SecDef Hegseth and his pointless name game

NBC affiliate WFMY in Greensboro, N.C., reports:

NORTH CAROLINA, USA — The controversy surrounding the name of North Carolina’s Fort Liberty is back in the spotlight following remarks by the newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

In 2022, the U.S. military spent over $2 million to rename Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty, distancing itself from Confederate ties as Fort Bragg was originally named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg. However, during his first day on the job Monday, Hegseth referred to the base by its former name.

“Every moment that I’m here, I’m thinking about the guys and gals in Guam, in Germany, Fort Benning, and Fort Bragg, on missile defense sites and aircraft carriers,” Hegseth told reporters as he entered the Pentagon.

The mention of Fort Benning also stood out, as the Georgia base was renamed Fort Moore in 2023, another step in the Pentagon’s efforts to remove Confederate associations from military assets.

Hegseth’s remarks align with a promise President Donald Trump made on the campaign trail in Fayetteville, North Carolina three months ago. “Should we change the name from Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg?” Trump asked a crowd of supporters, receiving loud cheers. “So here’s what we do: we get elected, I’m doing it. I’m doing it.”

I am a retired Army artillery officer. I served a tour at Ft Bragg in the latter 1980s. I am very definitely a political conservative, but I cannot agree with reverting the name back to Bragg. Here is why:

Confederate General Braxton Bragg

1. Ft Bragg was founded in Sept. 1918 as an artillery training center. Called Camp Bragg at first (because it was considered a temporary installation), it was named for North Carolina native Gen. Braxton Bragg for his artillery actions during the Mexican-American War in 1847. 

So far, so good. Bragg's record as a US Army officer was in fact stellar. But another important reason the camp was named after him was, frankly, to appease Southerners while the US was at war in Europe. In 1918, there was still a large number of Civil War veterans, Union and Confederate, still living, and to their children and grandchildren, that war was not old history, far removed in time or space. So, the camp was named after a CSA general who conveniently was an NC native and Army artillery officer. 

Please note that there are no military installations outside the old CSA that were named after CSA figures. I will also note that Gen. Bragg was a truly dismal battlefield general, which IMO is another reason not to revert to using his name. 

I also think, however, that Fort Liberty is a nitwit name. Find a post-Civil War American military hero or renowned wartime commander and use that. 

2. There are some hard truths about the CSA. I was born and raised in the Deep South. My family's roots in Middle Tenn. go back to just after the Revolutionary War. I have ancestral family members who fought (and some died) for the CSA on both my mom's and dad's side (also for the Union on my dad's). Alexander Stephens, vice president of the CSA, was my wife's great-great grandfather's brother.

I take no back seat to anyone for Southern heritage and upbringing.

Like probably most native Southerners of my generation, I was raised being taught that the real reasons for the Southern states' secession was to preserve states’ rights and that the northern economic lobby was choking the South's economy with high tariffs on Southern goods.

Slavery? Well, it was in the mix somewhere, but slavery was not the real reason for secession. 

It is a lie, pure and simple. 

The states’ rights and tariffs arguments are entirely absent from Southern apologia until after the Civil War. In 1860 and before, no one in the South was using those topics to justify secession. Furthermore, in 1860 federal tariffs on Southern goods were lower than they had been since 1816. 

Why did the Southern states secede? To protect slavery, period.

Read the 11 seceded states' actual acts of secession, beginning with South Carolina's, and you will see that slavery was the sole reason for secession. South Carolina's act makes this very unambiguous: protection of slavery was the only topic presented as driving secession. Same with Mississippi. And the others.

The Confederate States of America was founded to do one thing only: to preserve the power of one class of people to literally own as chattel property another class of people. There is no other reason the CSA existed.

We are long, long past the time where any figure of the CSA should be honored with naming any federal property after him.  

I wrote  at greater length upon the CSA's secession and raison d'etre here: "Confederate monuments: So what? Now What?"

14th Amendment and "birthright citizenship"

I wrote this on another web site in 2010, so the issue of birthright American citizenship has been contentious for a long time. But the main points are still relevant, so here you go:

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Many pixels are being lit up by some Republicans' commentary that the 14th Amendment to the 
Constitution "is in need of review."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told The Hill on Monday that Congress “ought to take a look at” changing the 14th Amendment, which gives the children of illegal immigrants a right to U.S. citizenship.

