Behold the Star

The Reverend Scott Homer

In the Name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Merry Christmas! This is the tenth day of Christmas. So, on the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me??? (Twelve lords leaping, Eleven ladies dancing, Ten pipers piping, Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids milking, Seven swans swimming, Six geese laying, Five gold rings, Four calling birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree) Today is the second and final Sunday of Christmastide. But in anticipation of the Epiphany we are actually looking at the classic Epiphany story this morning. It is from the Gospel according to St Matthew. It is, as you heard, the story of the visit of the three magi, or as my toddler son used to call them, “the three wise guys.” ( I still get images of black suits and white ties, a bulge under the arm, Fedora hats, a scar on the cheek, driving a Cadillac—black of course. What are those guys doing in Bethlehem?) We better stick with the Magi!

Why is this story of the Magi visiting the Christ associated with Epiphany rather than Christmas? Well, in Christmas we see Jesus revealed to God’s chosen people. He is born in Bethlehem—in the City of David—born of the kingly line of David—heir to David’s throne. In Christmas messiah has come to his people Israel—the savior of the chosen people of God—and he is called by the Hebrew name “messiah.” But in Epiphany our focus shifts. In Epiphany we celebrate very good news for those of us who are not Jews by birth. We celebrate God letting the whole world in on the secret. We celebrate that God no longer plays favorites. He has revealed this savior not just to Jews but to gentiles too—to the entire earth, all its tribes and tongues and nations. He has opened up the real possibility of salvation and eternal life to you and me (Did you know you were not entitled to God’s salvation? Did you know it was an act of charity on God’s part?). God has opened up the gates of heaven to everybody! The entire world has been invited to enter into eternity—to become a part of the greatest story ever told—and to find, in that story, their true meaning and purpose in life. Almighty God has caused the entire cosmos to conspire together to lead and guide you and me into the presence of the Christ, and his goal is not just to save us from our sins but to provide a chorus of believers who worship the King and sing his praises forever, because this King deserves eternal praise. He is worthy of our worship, in fact even our best efforts fall short. He deserves our praise. God has swung wide the gates for anybody and everybody—the more the merrier and He invites us to make the journey, to come and behold the Christ, and to join the eternal choir that bows down and worships Jesus Christ the Lord. Now that is a grand theological statement but lets take a walk in the woods to see if we can bring this teaching down to earth a bit.

I love to walk in the woods because when you get out into the woods God’s creation takes on a magnitude far greater than it is allowed here in the towns and the hamlets. In town our attention is drawn to buildings, and cars, and all the hustle and bustled of daily living but out in the woods the Creation dominates. Our attention is drawn to the trees and the animals. We begin to see the intricate detail of nature again: trees have bark, the ground is covered with a carpet of little plants and flowers. We can feel the wind and the sun on our skin again. And at night! At night you can’t help but notice the sky. The sky dominates after dark. City lights drown it out making it a vague gray blanket overhead but out in the country the sky reveals millions of stars—each a distinct point of light in an otherwise inky black darkness. The night sky in all its vastness also reveals a near perfect order. Nothing is random. Every star is in its proper relationship to every other. It is the same night after night after night.

The night sky is so reliable you can navigate by it. (We use Global Positioning Systems for our directional guidance but for thousands of years our ancestors found their way by being led by stars) If you know the time, and you know the horizon line, you can precisely calculate your current position and your desired course from the location of the stars. This is not modern science. It is ancient wisdom. Going back to a time before recorded history people understood that although the stars were constantly moving, they moved in a pattern—over and over again they were repeating the exact same course through the sky, and you could always rely upon the position of the stars to determine your direction on earth. The night sky seems to be a certainty, an immutable, unchangeable, fact.

And that makes what St Matthew tells us all the more important because what he says is that the heavens are not always constant. They are not completely unchanging—that, in fact, once a star appeared that did not belong in the normal night sky. It appeared for only a short time. St Matthew claims that the heavens can and do change—or at least they did once. And he makes a second, even more spectacular claim. He claims that this change in the celestial order was no random accident. He claims it occurred by intelligent design—the star was made to appear in order to announce an event here on earth. (Maybe we are not so small and inconsequential as we thought) St Matthew says that a star appeared in the sky for a relatively short time and that the star served to reliably guide three foreigners, called magi, or wise men, to a particular place. Spectacular!

