T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" (1927): A Brief Reflection for Epiphany

Today (Jan 6) marks the Christian Feast of the Epiphany, which in the Western Church celebrates the visit of the gift-bearing Magi to Bethlehem narrated in Matthew chapter 2. In Matthew's narrative, the Magi, who "prostrate themselves" before the one "born King of the Jews," represent, as the late New Testament scholar Raymond Brown argued,* the firstfruits of the eschatological pilgrimage of the nations and their submission to the true God. This richly evocative story called forth this wonderful poem by Christian convert T. S. Eliot in 1927:

 

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, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times when we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

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.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wineskins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

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.

 

Three elements of this poem stand out for me. The first is the reference to the "three trees on the low sky." This, transparently, is an allusion to the three crosses on Golgotha 36 years (on the assumption of a 33 CE date for the crucifixion) after their visit. The second is the line, "Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver," likewise alluding to the soldiers' dicing for Jesus's garments (Mark 15:24 et par.) and Judas's betrayal of his Lord for 30 pieces of silver (Matt 26:15). Elliot's point in these two allusions is manifest: Jesus's death is already foreshadowed at his birth. And by doing this Eliot is, I believe, faithful to the theological intent of Matthew's narrative, in which "all Jerusalem" is "terrified" of the news of the birth of the King (Matt 2:3) and the "chief priests and scribes" "of the people" "assemble" in response, in deliberate foreshadowing of the "high priests and elders of the people's" decision to put Jesus to death at the climax of the story (Matt 27:1; cf. v. 25). Even in Matthew's story, in other words, the shadow of the cross hangs over Jesus's life from the beginning. For in truth Jesus was a baby born to die for all, Jew and Gentile alike, who submit to him as did the Magi of old.

The third element I would like to highlight comes at the end: "We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods." This highlights the all-important New Testament theological emphasis on inaugurated eschatology. The birth of Jesus―indeed, his birth, ministry, death, and resurrection viewed as a whole, the entire complex conveniently referred to as the "Christ-event"―changed things, indeed changed things fundamentally and eschatologically, inaugurating the promised kingdom and fulfilling, in an initial sense, the Abrahamic, Davidic, and New Covenants of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Second Exodus, the New Creation―these have arrived, but not completely, not as they will be at the consummation. The new age co-exists in "eschatological" tension with the old, a fact which gives the apostle Paul's theology its particular dynamic and dynamism. What matters is what today's followers of Jesus do with this eschatological tension. As Eliot, through the words of the Magi, suggests (rightly), the Christian, as a citizen of the kingdom of God, should never be totally at ease "here, in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods." As an American, it may be uncomfortable to have to say this, but America, like Britain, like Canada, may be a fine country to live in, but it is a human country, and that means it is a fallen country. It is not an outpost of the kingdom of God. And it has its own idols, chief among them being, as I heard Ron Sider say a number of years ago in a fine commencement address at Messiah College, an "idolatrous nationalism" that runs rampant in evangelical circles in today's America. As Christians, our job is to work for the kingdom of God, for that is where our true citizenship resides.

Soli Deo Gloria!

*Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, 2d ed. (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library; New York: Doubleday, 1999) 187; cf. Matt 8:11-12; Isaiah 60:6; Psalm 72:10-11, 15.