McConnell’s statement signals growing support within the GOP for the controversial idea, which has also recently been touted by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

In an interview, McConnell said the 14th Amendment provision should be reconsidered in light of the country’s immigration problem.

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Its intention was to ensure that slaves freed by the Civil War could not be denied citizenship. The part of the amendment for that purpose simply states,

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

This has been interpreted in the almost 150 years since as meaning that anyone born inside the US or its territories is automatically a citizen.

The 14th Amendment's crafter never imagined "anchor babies."

Babies born to illegal alien mothers within U.S. borders are called anchor babies because under the 1965 immigration Act, they act as an anchor that pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives into permanent U.S. residency. (Jackpot babies is another term).

The United States did not limit immigration in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Thus there were, by definition, no illegal immigrants and the issue of citizenship for children of those here in violation of the law was nonexistent. Granting of automatic citizenship to children of illegal alien mothers is a recent and totally inadvertent and unforeseen result of the amendment and the Reconstructionist period in which it was ratified.

For decades after the amendment took effect, American Indians were ruled by federal courts, including the Supreme Court, not to be covered by the 14th Amendment because they were not fully under the jurisdiction of the United States. (The Tribes were then and still are in a treaty relationship with the federal government.) It took a special act of Congress in 1924 to confer citizenship upon American Indians.

In fact, there has never been a federal court that held the 14th Amendment conferred citizenship upon infants born to parents inside the country illegally. It is being done despite that fact.

So at a minimum, Congressional legislation clarifying what birthright citizenship is, within the context of the 14th Amendment, is not only appropriate, it is long overdue. I myself would support a Constitutional amendment to that effect. It would not require repealing or modifying the 14th Amendment. My draft reads:

Amendment 33 - Citizenship by Right of Birth Clarified

1. A person shall be a citizen of the United States by right of birth provided that the person is:

a. born in the United States to parents of whom at least one is, at the time of the birth, both a citizen of the United States and a de jure parent of the newborn, or,

b. born in the United States to parents who, though not citizens of the United States, are legally in the United States at the time of the birth, and who are de jure parents of the newborn, or,

c. born outside the United States to a de jure parent who is citizen of the United States at the time of the birth, provided that the birth occurs outside the United States because of United States diplomatic mission or military orders of a parent, or,

d. born outside the United States to a de jure parent who is citizen of the United States at the time of the birth, provided that the birth and identifying information of the newborn are registered within six months from the date of the birth with a United States diplomatic mission to the jurisdiction wherein the birth occurred.

2. Persons born in the United States and who do not meet a criterion citizenship by right of birth shall not be deprived of due process of law; nor shall any such persons within the jurisdiction of the United States be denied the equal protection of the laws by the United States nor by any State.

3. Congress shall have the power to enforce this amendment by appropriate legislation.

So there you are.

Update: Here are three more links relevant to this topic. First is an article by George Mason law Prof. Ilya Somin, with whom I have corresponded now and then for going on 20 years, though I have never met him in person. I would say he is, overall, a centrist. he says that Trump cannot simply order it. Click here. 

Next is George Washington University law Prof. Jonathan Turley, one of the most respected legal scholars in the country. His article is from 2019, "No, It Is Not Racist To Oppose Birthright Citizenship," in which he points out, 

... that one of the outcomes was the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 to guarantee the rights of citizenship to protect the status of freed American slaves. That much is clear. The problem is that little else is. Since the 14th Amendment was ratified, many leaders have opposed claims of birthright citizenship, including former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Moreover, most countries reject such claims of citizenship. One can be entirely on board with the outcome of the Civil War, not be a racist, and still oppose birthright citizenship.

Finally, here is today's BBC's article, "Trump has vowed to end birthright citizenship. Can he do it?" I read the BBC because in covering American topics, I find it often more balanced and non-partisan than US media. Also, though the article does not say this, foreign nationals enjoy no birthright citizenship in the UK. 

Water into wine

 Jesus at Cana

 John 2:1-11

1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”

4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it.

9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. 

Have you ever seen water turned into wine? My wife and I have, many times. When we were stationed in Germany, we lived less than an hour’s drive from the Rhine River. The central part of the Rhine is the heart of wine country in western Germany. If you drive or cruise along the river, you pass mile after mile of vineyards. Germans grade their wine according to three main categories: tafelwein, or table wine, the lowest grade; qualitätswein, the middle grade, and prädikatswein, the highest. It’s the sugar content that makes the grade. The highest grade may not have sugar added by the vintners; the lowest two grade may have added sugar. Within each category there are several grades as well – Kabinett, Auslese, Spätlese, Riesling, and so forth.

