After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the reign of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.” When King Herod heard this, he was troubled, and everyone in Jerusalem was troubled with him. He gathered all the chief priests and the legal experts and asked them where the Christ was to be born. They said, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what the prophet wrote:
You, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
by no means are you least among the rulers of Judah,
because from you will come one who governs,
who will shepherd my people Israel.” Matthew 2:1-6 (CEB)
A couple of years ago, I visited a parishioner who was convalescing at home after a debilitating illness. He was a former NASA scientist—with a Ph.D. from Harvard—who was also an amateur astronomer. (“Amateur” in the truest sense of the word—he didn’t need compensation to pursue his love for the stars.) To pass the time and keep his sanity during his long recovery, he engaged in some astronomical research.
“I’ve made a discovery,” he told me with excitement as he greeted me at the door. “I know the date on which Jesus was born!”
“Really?” He sensed skepticism in my voice. He then qualified his earlier words: Maybe he didn’t know the exact date, but he had a narrow range of dates, within a couple of weeks, given certain assumptions. “Look, I’ll show you.” He explained his findings using a star chart (which I had never seen before but reminded me of the rotating Led Zeppelin III album cover), the Bible, and various clippings from astronomy journals.
Surprisingly, it all seemed very… plausible to me (who knows almost nothing about astronomy). And he wasn’t a crackpot. He said that it wasn’t actually a star, per se, but a morning star—Jupiter, I believe—which would have been visible to the magi at this particular time in this particular region. Contrary to popular illustrations of the Star of Bethlehem and Christmas songs like “Do You Hear What I Hear,” this astral phenomenon was not something just anyone would have noticed. But for men like these magi who were, for their pre-modern era, experts in astronomy, and who made their living studying the night sky, this would have been an incredibly curious event.
I enjoyed listening to his argument for this particular date. (I wish I’d at least written the date down!) Of course there are other theories about what the star was and when it was. I’m agnostic on theories about the “star.” But I’m not agnostic on its existence: I believe the magi saw something—it’s just that that the event is so remote, how can we possibly know what it was?
Regardless, I appreciate that most of these theories—and most Christians who argue for them—happily describe a natural, rather than supernatural, event. Through this natural event, God was speaking to the magi. I like that! We don’t need to resort to some conventionally “miraculous” explanation that defies the laws of physics in order to believe that God is actively working in the world.
Don’t get me wrong: I believe in miracles. But if we limit the “miraculous” only to those things that we can’t otherwise explain, then we risk becoming practical Deists. We risk buying into the seductive Enlightenment myth of a distant, watchmaker God who set the universe in motion and then stepped away to let it run on its own. Oh, sure… God may occasionally intervene with a miracle here and there, from outside this otherwise closed universe. But mostly God is absent and uninvolved.
While this view of God is as pervasive today as it is contrary to biblical and Christian teaching, it’s not a view shared by the magi. For them, every moment was imbued with the possibility of encountering God. That being the case, they waited and watched for God, discerning his presence in the ordinary, the mundane, and the everyday.
If only we could follow their example! Not by becoming astronomers, obviously—although if we are astronomers, we shouldn’t be surprised to find God in that area of our lives, as well!
If we could follow their example, we might learn to see signposts pointing to God everywhere.
In his book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Richard Foster describes a worship service he was leading in someone’s home on a hot summer evening.
The doors were left open in hopes of a breeze. At one point in the meeting, I encouraged everyone to “wait on the Lord” in listening silence. The stillness was quickly interrupted by the homeowner’s cat scratching at the screen door, seeking entrance. The more I tried to ignore the cat, the worse it got. I prayed that God would do something—send the cat away, magically open the door, and other more drastic prayers that I shall not mention, since you may have a fondness for cats. (Strangely, it never occurred to me to get up and let the cat in!)
Later in the evening, someone mentioned the cat. Everyone began sharing how distracting the cat had been on their ability to focus on God. Everyone, that is, except Bill—a former missionary filled with wisdom and the Holy Spirit. Bill sat pensive, uttering not a word. “Bill,” I queried, “what are you thinking?” “Oh,” he spoke deliberately, “I was just wondering what God wanted to say to us through the cat?”†
I’m not quite where Bill is in this story—maybe not even close. But I’d like to be!
[For more on miracles, see this post and this post.]
This post is part of the Advent Blog Tour, which features Advent/Christmas reflections from 25 different bloggers using scripture from the new Common English Bible translation.
† Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 86.