Series B
The Three Wisemen at Schiphol Airport, Year 2000:
A Modern Play    

Epiphany Sunday

A NARRATOR: 

Traditionally, there have been three wise men. Traditionally, they have been twenty, forty and sixty years old, representing youth, middle age, and older age. Traditionally, they have been white, yellow and black, representing Caucasian, Asian and African. Traditionally, their names have been Gaspar, Melchoir, and Balthalzar.

In today’s drama, the scene occurs in the year 2000 in the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, Holland, after the three “wise men” had been together in Bethlehem. Their journey to Bethlehem has just occurred, and they are at a café in the Schiphol airport, discussing with one another what happened to them when they were in Bethlehem and what it all means.

We will meet three characters today:  Balt is African and about sixty. Mel is Asian and about forty. Spar is Caucasian, female and about twenty. (The narrator exits.)

(Enter Balt, Mel and Spar. Balt is carrying a suitcase; Mel is pulling a black suitcase on rollers; Spar is wearing a backpack. The three personalities are boisterous at first, in contrast to what is coming. The setting is simple: a coffee bar with three tall stools. The scripts can be on the coffee bar so that this play can become “reader theater;” hence the lines do not need to be memorized. There is not opportunity for many stage directions and movements, so the movement needs to be in the body language and eye contact between the three players. )

Balt:
Here is a table with three chairs. (Entering and walking to the table.)

Mel:  
That’s great. This café is sure crowded. The entire airport is jammed with people.

Spar: 
I’m glad we found a table. I want to relax with this latte. I haven’t had a good latte with a flavor of American Starbucks for a long time.

Balt: 
I have a tasty cup of hot coffee here. Original Kenyan coffee, from my homeland.

Mel: 
And I have found my favorite tea from Japan. Home sweet home. Smells good like Japanese tea should.

Spar: 
Do we have time for one last conversation? We have share a profound experience, and it seems we need to talk more about it. (The following conversation just ignores Spar’s request.)

Balt: 
Yes, we should. None of our flights are leaving for two hours.

Mel: 
We all have cleared customs. There are no more long lines to stand in.

Spar: 
We can actually sit here and relax a minute.

Balt: 
What gate are you leaving from?

Spar: 
Gate twenty, right across the way.

Mel:  
I am leaving from gate forty, down the same concourse.

Balt: 
I am at gate sixty, on the next concourse, but I don’t have to go through customs.

Mel: 
So, our gates are nearby. We do have time to chat.

Spar: 
(to Balt) How long will it take you to fly back home?

Balt: 
Me? About nine hours to go back home to Nairobi, Kenya. Straight through from here at Schiphol Airport, non-stop right across the top of Africa.

Mel: 
And Me? Would you believe eleven hours from here in Amsterdam, all the way home to Tokyo, right over the top of Russia.

Spar:
So we are about the same. I fly ten hours, non-stop, like you, from here at Schiphol,  way back home to Seattle, right over Greenland. And it will be great to see my family, my parents, my kitty cat, and some of those good looking boys. I have missed them.

Balt: 
And I have missed my wife and children but especially those grandchildren of mine. I am told my grandchildren will be at the airport to see their grand daddy.

Mel: 
Ahhhh, you and your families. Just cause I am a single guy and haven’t settled down yet.

Spar:
Yah, but from what you said, you have somebody special.

Balt: 
Somebody you may be giving a ring to pretty soon, from what you have said.

(Pause. A longer pause. Each nervously plays with a coffee mug or nervously taps a pencil on the table. They are glancing around at the people.)

Mel:
(Slowly and deliberately) I think we need to have one more conversation about this heart shaking and mind intriguing experience we just went through. I need to talk more about this and hear what you have to say.

Spar: 
You mean about what just happened to us these past few days?

Balt:
You’re right. I too need one more conversation about these life changing events … before we go our separate ways.

(Brief pause, all in thought, reliving in their minds)

Mel: 
It was strange, really strange, how we all ended up in Bethlehem together.

Spar:
Odd that we all stayed at the very same hotel.

Balt:
Unusual that we were there together at the very same time, on the very same days.

Mel: 
A co-incidence?

Spar:
I say more than a co-incidence.

Balt: 
I say … maybe… a miracle.

Mel: 
It is almost as if our stars were crossed.

Spar: 
The destinies of our personal lives interwoven.

Balt: 
All woven together with some greater purpose than ourselves.

