I've told this funny story before, but it bears telling again. One summer, Janet and I, along with another couple, went canoeing in Killarney Provincial Park in Ontario. Thom and I thought while camping that we'd become experts in the stars of Northern Ontario. We brought a star gazing book and a red light so as not to destroy our night-vision, but that would allow us to read the book. So, on our first night it was clear and the stars were bright; we brought out the book and the light and lay down gazing up at the starts. We kept looking and pointing out what we thought were constellations, but we couldn't agree. Finally, after about ½ an hour, arguing about whether this was Cassiopeia or not or whether this was Ursus Minor, we realized that we had the book oriented upside down and were looking in the wrong direction. Well, of course Janet and Lynne laughed and laughed... we did, too, after a while. Astronomers we are not!
The Magi were true astronomers as well as astrologers. Astronomy is the science of the stars, planets and universe. Astrology looks for meaning in the stars with respect to human life and destiny. The Magi, which gives us the word magic, were not, however, magical figures; they were scientists who were conversant in a variety of scientific and religious disciplines. Scholars think they came, not from Persia or Arabia, but from Babylon, which was the centre of learning in those days. The Magi see the star "at its rising." Herod doesn't see the star, nor do any of his advisors; but they weren't necessarily well-versed in the arts of astrology and astronomy. And modern astronomers, who have tried to determine what the star might have been, have not been very successful in saying definitively what the star was—a comet, a meteor, a falling star.
Paul Achtemeier, a Christian Scripture commentator, has suggested that the star may have only risen once or twice at the beginning of the Magi's journey. [1] And then it rose again when they were close to Bethlehem. Achtemeier suggests this because of the joy that the Magi expressed when they arrived in Bethlehem; it is an exaggerated joy and the Greek shows no less than four words to describe the kind of exceeding joy that they experienced. From this, Achtemeier infers that the Magi hadn't seen the star since they set out and they were both relieved to see the star and excited by what this meant.
It's an interesting conjecture, that the Magi didn't see the star after they set out until they arrived. It's amazing to me to think that they didn't just turn around and think it was all just a false-start. It's amazing to me to think that they were able to see well enough to know that something extraordinary had happened. But the act of seeing was itself more than just sight; in this little story of Jesus' birth as told by Matthew, the Magi saw the star both with their eyes and with their hearts; their hearts told them of what significance the star's appearance had.
As I've thought about this story, I've come more and more to realize that it is a story about life. We lose sight of the stars that guide our lives for a variety of reasons from time to time. We fall into the spiritual doldrums and nothing seems to be rising anymore—no stars, no epiphanies, no ah-hahs. We experience losses that so jolt us that we lose sight of what's important and life-giving; we lose sight of the signs of God's presence, the signs of the Christ's presence in our lives... we lose sight of the Spirit's gentle breath showing us the way. We saw the star at its rising and worked tirelessly for social, political and religious change in the world only to lose sight of the star and the energy it gives to sustain us. What do we do when we see the star at its rising, but not when we're on the road, not when we've embarked on the journey? Should we stop and recalibrate our instruments to see more clearly? Should we stop altogether and go back and rethink the whole enterprise? Should we just stop where we are and make this our place? Should we persist and trust in what we saw? Do we anxiously look upwards to find the star again and just keep going, drawing inspiration from that first sighting, trusting that our sight is more than just physical?
All of the wonderful stories about the fourth Magi are about persistence; only tradition tells us there were third Magi. The story of the Babushka from Russia, the Fourth Magi, the Magi traditions of gift giving on Epiphany point to the idea that persistence in looking for the Christ-child is what is important, and seeing. Sometimes this persistence, sometimes seeing the star and knowing its meaning, means that we are led into some difficult places and sometimes away from what we perceive to be our destination. But as these wonderful Epiphany stories of Magi and Wise Ones point to, don't we find the Christ-Child along the way? Don't we, when we look back, find that as we have done to the least of these my brothers and sisters, we have done to the Christ? Even O'Henry's story of "The Gift of the Magi" points to the way in which we see life; we sacrifice our precious gifts, in O'Henry's case a watch and hair, in order to give life to the other.
The story of the Magi and the story of Epiphany, long celebrated before Christmas, is the human story of faithful living and trusting in the star's light, trusting in our memory—both collective and individual—of that light and the star-energy it gives us. I like that line from Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock": "We are stardust, billion year old carbon; we are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden." Mitchell recognizes that, like the Magi, we've all seen the star and we need to remember its rising and get on with living the Christ-centred and love-focused life of grace, hope and new life.
The Epiphany star guides us, whether we always see it, back to the Christ. It leads us over mountains, through dark, shadowy valleys, through desert places, through green, fertile estuaries, through times of death and times of new life. The Epiphany star is the Christ-star and even though it isn't always where we think it should be, that light is ours, and that star-dust is in us. So we keep going, finding the Christ all along the way and knowing and seeing the Christ inside one another and ourselves.
Let me leave you with words from Howard Thurman, who was chaplain of Howard University in Washington, DC in the 30's and 40's, and who wrote a poem called "The Work of Christmas." Jim Strathdee used the words in his song ("I am the Light of the World", VU 87) we sang earlier and they describe this work of Epiphany star-dust:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
This is the Epiphany invitation. Amen.
____________________________________________________
1 Paul J. Achtemeier, Exegetical Commentary for Matthew 2:1-12, in Festival of Homiletics, Year C, Volume 1, p. 213-217 [return]
0 comments:
Post a Comment