The highest-grade wine, and the rarest, is called Eiswein, which means just what it sounds like: ice wine. A good produce of ice wine comes along only about every four years, and then in small quantities. It is the sweetest wine made in Germany. The longer grapes stay on the vine, the more natural sugar they have. The growing season ends with the first overnight frost. If the first frost is too severe, grapes on the vine are ruined and must be thrown away. This happens on average three years of every four, so vintners leave relatively few grapes on the vine that late. But if the first frost is mild, the grapes just barely freeze and the next day are harvested to make ice wine, which is so intensely sweet that I couldn’t abide it. Ice wine commands high prices.

So, to drive along the Rhine is to see water, in the form of rainfall, made into wine. Rain soaks the ground, enters the vines, fills the grapes, is harvested, and made into wine. It happens all the time. We do not wonder at it. It “has lost its marvellousness by its constant recurrence” (Augustine).

A fellow officer named Ed Schmidt lived a kilometer away from us in a house he and his wife rented. They made a number of German friends in their village of Grüningen. Ed didn’t speak a word of German, but he had a German last name and looked like a poster boy for Aryan purity, so the Germans liked him. One weekend Ed and Barbara threw a wine-tasting party under a big tent on their lawn. Most of our battalion’s officers came, along with many of Ed’s German neighbors. Everyone brought at least one bottle of wine. One lieutenant had gone to the Army’s Class VI store and bought some Mad Dog 20-20 and Thunderbird, which are about the cheapest rotgut wine made in North America. Ed didn’t know what to do about the MD 20-20 and the T-Bird. He just knew that if the Germans saw the skid-row stuff surely they’d laugh at the cheap, unsophisticated American palate. So he put them behind everything else and started with the good German wine, figuring that after everyone had partaken of a number of samples of prädikatswein they’d forget about the rotgut.

But the Germans had already seen the cheap stuff and after the rest of the wine had been uncorked and passed from table to table, they asked about the Mad Dog and the Thunderbird. Reluctantly, Ed opened it – not “uncorked” it, because it was so cheap it had a screw-on top. His ego deflated, he handed the bottles to the Germans. Amazingly, the Germans loved it! The bottles never left their table. They drank every drop and complimented Eddie for leaving some good wine for the end.

We couldn’t believe it. In fact, we never did believe it. We agreed that they told each other jokes about the idiot Americans and their terrible wine for weeks afterward.

Wine is a fascinating subject. According to Guinness, the most expensive bottle of wine ever was a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite that sold in 1985 for $136,248 at auction at Sotheby’s in London. It was engraved with the initials of Thomas Jefferson. In 1986, its cork slipped, and the wine was ruined. No word on how much the empty bottle is worth.

The first mention of wine in the Bible is in the Noah story. After the flood receded, Noah planted a vineyard, made wine, and got so drunk he passed out naked.

Wine was a significant trade item in ancient Israel. Solomon traded wine for timber. Legal fines were sometimes paid with wine. The Hebrews sometimes used wine in worship, offering libations to the Lord. The offerings of first fruits required a quantity of wine, as did the sacrifice of a ram. Psalm 104 says that wine to gladden the heart of is a gift of God. People offered wine to others as gifts of honor, as when David took wine to Saul on the battlefield. Three tribes brought wine to David as gifts when he was made king. Wine was said to revive the faint in 2 Samuel and Proverbs said it was suitable as a sedative for people in distress. Jesus said the Good Samaritan poured oil and wine on the wounds of the injured traveler. Roman soldiers offered Jesus wine mixed with gall when Jesus was dying. Paul admonished Timothy not to drink only water, but to drink wine also.

Yet the Scriptures also recognize the dangers of wine. The Bible condemns drunkenness, beginning with Noah’s tale, and prophets sometimes accused national leaders of being more interested in drinking wine than tending to affairs of state. Paul cautioned the Ephesians to be filled with the Holy Spirit rather than wine. On Pentecost, the disciples glorified God and Christ so energetically that onlookers accused them of drinking “too much wine,” a charge Peter brushed off by responding that they were not drunk because it was only nine in the morning.

