHO WILL SHEPHERD MY PEOPLE ISRAEL.’” [quote from Micah chapter 5 in the Older Testament]

Matt. 2:7   Then Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. ⁸ And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him.” ⁹ After hearing the king, they went their way; and the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the Child was. ¹⁰ When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. ¹¹ After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshipped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹² And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi left for their own country by another way." (recorded in the biography written by Matthew, chapter 2, verses 1-12.

Do you hear what I hear?

Crises and Christ: Who will save the USA?

Every thinking person who watched on 6 January and saw the US Capitol breached was shocked. The seat of democracy, the great American experiment from 1776, was assaulted in its core. Hundreds of ambling protesters who might have thought themselves patriots became rioters; the listeners became a marauding mob. Stirred to action, the domestic terrorists boasted and filmed themselves, cheered "USA" and called each other to take the building. One scene after another pulsated across our televisions. Shock. Awe. Sadness. 

That moment which grew into those hours of defamation and disregard, the embarrassment and the shame-- broadcast the pain, the bifurcation, the bother, and the lack of faith in the system of democracy forged on those shores nearly 250 years ago. That is a crisis into which President-elect Biden will have to work to solve. I'll label it Crisis #1: Segmenting from Polarity.

Pundits and JoeEveryman alike want to assign blame on someone or something for the insurrection. Five people are dead as an immediate result of the riot including a DC policeman. 13 people (so far, with hundreds of open cases) are under arrest for various federal crimes. The leadership of both the House of Representatives and the Senate are being labeled in social media and in water cooler conversations as patriots or conspirators, and the number one target of blame is the president himself, Donald J. Trump. Tomorrow the US House will bring charges hinting at sedition in the form of Articles of Impeachment. The charge is 'incitement to insurrection." The estimate is that by Wednesday, exactly one week after the breaching of those Capitol's walls, the House will impeach the sitting president for an unprecedented second time. 

The president, they will allege, is responsible for the mayhem and the insurrection. Sedition is defined as "conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch." The words he used during that speech (full transcript is here) on Wednesday include all the following and much, much more: "We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved." "we will stop the steal...we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election...I’ve been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first." "they say we lost. We didn’t lose.""After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you... We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.""you’re going to start working on Congress. And we got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them. We got to get rid of them.""we’re stuck with a president (Biden) who lost the election by a lot, and we have to live with that for four more years. We’re just not going to let that happen.""All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to recertify" "They (undefined) have no idea. They’ve totally lost control.""Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength." "we’re going to have somebody (Biden) in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed, and we’re not going to stand for that.""you have to get your people to fight""I want to thank the more than 140 members of the House. Those are warriors.""We will not be intimidated into accepting the hoaxes""You will have an illegitimate president, that’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen.""we can’t let this stuff happen. We won’t have a country if it happens"" if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore."

This is not to mention anything of Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy or any others who added to the fires. Nor is it to mention anything about the FBI bulletin released this week which shows all 50 capital cities and DC being under the threat of real violence in the next 8 days. Oy!

Crisis #2 is Sedition through Power.

Beyond Washington, DC, there is the pandemic. 909 Australians have died. 10,000 British people have died since 27 December. 370,000 Americans are dead since March. Over 40,000 in the US since Christmas. 30% of the vaccines purchased in the US have been put into the arms of Americans to date. That's well below the desire of the leadership. Is the virus a crisis? There are still plenty of people who disbelieve the statistics. Some called it a hoax. They believe a conspiracy from Bill Gates, 5G towers, microchips, and all kinds of other accouterments are indicative of the Deep State trying to take control of our lives and lead us away from sense and sensibility. 

Whether the vaccine is tainted, and the shot-in-the-arm given to Kamala and Boris and Biden and so many others is just showmanship, I for one am very keen to get the vaccine. The pandemic is nothing to sneeze at. It's the worst disease we have seen in 100 years. It's killing citizens around the world. Almost 2 million so far. 

It's Crisis #3, the Survival from the Pandemic. 

Into each of those crises, we need salvation; we need help; we need change!

Polarity means we cannot speak peaceably to one another. There is an answer to this: The Bible says "in Messiah there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free." (Galatians 3.28, Colossians 3.11) That is, no matter what our distinctives are by which we separate from one another, the Bible makes clear, Yeshua the Messiah said,  "If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet." (John 13.14) and again, "This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you." (John 15.12).

"Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor." and again, "Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation." (Romans 12.10, 16)

I guess that whole ethic of conversation and how we should relate to one another is the answer viz the sedition concern and also the pandemic. Listen to the science they say. Listen to one another. Hear each other and we will be a kinder and gentler republic. 

And that goes for Sydney and Melbourne, NSW and WA, heck it goes for us all. Love is all you need. (Oh wait, that was the Beatles, not the Bible) Still it's the bottom line in this whole matter of crises.

And the summary of the love of God is found in Jesus. He is the One who gave his life, who put up his hand, if you will, in heaven and volunteered to move to earth, to live in a quarantine fashion away from heaven, and take the virus on himself. He died, taking our sins, so that we could have The Great Exchange of his righteousness for our sins. His death paid the penalty for our sins and brought us into relationship to the Almighty. 

Crisis averted; Christ is risen; the victory is won!