Oh Come let us Adore Him

We have started singing Christmas Carols at church! I love it!

This week as we sang Oh Come Let us Adore Him, I thought about the "three wise men", aka rich foreigners of indeterminate number on a long trip to a backwater Roman province, and what it might have been like for them to visit toddler Jesus and bow to him.

Venerating a toddler is basically unfathomable for me. I can only grasp at it. I know that in Buddhism sometimes they have young deities. And I imagine that in hereditary monarchies people get used to the occasional young monarch or heir apparent. But I'm a Protestant American. If anything it is taboo to venerate people for anything other than their accomplishments. There's a vague notion of "First Families" but it's got a vague tint of unAmericanness about it.

But there you go. In Matthew chapter two, it says these "Magi" end up at Jesus' house, bow down to him, and present him gifts. I wonder what could have moved them to do that? It says they saw a "star when it rose" and they interpreted that as the birth of a new king of the Jews. First, how? and second, how does that lead them to conclude that what they need to do is take a long journey to find this new king and worship him which is what the text says they do? That's a lot of conviction followed by spending, the money, time and effort. I wonder what their servants thought about this whole hare-brained adventure?

Then I wonder what these guys thought when they discovered the new king wasn't going to be found in a palace but probably the village of Bethlehem? Like, is that ok? Do they question their quest at this point? A king? but not in the palace? (And I notice that Herod puts two and two together really quick and decides this new king is the "promised Messiah". This does not stop him from ordering the deaths of a whole bunch of toddlers in the hopes of getting this aforementioned Messiah dead.) But back to the Magi, in any event, they move on from the palace and a star leads them to Mary and Jesus.

As far as the text go, we don't know that Mary and Joseph had any special social status. But in the Magi go, into the house, and they bow down. Wild. Toddler boys don't look like much. Wide-eyed, with round bellies and stumping legs, they kind of hoover up life innocently. They are not worship material. They are barely contained chaos, don't-touch-that, don't-eat-that kinds of beings. Maybe toddler Jesus was special and glowed or something. But I like to believe that these foreigners simply had a God-given revelation that this kid was special and had special meaning for the world. In any event, however, they felt about the events that led up to that recorded meeting, they worshiped, and Jesus even as toddler deserved that worship.

As I look ahead to 2014, I am exploring whether to commit my time to a couple new projects. My thing with projects that involve people is that I like metrics but I believe in the value of people. So left to my instincts, I will pursue outcomes over individuals. But as I think about venerating a teething, drooling, pooping toddler, I'm reminded that just as Jesus deserved worship before he "accomplished" anything, that if I take on a project my first goal is not to fulfill metrics. Instead I need to live as a human being treating others as other human beings who have a Jesus-derived worth.