And of course, Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding at Cana. According to John, this miracle was the first Jesus performed. Actually, this miracle is misnamed as turning water into wine. When Jesus began, the six stone jars were empty. The servants filled them with water at Jesus’ direction. Jesus really turned emptiness into wine. He made wine out of nothing.

It is a story of extravagance. John leaves out details we would usually think important in order to emphasize the over-abundance of Christ’s work. For example, we don’t know why Jesus and his disciples and Jesus’ mother were invited. (As an aside, John never calls Mary by name – she is always called “the mother of Jesus.”) The wedding itself is never described; we don’t even know the names of the bride and groom. The bride never appears. The groom appears briefly but does not have a speaking part.

The story begins and ends with wine. There’s a wedding. The wine runs out. Mary tells Jesus, who professes not to care. He doesn’t even call his mother, “Mother,” but “woman,” as if she were some kitchen help come out to give him a message. But then again, John says Jesus called her “woman” when he hung on the cross, so it doesn’t appear to have been disrespectful.

“There’s no more wine,” Mary says. Jesus replies, What does that have to do with you and me?

Mary doesn’t say anything. She has been rebuked, however mildly, because Jesus isn’t subject to her beck and call – not hers, not anyone’s. John makes this clear throughout. Jesus acts on his own initiative, guided by the Spirit of God. Ordinary human beings can’t order him around. “Jesus’ actions will be governed by the hour set by God, not by anyone else’s time or will” (NIB).

But they can ask, and Mary does, leaving the solution up to Jesus. Mary tells the servants to do whatever Jesus says, which, Mary must have known, might have been nothing. Or Jesus might have told the servants to hightail it down to the Food Lion before it closed to pick up a few cases of Mad Dog 20-20 and Thunderbird. After all, when his disciples told him much later that a few thousand people had nothing to eat, Jesus just said, “Well, you give them something to eat.”

Instead, Jesus orders about 150 gallons of water brought in. The modern equivalent of the ancient Jewish measurement isn’t certain. It’s somewhere between twenty to thirty gallons per jar. Call it twenty-five, for a total of 150 gallons. That’s – let’s see – nineteen thousand, two hundred ounces, so if a serving was six ounces, like ours are today, that’s three thousand, two hundred cups of wine. This must have been a great party!

No matter how many guests were there, a few or many, thirty-two-hundred cups of wine is a lot of wine! Everything about this episode is overdrawn: the capacity of the jars, the amount of wine, even the number of words John spends describing the miracle. But as for the exact moment of the chemical transformation of the water into wine, there is no notice. It just happens sometime between the filling of the jars and the drawing out of a serving for the chief steward. There is an abundance of good gifts available through Jesus, but exactly how and when always remain mysterious.

The chief steward doesn’t know the wine’s source; he just assumes the bridegroom kept it back all along. “This is good stuff,” he exclaims, commending the bridegroom for continuing to serve fine wine even after the guests have had plenty to drink.

“In the Old Testament, an abundance of good wine is an eschatological symbol, a sign of the joyous arrival of God’s new age.” Both Amos and Joel used the image of the hills dripping with new wine to describe God’s favor. The miracle at Cana is more than “the first act in Jesus’ ministry. It also stands as the fulfillment of Old Testament eschatological hopes, as the inaugural act of God’s promised salvation” (NIB).

I refuse to get hung up on arguments such as whether this miracle quote-actually-unquote occurred. Discussing it on such a scientific-materialist basis robs it of its real power and meaning. Neither can we arrogantly assume that the people of the first century were so simple-minded that they easily embraced the miraculous. The steward assumes that the wine he drank, while excellent, had been obtained by the bridegroom in the usual way. What he finds unusual is the groom’s hospitality, not the wine itself.

But the servants and Jesus’ disciples know how the wine came to be. Isn’t it interesting that they don’t drink any? Maybe the wine isn’t the point after all. Maybe what the disciples see is that God’s presence is truly among them in the person of Jesus. Jesus offers a new category of understanding reality, and the disciples “believed in him.”

The Reverend William Sloane Coffin once said, “Jesus turned water into wine, but we in the Church have become very good at turning the wine back into water.” The new wine of Jesus – the fulfillment of the hopes of God’s people – is what we long for and hope for. Yet when we look about us, we can see oldness at every level. We carry old fears and anxieties despite our faith in God; we are weak stewards of God’s gifts to us; we see career-minded clergy; we are mired in bureaucratic church structures to do the church’s business. Sometimes it’s hard to see the newness of life, and like the chief steward, even when we do, we mis-attribute it to the usual sources.

