1 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, magi from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the east and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him, 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet: 6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” 7 Then Herod secretly called for the magi and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they set out, and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen in the east, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Matthew 2:1-12 (NRSVue)
Our passage from Matthew is read in the Western Christian tradition for the feast of Epiphany, celebrating the visit of the magi to the Holy Child. Epiphany celebrates the first appearance of Christ to the Gentile world, a revelation of the Messiah to these rather strange and mysterious characters identified simply as the magi.
What was their journey to visit Christ like? T. S. Eliot offers the following portrait:
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
Eliot’s retelling of this story places us in the mind of one of the magi, now older and introspective, recalling the journey they made “from the east” to Jerusalem and then Bethlehem (Matt 2:1). In Eliot’s poem, as they travel through “cities hostile” and “towns unfriendly,” the magi’s journey is fraught with difficulty and resistance. They eventually take to riding only at night, “With the voices singing in our ears, saying / That this was all folly.”
The poem evocatively concludes:
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;
This Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us,
like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Eliot here subverts the sometimes cloyingly sanguine recollection of the Nativity. For this story—dulled to our senses by layers of Charles Dickens and consumerist kitsch—is not as straightforward as is often assumed. In Eliot’s retelling, we see that the Epiphany can be understood as a moment of conflicting clarity. It represents both the unveiling of an entirely new reality and yet also the ending of current circumstances and situations. It can be understood as both a birth and a death.
For one, the joy of Christmas is always mixed up with the grief of the world’s suffering. One need only look today at the very town the magi came to visit. During Advent, Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem resumed for the first time since Israel’s genocidal (and ongoing) onslaught of Gaza began in 2023. On December 6, a large Christmas tree was lit up outside the Church of the Nativity, the site traditionally understood as the birthplace of Jesus.
Videos soon circulated online of Palestinian families—Christian and Muslim—watching as the tree came to life. It was very much like watching videos of the Christmas tree light up in my hometown of Auckland: kids running around, music playing, people filming. It was a moment of joy and celebration amidst ongoing lament.
At the same time, videos of the Christmas tree in Bethlehem were quickly picked up by Zionist social media accounts captioning them with things like, “Israel is the only place in the Middle East where you can celebrate Christmas”—despite Bethlehem being under an illegal and brutal occupation by Israel in the West Bank. This insidious denial of Palestinian life, history, and interfaith belonging is but one example among many in 77 years of Israeli violence and displacement. It reminds us that Palestinian joy and storytelling is always contested—something that can be stolen, commodified, and erased.
In this erasure of Palestinian life in Bethlehem today, we witness something of the Epiphany as narrated by Eliot. Rather than a straightforwardly triumphalistic moment in which peace and justice reign on earth, this example of celebrating the Christmas story instead leaves us unsure and unsettled. Like the magi of Eliot’s poem, we might wonder what type of event the birth of Christ is, and what exactly it means for our world today.
For Christians, the birth of Christ represents a fundamental turning point in the history of all things, the moment in which God became flesh in the ignoble birth of a Galilean peasant. Accompanied by angelic visitations, a mystical conception, and astrological portents, the Christmas story is one of liberation and celebration—a grand act of divine intervention into human existence and suffering. Yet when one steps back from the easy familiarity of this narrative, it must be admitted that this all reads a little strange. After all, Christ remains at this time a vulnerable child with little means of power. His people continue to live under Roman occupation. What was it like for those who witnessed the Nativity in such a context?
What was it like, for example, for the shepherds to whom the angels appeared singing in a great host, announcing peace on earth and goodwill to all (Luke 2:14)? After running through the town, announcing their own epiphany, when they returned to their flocks, what peace did they experience? What did their lives look like after Christmas?
What was it like for the magi, having been warned in a dream to avoid Herod’s wrath and so “left for their own country by another road” (Matt 2:12)? Upon their arrival home, might they have been “no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,” as Eliot writes? Just what type of epiphany had they received?
And there is another royal figure in our cast of confused and bewildered Christmas characters. We see in Herod, perhaps, a glimpse of the type of future the Christmas story points to. As our passage reads: “When King Herod heard this”—of the arrival of the one the magi identify as king of the Jews—“he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matt 2:3).
In Herod’s response, then, we receive another epiphany. This birth sends fear into the heart of the empire. In this way, for Herod and his order, this birth is also a type of death. It is a moment in history heralded by rulers being brought down from their thrones and the rich being sent away empty. It is an event which breeds possibilities for a new order in which the humble are lifted up and hungry are filled (cf. Luke 1:52–53).
Yet our present conditions—especially of those in the Holy Land today—frustrate and confuse such hopes. The Advent condition of waiting, then, becomes a fragile way of life—a mix of hope and frustration, joy and grief, celebration and lament. With the magi, having paused at the scene of the Nativity and now returning to our regular lives, we in fact still wait for a final consummation—we long for the coming redemption of all things in the midst of present sufferings. In such a context, we might indeed be “glad of another death.”
