While the appearance of the wise men usually comes after the birth of Christ, it’s their mad quest, born of an impossible dream, that I’d like to think about this morning. A closer examination reveals characters who may have been closer to Quixote than not, closer to folly than what usually passes for wisdom. To follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far – are those not words that could just as easily describe the mad journey of the wise men, guided by a star toward the Bethlehem event? They’re deemed “wise” in Matthew’s text, the only Gospel in which they appear, and generations of Christmas hymnody and pageantry and iconography have given the impression of three sage men, who alone discerned the stars correctly. You’ll notice on our communion table two sets of statues – on one side we have Quixote and Sancho Panza, and on the other we have the wise men, stories that I’ll be running together this morning. Quixote has been on my mind, and so it’s no surprise that when we entered the season of Advent, and as I began to think about the characters surrounding the Christmas story, the wise men took on shades of folly akin to Quixote that I haven’t been able to shake.
#Horror sound effects free#
Three times he breaks free and ventures into the countryside on adventures, dreaming his impossible dreams, following his unreachable star. Comic misunderstandings abound, and Don Quixote’s family and friends conspire to trap him and bring him back home, a place that, for the Don, bears all the features of a prison. Alonso Quixano is an aging landowner in early 17 th century Spain, and he reads so many novels that he loses his sanity, thereafter assuming the name of Don Quixote of La Mancha and riding into the countryside on his emaciated horse Rocinante, along with his faithful squire Sancho Panza, in order to renew the tradition of courtly love and honor and to set to right the injustices of the age. You likely know the story, or at least a version of it. It’s a novel about the wisdom of folly, and the folly of the so-called wise. The musical is very loosely based on the great novel by Cervantes, which I spent much of the summer and fall reading.
“This is my quest to follow that star no matter how hopeless no matter how far.” Those are the words that Don Quixote sings in the musical Man of La Mancha, words that I’m grateful we were able to hear from Brian Cheney and Simon.
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