Author Mary Collins wrote of attending a Catholic Mass in Bologna, Italy. The church was very poor. Instead of the usual pews, the church had only cast-off chairs from school lunchrooms. The worshipers were mostly broken down, elderly men showing signs of alcoholism and disease and poverty, plus a few poor, old women.

She wrote, “The liturgy progressed as usual. The homily proclaimed the mystery of the Trinity as a mystery of divine love so limitless it is poured out even to the poor of Bologna. Then it was time for the offering. The ushers went forward. We reached for our bundles of lire. Then the unexpected happened. The ushers also reached for stacks of bills, and they moved through the assembly making the church’s offering by giving them small amounts of money. Later, on the street, we learned that the gifts to the poor were given weekly: a token of God’s graciousness and eschatological fullness, something to celebrate the Lord’s Day. In the presence of Christ, not enough becomes plenty for all; in the presence of Christ, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary.”

If we are truly to perceive God’s abundant grace, our response must be thankfulness and generous sharing. The wedding party found itself with so much wine that all they could have done with it was just give it away. Everything we have is a gift from God. Let us believe in Christ! Let us let go of our old ways and old things. Let them go, let them vanish! The newness of life in Christ won’t come until they are gone – BUT . . . in the newness of Christ, the best is yet to come!

Worlds in Collision - A Magi Tells His Story

On the church calendar, the Day of Epiphany is tomorrow, Jan. 6. It is the day the Church celebrates the arrival of the magi, of wise men as they are often called, to Bethlehem, where they visited the holy family. En route, they stopped at King Herod's palace in Jerusalem, who told the magi to report to him where this apparent pretender to his throne lived. Herod intended to kill him, as he had already done to some of his own sons for the same offense, leading Caesar to observe that it was better to be Herod's dog than his son. 

“Epiphany” simply means manifestation and has been used by the Church for centuries to refer to the manifestation of the Son of God, Jesus, to the Gentiles, for whom the magi, or wise men, were the first Gentiles to behold him. 

Now, here’s a little quiz about this story for us – true or false: 

1. We know that there were three magi who visited Jesus.

2. The magis’ names were Melchior, Balthazar and Caspar.

3. The magi visited the baby Jesus while Jesus was lying in the manger.

All three statements are false. We do not know how many magi went to Bethlehem; that there were three rests on nothing more than they brought three named gifts. The names of the magi are found nowhere in the Bible and in fact are never mentioned in any text until several hundred years after Jesus’ birth. And Matthew says that Jesus and parents were living in a house when they arrived.   

So let’s take a look at the Gospel and try to discern what Matthew is trying to tell us. Here is the passage: 

Matthew 2:1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, Magi  from the East came to Jerusalem, 2asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the east, and have come to pay him homage.” 3When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him; 4and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:

6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler

who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ”

 7Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

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My name is Melchior. I was one of the magi who visited Jesus in Bethlehem several months after he was born. I was only thirty at the time. Late in life I learned that Matthew wrote we had seen Jesus’ star in the east, but we knew it was not an ordinary star. Stars remain fixed as they pass from east to west in the night sky, but this star, like a few others, moved back and forth over months of viewing. So we called those stars wanderers, or in Greek, planets. 

This planet was called Rex, or King, by the Romans, later called Jupiter. It entered retrograde motion while in front of the constellation Leo. We knew Leo symbolized the tribe of Judah, which was King David’s tribe. What could that mean but a newly-born king of the Jews?

We knew “what” but not precisely “where.” So, we set out for the palace of the present king of the Jews, Herod, to inquire where the new king was born. That turned out to be a pretty stupid thing to do. Herod had already killed several of his own sons for pretending to his throne. We were boneheads that day, for sure. 

Herod’s priests quoted a prophecy from Micah that said the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, only a few miles away. Herod urged us to confirm it so he could pay homage to the child, too.

Seen from Jerusalem, the planet Rex was motionless directly over Bethlehem as it entered a retrograde. We were delighted that God’s revelation in nature and in Scripture both confirmed his work in the world. We found the child in his house and gave him gold, frankincense, and myrrh, three expensive gifts suitable for a king.  

