7th century mosaic at the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna.

It was a nice, delicate characteristic of writers in first century Eastern Mediterranean countries to ascribe divers personal traits of their subject through story-telling! Kings, Magi or whatever they were in the mind of the writer of Matthew's gospel, certainly highlighted the career of this Man, as some said, 'born to be king' - but not of this world. A happy fable!

Christianity is not a religion of the 'air', nor of the mind alone, but is firmly rooted in the materiality of our ordinary life, here and now. It is to do with laughter as well as serious theological thinking. It is about the total human condition. From the outset of the gospel story, of course, there are only hints to the stature and humanness of the person who was to be fêted with gifts suited to a king. It had to be left to the later writer of John's gospel who, as it were, choreographed the life of this Man with divineness from the beginning - telling the story from its end point: the risen and glorified Lord.

Something of this surprise affected the disciples when they were hailed by a stranger, who invited the disciples who had been fishing, to come and eat -

Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared ask him, "Who are you?" They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. (John 21: 12-13)

It is interesting to think what these origins of Christianity felt like before the coming of established ecclesia or churches. Here they were, the frightened disciples, being confronted with the one they had known and loved. But recovering their former courage they were to be the heralds of an astonishing message,

'Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.'

While this message was for Judah to hear, first, the fact was that it was a message for the then known world - and for all humanity in the following two millenia. It was not a message to be kept, religiously, within the Christian communities or in the churches which became involved in the Roman state after the early fourth century. In the early letters of Paul one can see how difficult and problematical it was to convey this astonishing message to Gentile people in Asia and beyond.

Looking back on these first halting steps made by the Christian communities of the first two hundred years one can begin to feel both how enormous the challenge was for them and yet how fulfilled they must have felt as people engaged in a global task (as we might say today!). Since then, centuries of (necessary) ecclesiastical machinery have made it possible to accomplish the task of the gospel of the risen Lord. The human capacity to enrich life - in music, art, literature; in family and in monastic institutions - has played an immense part throughout sixteen hundred years in maintaining the Christian gospel. But the inevitable struggle of this mission has sometimes obscured the gospel of the risen Lord and in other ways interiorised it. Suffering, war, and the crises of civilisation made it almost inevitable that the church was forced to emphasize the suffering of Jesus on the cross rather than the victory of God and the renewal of humanity in the risen Lord.

What God, the Abba, had done in Jesus was nothing other than the anticipated climax of his creation. The glorification of Christ was the underwriting by God of the prospects for all humankind. It was not what we should today call a 'religious' outcome. It is intended to be the motivation and outcome for the world. At least that is the very striking message in the gospels. Somehow it is our job to resist making it an ecclesiastical work! At the end of a tumultuous four centuries of struggle, brilliant and mind blowing discoveries in the world and cosmos, the endless cycle of human poverty and pain, it seems that Christians have to find a way to speak of this cosmic message of God in the raising of Jesus which will make sense to all who have in those four centuries walked away from the churches.

Like the Magi who in 'fabulous' pomp and circumstance set the stage for the victory of God in Jesus, maybe it is our part today to set the gospel of that new life in the risen Lord apart from the ecclesiastical strings in which it has been entwined for centuries. How difficult that will be can be measured by the very human problems which beset all Europe today, politically and humanly. And yet, as we began by saying, the gospel can only be understood in radically materialistic terms. It is about real life here and now and for the future of the human race.

'To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him.' (Ephesians 4: 8-12)