Epiphany with Artaban: the Hidden Way of Sorrow

 We journey on with Artaban, the Other Wise Man, in the story told by Henry Van Dyke. He started out to meet Caspar, Balthazar, and Melchoir to find the new King of the Jews. However, he is delayed when he stops to help a dying Hebrew outside Babylon. He must spend the sapphire, meant for the King, to equip a caravan to cross the desert. In Bethlehem, he learns the Holy Family has fled to Egypt. Then he uses the ruby meant as royal gift to save a child from Herod’s soldiers. Now he only has the pearl left as he searches and searches for the King.

Van Dyke writes, “I caught only a glimpse, here and there, of the river of his life…I saw him moving among the throngs of men in populous Egypt, seeking everywhere for traces of the household…in an obscure house of Alexandria, taking counsel with a Hebrew rabbi…he visited the oppressed and the afflicted…though he found none to worship, he found many to help.”

Many authors recently have talked about how the current ‘climate’ of anger, injustice, war, and even climate change result in stress and anxiety. We aren’t sure how or what to do, or if what we try to do is making any difference. It’s easy to despair. Artaban walked in despair for years. Never finding the One he sought. Always a step behind. Van Dyke notes, “It seemed almost as if he had forgotten his quest.” Yet, as the Magi looks at the remaining pearl, he notices it “seemed to have absorbed some reflection of the colors of the lost sapphire and ruby.”

Our work and ministry may seem fruitless and unnoticed. We may think we have lost sight of the dream of Beloved Community or that it is too far away and the voices of hate and fear too loud. Yet, like Artaban, in his work with the afflicted along the way, we do make a difference. A ripple of love is set in motion. Hope can be born again in us and then in those we minister to and with.

As Van Dyke notes at the end of this chapter, “All that helped [this life], all that hindered it, is transfused by a subtle magic into its very essence.” We are each made up of our pasts—the wounds and the joys, the sorrows and the exultations. The pearl of our own hearts is made luminous by the living of our lives.

Jesus points compares the Kingdom to a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. The love we share with one another, the burdens we help bear, the smiles we offer, the encouragement we provide each make our hearts more and more a ‘pearl of great price.’ Whether we see that luster or not, it is there, and our Loving Father sees and blesses us.

Artaban in his search for the King shared love in a multitude of ways, implied by Van Dyke. We can do so in concrete ways.

In his book, Love is the Way, Bishop Curry states, “When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more. When love is the way, there’s plenty of room for all of God’s children. When love is the way, we actually treat each other, well, like we are actually family.” The recently released film A Case for Love, offers a 30 day challenge to BE A VOICE FOR LOVE each day and we can do as Martin Luther King suggested,  “discover love—the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make of this old world, a new world.”