I was camping in northern New Mexico one year, and when I say camping, it was walk 20 miles into the woods with a pack camping, and so we were in the middle of nowhere, with no artificial lighting around, and it was in August at the time of the Perseid meteor shower, which is usually one of the best meteor showers of the year, with normal output of around 100 meteors an hour, and sometimes as high as 250 an hour. So, we stayed up late, and walked into a meadow, away from our campfire and just watched as meteor after meteor entered and burned up in the earths atmosphere. But these were just little displays, we were watching them streak by lasting for 7-10 seconds, and not just one doing that, but dozens. Until we went to see the total eclipse this year, it was by far the most amazing astronomical phenomenon, or show, that I had ever seen. And it is something that we are normally separated from because of the ambient light, or light pollution, that is always around us, that drowns out the night sky. There are people who have never really seen the stars at night, have never experienced the brilliance of the Milky Way being splayed out across the sky, have never seen thousands of stars shining, maybe never have even seen a hundred stars. There was a truck commercial this fall in which a father gives his daughter a telescope, and then realizing that she couldn’t really see the stars, he takes her in his nice new truck out to the forest so she can gaze at the sky, of course he then leaves the headlights and the interior lights and the light in the bed of the truck on, which sort of defeats the purpose of getting away from lights, but did show off the truck really well, although I don’t know which brand, and so I’m not sure how effective it really was.
It wasn’t always this way, of course. We don’t have to go back very far in our history to a time in which they night was not perpetually lit all around us. When people paid attention to what was happening in the sky, and depended upon knowing because often their lives or livelihood depended upon it and they couldn’t get up in the morning and ask google or Siri what the weather was going to be that day. The 19th Psalm begins, “The heavens the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (psalm 19:1-4 NIV) I think that Calvin is right, and that’s not John Calvin, but Calvin and Hobbes, that if we spent more time looking at the stars, of seeing the splendor and wonder of creation, that we might all live a little differently, or at least approach how we live differently.
For the past few years, on Christmas Eve, I have been talking about the main characters on the night that Jesus was born, Mary, Joseph and the angels and the shepherds, and what we can learn and take from them for our own faith lives. I thought I was done with that series and was planning on moving on to something else this year, but throughout the fall, things kept bringing me back to the star, things I read or that people said, and so I decided that maybe there was one more part to the story, and that was before I even heard that there was a cartoon coming out called The Star, which sort of clinched it for me, and before you ask, no I didn’t see it. Now, I was not going to originally say anything about either the wise men or the star because even though they are a part of our nativity set, they are not part of the nativity story, or at least not a part of Jesus’ birth. Luke and Matthew, the only two gospels to recount Jesus’ birth, tell very different stories. In Luke’s account, the one with which most of us are familiar, Mary and Joseph have to travel to Bethlehem for the census, and not finding any room in the inn, Mary gives birth and lays Jesus in a Manger. But they live in Nazareth, and return back to Nazareth after his birth. It is Luke who has the angels running around making announcements to people, including the shepherds out abiding in the fields.
But, in Matthew, Mary and Joseph don’t worry about finding a place to stay in Bethlehem, because they live in Bethlehem, which is why we are told that the wise men find him in a house. Additionally, this doesn’t happen immediately after the birth, but perhaps as late as when Jesus is two years old, as Herod, after realizing the wise men aren’t coming back, orders the killing of all male children in Bethlehem who were two years old or younger. In Hispanic cultures, the arrival of the wise men is celebrated on Three Kings Day, which is on January 6, which is a much bigger celebration than Christmas and that is when gifts are exchanged. This day is also known as Epiphany, and represents the revelation of Jesus as the son of God to the gentiles, that is the non-Jews. But, while there is a lot we could say about these foreign men, and we say that there are three only because they bring three gifts, but how many there actually are is never claimed. I do want to focus on the star and people’s reactions to that star.
Now there are lots of speculation about what this star might have been. Some have said that it was the convergence of several planets, although none of them are very convincing. Others have speculated about a comet, although comets were normally viewed as bad omens, so not a likely idea. Some have speculated that perhaps it was a supernova, which could make for a nice metaphor, because long after the visible elements of a supernova, which is an exploding star, have gone away, that is after the time we can see it, it can still be detected because of the prodigious amounts of energy emanating in the infrared spectrum in things like x-rays and radio waves. So, much like Jesus’ birth, it still resonates to us today even if we cannot literally see Christ. A beautiful metaphor, but probably not likely. What we do know is that people did look to the heavens for signs, both good and bad, and so having these wise men, or astrologers, as magi can be translated multiple ways, more than likely from Babylon, or modern-day Iraq, looking for some celestial guidance would indicate someone significant had been born. There is not a specific prophecy in the Hebrew scriptures about a star presaging the arrival of the Messiah, other than a mention in the book of Numbers that “A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel,” although the context of this oracle is not about some distant event, but about the immediate, which is long in the past by the time of Jesus’ birth, although the prophecy about the Messiah coming from Bethlehem is much clearer in the prophet Micah.