Mel: 
Who knows. …  I was at home in Tokyo, simply working on the web, doing research on the galaxies for a potential intergalactic space module, and I stumbled on that unusual configuration of the planets, Saturn and Jupiter. Saturn and Jupiter had a distinct pattern of intersections. It was weird, the way these two planets crisscrossed their paths. And I was thinking to myself, “What does this all mean?”

Spar: 
And I was at home in Seattle, going to the University of Washington, doing research for a paper in my field of study: astronomy. I too noticed that unusual movement of the planets, Jupiter and Saturn. When the two planets crossed paths, it appeared that they were one planet, and not two and their lights combined to glow in the sky like nothing had glowed in the sky before.

Balt: 
I was at home in Nairobi, a theological professor and teacher at a seminary there. I was reading the Bible and the other ancient manuscripts. From my research into ancient manuscripts, I was slowly coming to the conclusion that an amazing bright star, symbolic of a king or ruler or messianic figure, was to be born in Bethlehem of Judea.

Mel: 
Well, the research I read on the net said that Jupiter, the giant planet, symbolizes a king. Saturn, with its rings of protection around it, symbolizes Israel. It is that simple. I put the two planets together, the two ideas together, and I began to come to the conclusion that a bright star, symbolizing a king, a world ruler, would come from Israel.

Spar: 
Crazy. So did I. I am a kid compared to the two of you, only twenty years old and in college, but I was coming to the same conclusions in my astronomy class. I read a book, titled, STORIES IN THE SKY, and it said the same thing.  Jupiter? A world ruler.  Saturn?  From Israel, of all places.

Balt: 
A feeling came over me. I don’t know what it was. But I needed to go to Jerusalem and investigate for myself to see if there was any truth to this. Something inside of me was pushing me towards Jerusalem.

Mel: 
Me too. My company was sending me to Paris for an international “intergalactic space conference” so I decided I would attend the conference and then after the conference, drop down from Paris to Jerusalem and see for myself about these planets. That’s how I got there.

Spar: 
And my college was sponsoring an expedition to the Holy Land, so I thought I would go along and do some further research at the observatory in Jerusalem. I wanted to see for myself the intersecting of the planets into one bright star in the sky. And before I knew it, I too was in Jerusalem.

Balt:
And we all ended up staying at the Sheraton in Jerusalem.

Mel: 
Wasn’t that strange?

Spar:
Wasn’t that a co-incidence?

Balt: 
Most unusual, I say. 

Mel:
And that night, while we were sitting at the bar in the Sheraton, we gradually fell into conversation with each other. It was all so unlikely.

Spar: 
Ha. Unlikely that I even got into that bar. I say our stars were crossed. It was in our destinies to find each other that night and talk.

Bart:  
I believe our meeting was not by chance. It was too unusual, too coincidental.

Mel: 
And we slowly discovered that night we first met that each one of us was on a similar quest.

Spar: 
From three separate places, we were all studying the interplay of Jupiter and Saturn and wondering what it meant.

Balt: 
What to do? What should be our strategy? Who hit on the idea that we should go to City Hall and find out if they knew something about a world leader being born in Israel?

Mel: 
I don’t know but all three of us went down to the Israelie headquarters to ask if they had heard about a new world leader being born here.

Spar: 
Prime Minister Sharon and his outfit. Man, have those Jews been nailing the Palestinians recently. The Jews have been building their Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory and the Palestinians have responded with rocks and violence. We see it on television all the time at home.

Balt: 
Like living in a war zone.

Mel: 
Like being in the middle of a riot.

Spar: 
The Jewish authorities weren’t any help, so we went to Arafat’s Palestinian office. The guy behind the desk barked, “Is this another sly plot of the Jews to create more trouble for us Palestinians? If it is, we will have that so-called world ruler eliminated, if you know what I mean.”

Balt: 
So neither the Jews nor the Palestinians were interested in a new world ruler being from this region of the world.

Mel: 
This whole region is like a powder keg, ready to explode.

Spar:  
Like a tinder box, ready to burst into flames.

Balt: 
Both the Jews and Arabs: it seems they want to drag the whole world into a wildfire of war.

Mel: 
You know what this place needs? … A ruler who would bring peace.

Spar: 
Not only here. Every place on earth. Every place on earth needs a ruler who would bring peace.

