The Journey of Engagement

Paul Walton
6 January 2004

In looking at the story of the magi, there are at least two ways to go about it.

One is the dispassionate, detached way of examining the story ‘from afar’, as it were—asking questions like
‘Who were these “wise men”?’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘What was the star?’
‘Did it really happen?’

It’s the way of looking critically at the story, and keeping it ‘out there’.

The second way is the way of engagement. To look at the story, to linger with it, to journey with the magi, to gaze in wonder upon the young Jesus with his mother. It’s the way that TS Eliot took in his poem, The Journey of the Magi. In this poem, an aged magus looks back, and remembers:

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey …
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.…

This is engagement—an imaginative approach in which the story doesn’t stay ‘out there’. Instead, it gets so close that it gets ‘under your skin’.

Getting things ‘under our skin’ is an uncomfortable picture. No wonder we sometimes prefer having things ‘out there’, ‘at a safe distance’, where we can ‘get some perspective’. It certainly keeps things ‘under control’.

It seems clear that at Mustard Bush we have gone for the way of engagement, letting things get ‘under our skin’.

We’ve done that deliberately. We have tried to engage with the faith of the early Church, the liturgy of the Eastern Church, and the language and some of the issues of our own day. And we dived into the deep end to do that—we didn’t wait until we had ‘gained some perspective’. And now it’s under our skin.

Not that we don’t have any perspective. We have the perspective of those who are committed.

I want to introduce you to St Ephrem the Syrian; an excerpt from his poem On the Nativity is the Canticle for the current liturgy, Christmas, Epiphany, Candlemas. Ephrem lived from around 306-373; he wrote in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus. His theological writings are in the form of poetry; he represents a very early form of Christian thought and life.

It seems that he tried the first way of approaching the Scriptures, that of being detached (see Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye, Cistercian Publications, 1985). He wrote (in Faith 32:1),

Turn me back to your teaching;
I wanted to stand back,
but I saw that I became the poorer.
For the soul does not get any benefit
except through converse with you.

The only way for Ephrem was the way of engagement. This was first and foremost an engagement of love and wonder.

The way of detachment is a one-way street; we ask questions of the story, and it answers. The way of engagement is two-way; the story speaks to us, or rather the Spirit addresses us through the story.

We are called into question, and we are fed. We receive both grace and judgement. Ephrem’s poem continues:

Whenever I have meditated upon you
I have acquired a veritable treasure from you;
Whatever aspect of you I have contemplated,
a stream has flowed from you.
There is no way that I can contain it:
Your fountain, Lord, is hidden
from the person who does not thirst for you;
your treasury seems empty
to the person who rejects you.
Love is the treasurer
of your heavenly treasure store.

From my perspective, it’s just not possible to worship the way we do without engagement. We sit in the round, we have a highly participatory liturgy, we share our cares and celebrations, all our senses are involved, and—last, but by no means least—we have weekly communion. A cool detachment would be hard to maintain—love is the only possible response!

Getting back to the magi, who have been patiently waiting in the wings since the beginning of this sermon: they were hardly detached. Once they saw the star, they got on their bikes. Yet they weren’t engaged straight away; the first place they come to is Herod’s palace. The king they were seeking was born in no palace! These are typical biblical ironies: a king who cannot be found in a palace; ‘wise’ men who are not wise!

They found the answer from the priests—the only place to find a new ‘king of the Jews’ is Bethlehem. But the priests were pretty detached! They knew the answer, but as far as we can see, they didn’t go. Another irony!

But as the Magi approached the young boy Jesus, as they were confronted by the reality of this king, we can imagine that they became fully engaged. They would have asked themselves many questions; and I reckon that the answers wouldn’t have come straight away. They would have required a very personal response.

The way of engagement is a journey, every bit as eventful as that of the magi. Furthermore, it’s a journey that never ends, for how can we ever say that God has got under our skin enough?