The next morning, all three of us agreed that God wanted us to stay away from Herod. I said that if we were going home by another route, we’d best get going right away so we could get out of Herod’s jurisdiction before he missed us. So that’s what we did. We did not learn until much later that after Herod didn’t hear from us, he sent soldiers to Bethlehem and killed all the boys under two. It was the way of the world, we knew, but we could not escape the conviction that such a way could never be the way of God’s Messiah. 

A star brought us to Jesus, a dream made us leave. In the beginning, God. In the end, God. God’s presence was with us throughout, but never overwhelmed. After all, Herod and his court saw the heavens just as well as we did but went on with life as before. They knew but did not do. Our dream not to report back to Herod was not known to others. God’s presence and God’s activities are usually subtle. We must be alert and attentive to see God’s working in the world, and act accordingly.

We encountered two kings of the Jews in our travel, Jesus and Herod. Jesus was defenseless and powerless. He was a king with no apparent kingdom. As an old man I learned Jesus did have a kingdom, but a kingdom not like those of the world. It is still here, a kingdom where the ordinary rules of power and politics and the social order don’t apply. It is a kingdom of reversal, where the first shall be last and the last first, where the greatest shall be least and the least the greatest. The kingdom of Jesus Christ is not a place, but a community of persons submitting to God’s grace, a community which transcends both place and time.

King Herod’s kingdom was as firmly of this world as it could be. It was a kingdom which he ruled with Machiavellian skill and power. His kingdom was shot through with political intrigue. It was ruthlessly class ridden. The greatest did everything they could to stay that way, and those who had the most did everything they could to keep it. Herod’s Golden Rule was simple: whomever has the gold makes the rules. 

 These were the two kingdoms into which we magi went to ask where is born the king of the Jews. The conflict between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdoms of this world is what made Herod disturbed when he heard our words, and all Jerusalem with him. 

They were not disturbed as in a sleepless night of worry with a furrowed brow. You can bet Herod was not the slightest bit worried about handling some infant claimant to his throne. Nor did Jerusalem’s disturbance result from a potential threat to Herod’s rule. The Jews by and large couldn’t stand Herod and had long wanted a legitimate king of David’s line to rule over them. 

Their disturbance was the resistance of this world and all its corrupt, fallen systems to the advent of the kingdom of heaven which Jesus was bringing. Jerusalem’s resistance to Jesus would peak in his death on the cross there – where the Roman procurator crucified him with a sign naming him king of the Jews – but it was apparent at Jesus’ birth. The world Jesus would proclaim was already in collision with the world as it was. They still are today.

In later years I reflected why I went on the trip to Bethlehem. I came to know it was by God’s grace. It is God’s grace that leads people to seek the Christ. The yearnings even of those who do not know fully what they seek are met in the act of God at Bethlehem. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met” in Jesus. I was on a quest for ultimate meaning, a desire that runs deep in us mortals. I thought I could find it in my work. Others think they can find it in recreation, or family, or possessions, or politics – the list is endless. But Bethlehem was clarity for me. For I am a witness to the Christ, the Son of God.

So I am glad to tell my story. We magi didn’t come to a Christmas of wrappings and pretty trees and carols. Long before we arrived, the angels and shepherds had gone away, and Jesus and his family had vacated the manger for a house. We had to live with the fact that our visit brought two worlds into bloody collision. Herod thought he could slaughter his way to supremacy. Jesus knew he could only die to it.  

I continued to celebrate Jesus’ birth long after the rest of society had moved on. To continue to proclaim Emmanuel, God with us, is counter-cultural. To worship God born of woman is a form of civil disobedience. So I urge you to linger a little longer at the little town of Bethlehem with the holy family, and to anchor yourselves to Christ, who leads us to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven. 
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Also see, "Why is Christmas on December 25? Whatever date Jesus was born, it almost definitely was not December 25. So why do we date Christmas on it?"

What did the term "magi" mean back in their day? 

... many scholars believe that the magi came from the area of ancient Babylon and Persia (under Parthian control when Christ was born), which would satisfy the biblical criteria that they came “from the east” (Mt 2:1). Perhaps those from the tribe of Magi were the first to become the caste of Persian priests that were so highly valued by the king. Given their fixation on the star, some attempt to make a connection between the magi and earlier groups of astrologers or astronomers or astrologers from Babylon.