Balt:  
Peace. (nodding positively)

Mel:
Imagine … a world in peace. ((nodding)

Spar: 
Ahh. (all nodding in agreement)

Balt: 
So going to the Jewish and Palestinian leaders didn’t help us.

Mel: 
What did we do then? We decided on another plan. We read the local newspaper searching for any clues that a ruler of peace was in the region, but no luck there.

Spar: 
So we used another strategy. We watched the television stations for some clues about a king for peace. All we saw on TV were snippets of the latest violent shootings and bombings, the latest rocks and molotof cocktails. TV wasn’t any help.

Balt: 
Whose idea was it to talk to the cabbies?

Mel: 
I don’t know, but the taxi cab drivers always know everything that is happening in town.

Spar: 
So we asked a cabbie, “You hear any rumors about some king of peace showing up around here?”

Balt: 
That first cabbie we asked turned around in his driver’s seat and slowly sized us up, trying to figure out who we were.

Mel: 
That cabbie was as cautious as could be.

Spar: 
He finally muttered something under his breath.

Balt: 
He was barely audible.

Mel: 
Then, he slowly nodded and quietly drove his taxi from Jerusalem out towards Bethlehem.

Spar: 
Bethlehem of all places. A hick town. A no-wheres-ville. Just outside of Jerusalem.

Balt:
In Palestinian territory, mind you, with Arafat’s new government in charge.

Mel: 
We were all a bit nervous riding in the back seat of that cab on that dark night.

Spar: 
I was downright afraid, looking out the windows.

Balt: 
He pulled up in front of this tacky motel in a tacky part of town.

Mel: 
And there was a group of people across the street from the motel. They were holding lighted candles.

Spar: 
We looked more closely and saw there were people of all nationalities. You could tell it by the features in their faces and in the details of their clothing,

Balt: 
So many different colors of skin and colors of hair.

Mel: 
So many varied coats and hats.

Spar: 
You could see it all in the candlelight.

Balt: 
(Dreamily) And they were softly singing.

Mel: 
Some singing one word in unison “Glory, glory, glory.”

Spar:
And others were singing another word, “God, God, God.”

Balt: 
And others were singing one word but in different languages:  Peace. Shalom.

Mel: 
Pax, Hey wa.

Spar:
Milf. Paix.

Balt: 
It was weird. There in the middle of a fight between Palestinians and Jews.

Mel: 
Right in the middle of a tinder box.

Spar:
Right in the middle of a power keg, ready to explode.

Balt:
These people were singing quietly about glory and God and peace, of all things.

Mel: 
So we finally got out of the cab and paid the bill.

Spar:
The cabbie gestured for us to go into the seedy motel. I was thinking, “I don’t think my mom would approve of this.”

Balt: 
One door was ajar and folks were going in and out of it.

Mel:
So, we gulped and we went right in.

Spar: 
There was a crowd of people there.

Balt: 
Shoulder to shoulder and arm to arm.

Mel: 
And we squeeeeezed in and sure enough. (Both Mel and Spar stand to squeeze shoulders with Balt.)

Spar: 
There was a mother, a father and a new baby, of all things.

Balt: 
An old lady, just inside the door, said, “The new baby is a prince of a baby, the prince of peace.”

Mel: 
An old man, also just inside the door, said, “This new baby is what the world has been waiting for. The Savior. To save the world from war and hatred. To save people from themselves and their own sinful hearts.”

Spar: 
A crippled old man with a cane, spoke to us in a hushed whisper:  “The Arafats of the world; the Sharons of the world; they don’t like this new savior. He will bring both justice and peace and the wars on the earth will cease.”

Balt: 
Uncanny.

Mel: 
Weird.

Spar:
Mighty unusual.

Balt: 
I don’t know what happened to us that night or at that moment, but the Spirit of that night got into us.

Mel: 
Yes, it was like an epiphany, a revelation, a mind altering experience.

Spar: 
And the three of us found ourselves kneeling at the bedside of this new mother and her new baby.

Balt: 
It was crazy, but there we were, the three of us, on our knees.

Mel: 
In Bethlehem, in a tacky motel, with wacky strangers.

Spar: 
And simply kneeling. Kneeling with a reverence like we had never felt before. Even with more reverence than at Holy Communion.

Balt: 
It was sacred.

Mel: 
Holy.

Spar: 
Mysterious. Yes, it was all so mysterious.

Balt: 
The baby seemed to glow with purity (pause)  and peace.