But perhaps even more spectacular, St Matthew claims that this celestial phenomenon, whatever it was, had been foretold. Unscientific men, knew it about. People knew it was going to occur. And they had been told that it would have a meaning. The immutable sky was changed in order to announce the birth of a baby. Please note that the magi did not invent its meaning. Its meaning had been revealed to them. And so, the wise men were not just following some celestial oddity—they were pursuing a story—and not any story but the story of the birth of a great king. In our day some people travel all over the globe to see total eclipses just because of they are rare and novel. But wise men don’t pursue novelty for novelty’s sake. Wise men undertake difficult journeys in order to see God’s promise fulfilled. Travel was tough but they travel because the star announces the birth of a messiah. The Magi have made a great journey so that they can worship this newborn “King of the Jews.” (Flash forward to the sign Pontius Pilate has nailed onto the Cross. It too declares this Jesus, king of the Jews. King of the Jews stands like book ends at the beginning and the end of Jesus’ life. But remember too that the sign was written in all the common languages of the day.) I hope we will not miss the fact that if the eternal sky is altered in order to announce a King—that king must be very special indeed. The birth of this king seems to be of major importance, not just to folks in the Middle East around the time of Herod the Great, and not just for human beings at all times and all places (although that is pretty important), but it also seems to be of great importance to whoever it is who directs and manages the night sky. He has only seen fit to change the stars and planets a couple of times after all. (Can you name the others?)

But we have been raised in the cynical philosophy of atheist scientists. We have been drinking the poison Koolaid they have been serving us for generations. And we are sick. Our society, even Christians, are afflicted by a lack of meaning and purpose to life. We despair that it is all just pointless and meaningless. Addictions consume us. Our pursuit of selfish pleasure leaves us jaded and unfulfilled. Our indifference towards anybody or anything that does not serve our personal purposes threatens the fabric of our society. But the universe is not an endless series of random accidents. The universe is ordered—by God. It is ordered according to his will. And we find our meaning and purpose in this fact—God sent a star into the night sky to announce the birth of his Son our Savior Jesus Christ.
Eternal God—who creates all things—who orders the universe—who loves his creation and continues to look after it day after day—eternal God thinks that the birth of this Christ child in Bethlehem is of major importance to everybody, not just the Jews. He puts a special light in the sky saying, Come here and look at your future. Come here and behold your joy and your peace. Come here and bow down before the source of your life—worship this Light of the World Jesus. Do you wonder about your purpose in life? Wonder no more. Your purpose is to worship the Christ. Are you searching for meaning in your life? Search no more. Your purpose in life is to announce the coming of the Salvation of the world. That is what the star did. That is what the Magi did. It was what John the Baptizer did, and the Apostles, and St Paul, and what Christians have done down through the generations. Our purpose is to support God’s purpose. Our purpose is to point at the Christ and to say, “He is the meaning of life. He is the reason for living. Come and behold him! Come and worship him!”

We must begin applying this teaching to our lives. We have got to find ways of beating back the atheist thought process that is destroying us. And so, I want to leave you with one very practical way of fighting back. I found this quote in a list called Ten Resolutions for Mental Health. This was resolution two:

“2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: "There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.”

The wise men followed God’s leading in their lives. They had no doubt that God was speaking to humanity. They spent their lives looking for God’s revelation and when they heard God’s Word they relied on what God was telling them. When God sent a star, the wise men recognized something very out of the ordinary and they set out to confirm its meaning (its meaning and not its cause). Although travel was dangerous, costly, and difficult in those days, they undertook the long journey to see the fulfillment of God’s promise. They acted on the good news. They followed the star. They came to see the Christ. And God blessed them, and they worshipped their salvation by giving him gifts and by giving him praise and honor. I pray that we would all act wisely in the year to come. Amen.