The Bethlehem Star – more than wishful thinking

Each year at this time I see online or am sent a link to an article about how the star of Bethlehem was either 

a) a fraud perpetrated by deluding biblical editors, 

b) a perfectly explainable natural phenomenon, or 

c) just a metaphor. 

I tend to smile gently and shake my head with a pity when I read these generally well-meant contributions to seasonal reading. They remind me once more how spiritually impoverished we are in our day, and how ironic it is that we think of ourselves as the “enlightened” ones.

The star we celebrate at Epiphany is presented in the biblical narrative as a sign, a guide, and a symbol that cannot be reduced to any of the neat categories moderns so like to use. One of the supreme joys of practicing a catholic faith is the ability to maintain connection with such a holistic mindset even in the midst of an era of relentless reductionism, materialism, and scientism.

Sacred scripture, like all ancient texts, requires us to enter into pricey territory: we must take time to read and ponder, and we have to submerge our ego-centric obsession with control and self-referential comfort in order to receive the multivalent message scripture brings about something so profound as reality or God or truth. That is a price too high to pay for many, even in the Church, it seems.

The Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord is a splendid example of how rich and beautiful—as well as useful and meaningful—the scriptures are. This feast commemorates Christ’s manifestation, his appearing to the world: not only a human infant or even as the savior, redeemer, and messiah of his own people only, but as the universal savior for all peoples. Through this little child the spiritual confusion and division of humanity is being unwound—sort of a reverse Tower of Babel. The result is a glorious vision and the ongoing mission of the church and all its members.

The star that announces this revelation in the Gospel according to St. Matthew brings with it vast amounts of meaning. It recalls the stars as “intelligences” of the creation (ministering and faithful spirits of a living and interactive cosmos) which is neither dead nor empty of relationships. It is also a reminder of the promise made to Abraham in Genesis that he would have progeny "as numerous as the stars of the night sky". So we have cosmos and history--generality and specificity. 

The star is a sign, but a sign that partakes of the reality it points to. The distinction between viewer and event is radically diminished in the bible. We become participants, not simply audience members. The star is important, yet it points not to itself but what is truly significant—God’s direct participation in human life through the Incarnation.

This dynamic participation sets us up to experience the Epiphany not only as part of the story of Christ, but as our story of coming to faith by God’s mysterious leading. We do not initiate faith; we respond to God’s leading (like the Magi and the star). The question for the believe is whether we actually live like this? Are we listening? Are our heads turned up to the heavens in interest and wonder as we look for truth—or only to our computer screens in the mindless and endless act of data-grazing, meme-sharing, and identity purchasing?

The Magi bring the fullness of human wisdom and science to bear in the service of finding not only facts, but truth. When humans offer themselves for this kind of life, this kind of journey (metaphorical and literal), we become vessels capable of receiving and sharing God and things divine. We grow into people with greater focus and boldness. The Magi’s purpose is so important to them they ignore common sense and actually advertise the presence of a rival King to Herod. Assuming that Herod would want to join them in this quest for truth, they (and we, when living the Gospel honestly) blurt out the purpose and joy within them. Rather than just collecting data or going a personal quest, the Magi's journey leads to the challenge and downfall of an existing order. Is our faith really that eager, that desirous of consummation in God?

The Epiphany is also an engagement with the mission of the church. That mission is not to grow a larger institution or spread more second-hand ideological propaganda. It is to minister its own eucharistic gratitude for the gift received from God by personal experience. Thus, the story of the urgency attached to the Magi’s search.

The Magi aren’t barnstorming spiritual hucksters on the Sawdust Trail. They are people whose living experience of God’s engagement has caused them to venture from their own familiar world toward an unknown region, a field of creative openness that can only be fulfilled by relationship with the author of knowledge.

This movement from possession to person is then made manifest by their giving gifts to the Christ child. The symbolic nature of these gifts is well known, of course, but it is not the total meaning. The church is always receiving and giving gifts of knowledge and love; it is always a eucharistic community of sharing and worship. In a very real sense, the church is a continuous state of Epiphany-now-and-not-yet, a conduit of the revelation that it does not statically possess but lives, shares, and shows as it makes its way to fullness. True faith involves verbs, not merely a string of nouns and adjectives. This is the difference between authentic religion and mere religiosity. The star's motion and dazzle emphasizes this dynamism as its gives of itself to show the way.

The mission of the church to teach and baptize all nations is not a checklist we are sent to complete by an impersonal, demanding God--something tempting us to dehumanize both those in and outside the body of Christ. The mission given to us is a condition of existence, a state of transmission, a shining with a light received, not generated. It is a gift we receive and then share.

The narrative of the manifestation of Christ (which properly includes the Adoration of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, and the First Miracle at the Wedding of Cana in Galilee) is an invitation to all who read it to enter into this dialogue, to follow the star God has placed in our own night sky, to use the science we have for something deeper than the satisfaction of material matters or the control of earthly forces. The season it is part of is one of looking out into the cosmos and meeting all we find there with curiosity and love as we share the fruits of our own experience and openness to the truth from above. If we possess neither openness nor experience, we are just stumbling in the dark of our own opinions and biases--and are not "good news" to anyone.

The Star of Bethlehem is about light in all its meanings. This star is not a just an event in history, nor merely a metaphor, nor is it the delusion or wishful thinking of a benighted age . It is a star—with all that means. Only those who can look upon stars as an inviting reality existing on all the planes of experience and existence will be able to read the sign, be open to the possibility, and take the journey.

Everyone else will just have to stay at home in the dark and click on the link.