Christ is born! Glorify Him! We gather today to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Two thousand years ago two quite different groups of people also gathered to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ—three wise men and quite a few shepherds. The gospel today from the second chapter of the Gospel of St Matthew explains how three men from the East, probably from Persia, certainly not Jewish, were drawn by a star to seek the newly born Jesus Christ. A gospel from the third chapter of the Gospel of St Luke explains how several shepherds, certainly Jewish, were urged by angels to find and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. I wonder, I wonder: Why do these three men from the East, Jewish shepherds and us all wish to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ? What binds us to each other and to Christ across the centuries and the different cultures?

Let’s begin with the wise men. They are often called “magi” indicating that they were magicians, followers of the Persian prophet Zoroaster who lived some 600 or 700 years before the birth of Christ. These magicians were seeking truth through astrology—the study of the movement of the stars and planets and how these movements are thought to influence people’s lives. As St John Chrysostom has pointed out, the star that the magicians were following “was not an ordinary star, for no other star has this capacity to guide, not merely to move, but to beckon, to ‘go before them,’ drawing and guiding them along their way” [end of quote]. So you see, God used a star to guide these men to Christ, because the world of stars was their milieu—their environment for learning, their path to reaching Truth.

The 19th century English poet Matthew Arnold has caught the plea of these Persian astrologers in his short poem, “Lines Written in Kensington Gardens”:

Calm soul of all things! Make it mine
To feel, amid the city’s jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar!

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.

Isn’t that what these Persian wise men were seeking? Calmness in their souls, a peace and a unity with God and with others, with a plea that they would not die before they had begun to live. They were seeking the presence of the one true God.

Consider the shepherds around Bethlehem who suddenly heard the angels speaking of the birth of Jesus Christ. Now shepherds in Israelite history were often persons of great integrity: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David were all shepherds. However, hired shepherds in first century Palestine have been described by one historian as “dishonest and thieving most of the time, leading their herds onto other people’s land and [stealing] the produce of the land.” Yet in the 10th chapter of the Gospel of St John, Jesus Christ described Himself as “the good shepherd” who was willing to lay down [His] life for the sheep.” Shepherds were often uneducated and isolated, living away from others with no one watching them, so they had to make their own decisions about how to live.

Just as Matthew Arnold caught the hope of the wise men, I think another 19th century English poet, Aubrey de Vere, in his poem “Implicit Faith,” caught the experience of the shepherds around the infant Jesus Christ. De Vere wrote:

That cradled Saviour, mute and small,
Was God—is God while worlds endure!
Who holds Truth truly holds it all
In essence, or in miniature.
Know what thou know’st! He knoweth much
Who knows not many things: and he
Knows most whose knowledge hath a touch
Of God’s divine simplicity.

That’s these shepherds, isn’t it? Uneducated and surprised, “knowing not many things” but “with a touch of God’s simplicity,” beside the cradle of the “Saviour, mute and small” knowing that before them both in “essence” and “in miniature” lies the person who “was God” and “is God.”

A note in The Orthodox Study Bible explains:

Whereas the Jewish shepherds worshiped the Saviour in the cave on the day He was born (Luke 2:8-20), the Gentile magi came to worship Him some time later. By then Joseph and Mary had found a house in which to dwell [as set out in Matthew 2:11]. This indicates that Christ first came to the Jews and then afterward was worshipped by the Gentiles.

So the shepherds and the wise men from the East both had important roles to play in worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ—to affirm him as Lord of their lives and Lord of the universe.

Now, what about us? Of course, we are neither Persian astrologers nor Palestinian shepherds, yet we too on this day are confronted with the birth of Jesus Christ and have important roles to play in worshipping Him. Perhaps a third and final 19th century English poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, has something to say to us in her poem, “Human Life’s Mystery.” In the opening line she uses the word “glebe” which is church-owned land that provides income for a resident minister. The poem begins:

We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,
We build the house where we may rest,
And then, at moments, suddenly,
We look up to the great wide sky,
Inquiring wherefore we were born…
For earnest or for jest? [...]

God keeps His holy mysteries
Just on the outside of man’s dream; [...]
While they [that is, our dreams] float pure beneath His eyes,
Like swans adown a stream. [...]

Yet, touching so, they draw above
Our common thoughts to Heaven’s unknown,
Our daily joy and pain advance
To a divine significance,
Our human love—O mortal love,
That light is not its own! [...]

That’s each of us, isn’t it? We work hard, “we build the house where we may rest;” we question the purpose of our lives as being “for earnest or for jest,” as we experience that God keeps “His holy mysteries just on the outside of [our] dreams.” And yet, and yet, we are drawn above to “Heaven’s unknown” precisely because “our daily joy and pain advance to a divine significance.”

I deeply believe that Elizabeth Barrett Browning is right: “our daily joy and pain [do] advance to a divine significance,” but it may not happen precisely as we think it might happen. In his Confessions 23.37, on the death of his devout and patient mother St Monica, St Augustine prayed that all her hopes for his life would be fulfilled, and I quote “through my confessions more than through my prayers.” That is a challenging prayer. Certainly, we should pray to the Lord daily; however, it may well be more important to confess our sins to the Lord daily, to be honest with the Lord and with ourselves. Within each of us there is a saint and a sinner; and we need to learn how to recognise when we are being saints and when we are being sinners. Then we can draw closer to God’s “holy mysteries just on the outside of [our] dreams.” It may well be that in this life we cannot reach those holy mysteries, but we can do what Sylvia and I in were urged to do in a Christmas card given to us yesterday by a member of the parish: “Listen for His voice, rest in His love and know all is well in His hands.”

I close with the words of St John Chrysostom in his Sermon on the Nativity. That great fourth century preacher, teacher and theologian said:

On this day of Christmas, the Word of God, being truly God, appeared in the form of a man, and turned all adoration to himself and away from competing claims for our attention. To Him, then who through the forest of lies has beaten a clear path for us, to Christ, to the Father, and to the Holy Spirit, we offer all praise, now and for ever. Amen.

St John Chrysostom has captured precisely what unites all of us with those first century wise men and shepherds. We three groups of people from such different ages and cultures have “turned away from competing claims for our attention . . . and turned all adoration [that is, all praise, all worship] . . . to Christ, to the Father, and to the Holy Spirit . . . now and for ever.” So there is no great mystical vision here. Each of us can simply turn “away from competing claims for our attention, and worship the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—God is three in one.