Editor’s note: Over the course of this week, in celebration of Epiphany, we will be publishing a series of poems on the Magi by Bishop Graham Kings, originally included in Andrew Wheeler’s Desire of Nations: The Magi, their Journey and the Child (2015).
Feigning faith
Herod the King,
“racially Arab,
religiously Jewish,
culturally Greek,
politically Roman.”
Baffled, bewildered,
by naïve strangers,
Shocked and scared,
by sacred page.
Secretly, exactly,
gathers facts,
feigns faith,
requests report:
Diligent intelligence.
The featured image is a twelfth-century stained glass of Herod and the scribes at Chartres Cathedral. The photo was taken by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P., and is licensed under Creative Commons.
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Graham Kings, in his retirement in Cambridge, is honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Ely and research associate at the the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, which he founded in 1995. He has served as Mission Theologian in the Anglican Communion; Bishop of Sherborne; and vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Islington, London, where he co-founded Fulcrum.
