The 12 Days

Tomorrow, Christmas, is in the liturgical calendar, the first of 12 days of Christmas.  The last day of Christmas is Epiphany. On Epiphany, we, the orthodox and liturgical types celebrate the Light of Christmas' first day, Jesus, being revealed to Gentiles, the Magi, for the first time.  It is the first intimation in the Gospels that the promises to Abraham that his family would be the source of Yaweh's blessings to all families was finally coming true.
There is wrinkle in the story of Epiphany that seems ripe for a bit of midrash.  The scriptures tell us that wise men from the east, from the lands we now call Iraq, on Christmas' last day found the gift under the special star.  The scriptures are also painstaking in their efforts to show that the gift child of the first day of Christmas, well, his family is from the east also.  Abraham and Terah come from Ur of the Chaldees: Iraq.  So while it is crucial for the salvation story that a gentile boy like me gets to now, in Jesus, be counted as one of the family of God, the look that passed between Jesus and the Magi on Epiphany is a look of family rcongnition.  While Epiphany is the marking of salvation coming from the Jews to the gentiles, it is also a recognition to paraphrase St. Paul, in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, peasant on the run or rich landed gentry, no male or female, black, brown or white, gay or straight, Canadian or American or Syrian or Mexican.  In Christ we are all simply the children of Eve and Adam.  That seems, to this gentile boy, to be both the blessing and the judgement of the season.

Incarnation

On the way back from Egypt, Joseph, Mary, and the boy passed again through that town of closed inns and starry nights.  The women just stared at them.  The fury was mostly gone, now only the emptiness. Their sons were dead, and here, this One the cause of it all, was riding on though.  No angel was commanded to whisper to them in the night.  No Gabriel said,”Fly. Bundle him and flee now, tonight.”   Some of the fathers had burst forth to defend their little ones.  Maybe they hoped that the ancient songs were true, and the Holy One would command his angels to guard their ways.  But steel slit bare-handed rage just as easily as two-year old flesh.   The fathers, who watched this day’s parade, the ones who watched as the thugs took their sons and hacked and hacked, did not know of sacred dramas and holy imperatives.  Maybe they wouldn’t care even if they did know of such deeper purposes.  Who would tell them: Joseph, whose Son yet lived?  Was that day their cruel day on Moriah?  Indeed, what purpose could justify?  They knew only guilt, blood, burial, and Rachel’s tears without end.  Mary had heard hints of this hurt, the angel warned that her day too would come.  But for now, not for 30 more years and three long days, not even God yet understood loss such as this.