Mel:  
The mother spoke softly, almost in a whisper, “We have named him, Jesus, for he will save the world.”

Spar: 
The father murmured, “His middle name is Immanuel which means, God is with us. We need God with us in this power keg called life.”

Balt: 
There was more silence. A holy silence.

Mel:  
No one spoke.

Spar: 
All you could hear were the muffled sounds of cars driving by.

Balt: 
We sensed this child was poor.

Mel: 
His family was poor

Spar: 
They were all poor.

Balt: 
We all silently asked ourselves: What shall we do?

Mel: 
(Pointing to Spar) So you, Spar, gave the poor family the beautiful Mother of Pearl necklace that you wore around your neck. You said it was a priceless heirloom from your grand mother.

Spar: 
(Pointing to Balt) You gave them your diamond studded watch that you were so proud of.  It had twelve, South African diamonds, one for each of the twelve hours. You were always saying in your deep and mellow voice, “Time is more expensive than money.”

Balt: 
(Pointing to Mel) You gave this poor family your wide gold ring. You were going to have your wide golden band divided into two rings for your engagement, one for you and one for your fiancé.

Mel: 
The poor family nodded in appreciation for our gifts.

Spar: 
Before we knew it, we were back in the cab and away into Jerusalem.

Balt: 
The next day out to the airport and onto an airplane.

Mel: 
Flying to Schiphol. And here we are in Amsterdam at a café in the airport.

Spar: 
I still can’t figure out what happened to us.

Balt: 
What does all this mean?

Mel:
I think we can.  Two planets. Two stars. Jupiter and Saturn. The king planet over Israel. The giant star to guide Israel. The giant star to guide the nations of the world. The giant star to guide our individual lives. We all have been destined for the brightest star in the heavens to guide us.

Spar: 
I am thinking. The giant star is the North Star, the Polar Star, the star that guides ships by night. People always gets their bearings from the North Star. The child is to be our North star. That’s it. The child is to be the North Star, the guiding star, the brightest star in the heavens.

Balt: |
You seem quite wise, Spar, for someone so young.

Mel: 
Every person and every nation needs a guiding star.

Spar:
If there is no guiding star, the nation gets lost.

Balt:
If there is no guiding star, a person gets lost.

Mel: 
No matter how young or old, rich or poor, no matter which race, we need that guiding star.

Spar: 
Caucasians need that guiding star.

Balt: 
Africans need that guiding star.

Mel: 
Asians need that guiding star.

Spar: 
So what do we do?

Balt: 
I know what that means for me. I am sixty years old. My career is about over. I am thinking about retirement, time, family, children, grand children. I need that giant star to guide me during the remaining years of life. I need that giant star to guide me into all eternity when I die. I will never be able to cross into the infinity of space without that polar star to guide me. In the dimly lit distance, I can see the end of my life, and I now know that I need that guiding star more than ever.

Mel: 
I know what that star means for me.  I am in the middle of my life. Forty years old and in my prime, so some people say. In the prime of my life, I sometimes think that I don’t need a star to guide me, that I can make it on my own, that I have my own inner star to guide me. In my prime, I am tempted to forget God.  When I get so busy being a success, I feel I don’t need a guiding star. What a joke; a person not needing a guiding star.

Spar: 
Me? I am young. Very young. My future is in front of me. So many decisions that need to be made. A long career; or perhaps several careers. A marriage partner, or maybe single.  House or a condominium. Maybe kids or maybe not. Which country to live in? Which continent? I am just beginning and the future is so wide open, almost too wide open in its possibilities. I sense that I too need this guiding star, this polar star, for me to follow in all aspects of my future life.

Balt: 
Look at the clock. It is time to go.  (All three stand up, start embracing each other before they leave.)

Mel. 
What a blessing to each of us that our lives were destined to be interconnected.

Spar: 
I am sure that God brought us together so we could learn something about the meaning of the star.

Balt: 
It may be…that…the star is God. The Presence of God above us to guide us.

Mel: 
And the Presence of God is in … the baby.

Spar: 
Yes, especially …The Presence of God …  within the baby, the savior for the world…the Son of God.

Balt:
That is the miracle.

All: 
Good bye. (They embrace, separate and leave as if going to three different concourses.)

BY:  Pastor Edward F. Markquart, Grace Lutheran Church, Des Moines, Washington, December, 2001.   

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