But, to me all the arguments about the star, and trying to look for actual astronomical phenomenon not only overlook what Matthew actually says, but I think miss the pointe entirely. First, what Matthew describes is that this star moves westward, rather than from east to west as is normal because of the rotation of the earth, and then moves southwest, which seems at this point to exclude a natural phenomenon, but then we are told that the “star stopped over the place where the child was.” That means that the star indicated, not just a country, or a city, but a specific house. Now I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like any naturally occurring phenomenon, because I have never seen a star hanging over a specific house before, and I’m guessing you haven’t either. This led some medieval theologians to speculate that maybe this isn’t a star at all, but instead was an angel that guided the wise men’s way. I think our understanding and emphasis here should be on two things, the first is the power of this star of wonder to be seen in people’s lives, and second to lead people to action.
Has anyone here ever been in total darkness? I’m not talking about going into the garage and the door closing behind you darkness, but I mean total darkness, a darkness where you can hold your hand up in front of your face and not see it. A darkness that you can feel, that seems to have its own presence? How much light does it take to break that darkness? It’s not much. Just a pinprick shatters that darkness, pushes back at it, and so as we think about Jesus being the light of the world, or as the prophet Isaiah says, in one of the readings assigned for Christmas Eve, about the coming Messiah,"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined… For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” That is what the coming of Christ is about, the lightness overcoming the darkness, and so it seems appropriate that Jesus’ birth is heralded not just by angels, as Luke says, but by a star. Because while the light from the moon comes and goes with its phases, the stars are always there, and the darker the night becomes, the brighter they shine, and I’m sure some of you have even experienced being able to read by starlight. They represent the light overcoming the darkness.
Additionally, that star requires us not just to see it, but to do something about it, because after the wise men arrive Herod calls the chief priests and scribes together, they know what they are looking for, they know that the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem, but they didn’t do anything about it. Even when the wise men told them what they saw, they stayed put where they were, doing what they had always done. They were not changed by this experience, they kept going about their business, believing they were religious, when in fact they had left God behind, and so we see the manifestation that Jesus will be good news to all people in this group of foreigners, non-Jews, who come and bow down and worship the king. That means that you don’t have to be a person who those who are religious think is religious, in order to worship God. But I’m going to go even a step further and say that you don’t have to be a celestial being in order to bring light into the world.
The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson reminds us that “The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.” That means we don’t live in the universe, the universe lives in us. We are all stars, and so the question is what are we going to do with that knowledge? Are we going to hide ourselves and our light? Are we going to pretend that we are just ordinary and can’t do anything, or are we going to believe that we are in fact extraordinary and that the light we shine can change the world? There is a seen in the movie Finding Neverland, where Johnny Depp, playing JM Barrie, the author of Peter Pan is interacting with Peter and his brothers and trying to help them see beyond just the ordinary…. Jesus told us that he came to bring life, but not just ordinary life, but life abundant, or as Casting Crowns sings, we were made for such more than ordinary lives, we were made to thrive.
What are we told about Herod when the wise men arrive? That he is frightened. But what do the angels say when announcing the birth of Christ? Fear not. Fear lives and feeds off of the darkness, but hope resides in the light. Love resides in the light. Peace resides in the light. Joy resides in the light. We are not called to sit back and let God do everything, we are called to participate in God’s plan, we are called to work to bring forth the kingdom of God, we are called to be bearers of light and hope to the world. All of us. We are stars meant to shine forth the glory of God into this world. Just like the wise men and Herod, the star shines forth for us, but we have to decide what we are going to do. Are we going to follow it and be overwhelmed with joy and worship and return to our lives transformed in order to be transformative? Or are we going to never go, to live in fear, to live for ourselves, and never seek to offer ourselves or the world hope? Because the truth is, if religion, if our faith, is small and self-serving, and it does not cause us to think beyond ourselves or our own tribe, then it is not from God, when it doesn’t connect us to something bigger, bigger ideas, and connect us to all people, and to see everyone as being connected and intertwined then it’s not from God. If it doesn’t cause us to wonder, and to be in wonder, to have a sense of awe, then it’s not from God. Jesus is the light of the world, and we are called to reflect that glow to the world, to be agents of change and agents of hope.
I am proud to say that we as a congregation work hard at living that out, of knowing that we are stars, and that what builds us also connects us to everyone else. In the past three years, we have given more than 1000 stuffed animals to the fire station next door that they give out to children they encounter while out on calls. We have donated the money to provide seven schools in Kenya with systems to provide clean running water. We have donated hundreds of prayer blankets to Presbyterian hospital, UNM Children’s hospital and the Ronald McDonald House so that people going through touch times know that they are not alone, and we are the first United Methodist Church in New Mexico to be openly welcoming and affirming of all of God’s children regardless of who they are or who they love. We do all that not so we can pat ourselves on the back, but because it is what we are called to do and who we are called to be. Jesus tells us that we cannot hide our light, but instead to let it shine, to bring light into the darkness and to offer hope to those who don’t have it. The Christmas story does not take place amongst the rich and famous, the powerful and influential. It’s a carpenter, and a teenage mother, from a backwater town in Palestine, it’s shepherds and foreigners from a strange land. God doesn’t need extraordinary people to do extraordinary things, God simply needs ordinary people who are willing to step up and allow God to do ordinary things through them, for with God all things are possible. As we think of this star of wonder, it should cause us to follow and to wonder, where can I let my light shine in order to push back and the darkness and to make a difference. Where can I be a star, because all of us, my brothers and sisters, are stars, so may out light shine brightly into this world. I pray that it will be so. Amen.
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