January 4, 2009 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Star of Glory

Alice M. Trowbridge
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 72:1–7
Isaiah 60:1–6
Matthew 2:1–12

“On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother;
and they knelt down and paid him homage.”

Matthew 2:11 (NRSV)

Lord God of the nations,
we have seen the star of your glory
rising in splendor.
The radiance of your incarnate Word
pierces the night that covers the earth
and signals the dawn of justice and peace.
May his brightness illumine our lives
and beckon all nations to walk as one in your light.
We ask this through Jesus Christ your Word made flesh,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
in the splendor of eternal light,
God forever and ever. Amen.

Book of Common Worship
Presbyterian Church (USA)

Out of his window overlooking the Atlantic Ocean as a little boy, author Peter Benchley would watch the sky day and night, and at his funeral several years ago, it was remembered that Benchley perceived the sunrise to be the greatest sign of hope in life.

An astronomer will tell us that the sun is a normal main-sequence G2 star, one of more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and by far the largest object in the solar system. But for Benchley, there was something beyond the scientific statistics, perhaps something majestic and awe-inspiring and certainly hopeful about seeing the sunrise over the ocean as a boy, that star of the sea with beams so bright that stirred his imagination of the possibilities and wonder of the world and inspired his creativity as a novelist.

Beneath the window in my home through which the sun rises each day, there is a new book to be found, The Lonely Planet Travel Book, which was given to our family this Christmas. It is a book that boasts “a journey through every country in the world” and features photographs not of the clichéd icons and picture-perfect postcard views of countries, but rather of scenes from everyday life—people together and alone, relaxing, eating, walking, working, praying, living daily life.

With just two pages per country, there is a real focus on the senses: what you might expect to see in that country, what you might hear people say in conversation or greeting, what kind of food or drink you could expect to taste if you were to travel there. It is a book about impressions, not dry statistics—the kind of impressions that become etched in the mind and fill the imagination and inspire a wanderlust and a desire for discovery that lies deep within us.

And in many of us, that desire for discovery is sacred. There is something about firsthand information—and our insistence of it—when it comes to faith.

Out of another window, the poet J. Barrie Shepherd looks out upon the dawn of a new day as his weary eye meets the sunrise, and he writes, “Winter dissolves this morning. . . . What little can be seen today, shrouded by dawn’s earliest fog, unveils a necessary, primeval beauty, an unsuspected grace within the frigid sleep, transforms mystery into invitation, dread to momentary silent wonder.”

Epiphany is the season of growing light. Slowly the days lengthen. And in step with nature, the church marks this as the season of the manifestation of Christ’s light in the world. Starting today, the church will begin again to tell the story of Jesus—the Incarnation, Emmanuel—and we will learn about his life, his ministry, his humanity, his divinity, and his kingship, which will come in its full meaning and significance only after his death. Each Sunday going forward, we will gather here to travel together and to discover again who Jesus is and where he is leading us to take notice and to grow in our lives.

And today we journey with the magi, or the wise men. Although the text does not specify how many magi came, tradition has made it three because of the three gifts they presented: gifts for a king, a god, and a man. Gold was a traditional gift for kings, frankincense indicated divinity and connected people to God; and myrrh was an anointing oil used at the time of burial. Artists and poets have told the magi’s story majestically in countless art forms throughout the ages.

The magi were likely from Persia, present-day Iran, and I imagine that through the view from their respective windows they observed a star at its rising, and they were called by its light and led by its hope. And so they set out on camel back to follow the star. This was more than an ordinary trip. It was a pilgrimage, for there was an undeniable tugging at the heart, I imagine, one tinged with a little trepidation, laced with a touch of fear. They had a desire, though, to seek and to find the holy.

Distinct from wanderers and tourists, those on a pilgrimage leave their homes, their belongings, in response to God’s call to journey beyond themselves, to go more deeply into the mystery and wonder of God’s presence and God’s love. All seekers are responding to something larger than themselves—something higher, nobler—or to an emptiness that yearns to be filled. Sometimes our restlessness is a call to recognize that it is time to move beyond our comfort zone into a new realm and seek God’s presence in new places and people.

Pilgrimage does not necessarily need a dirt path and a camel to be authentic; it starts right where we are, with a tug, an invitation, a call. Think of the call of Abraham to leave his own country and go in pilgrimage to the land that God has shown him, the land of Promise. And Jacob sets out on a kind of pilgrimage, fleeing from his estranged family and, really, fleeing from himself. He finds a barren place to be Beth-el, God’s house. God’s covenant community wanders through the wilderness, and there are times of struggle and finally deliverance. Moses meets God in the wilderness, and though Moses is certain he is unfit and unworthy to do God’s work, he is commissioned to lead the people. Elijah hears a sound of “sheer silence” and is moved from despair into action; Amos is called while minding sheep in the wilderness and is plunged into urban ministry; Jonah is summoned and runs to the farthest reaches of the sea to try to escape the call, the invitation to grow closer to God.

And Jesus’ call to the first disciples by the Syrian Sea was to drop their nets, rise up, and follow him. God invites us to get to know God more fully. And like the magi’s journey, that journey to deeper communion with the holy requires courage and risk and sacrifice. And in each of these pilgrimages, there are long patches of desert and wilderness where God seems quiet. And that is when we are to listen.

The invitation for such a journey is steady and ongoing; it sounds from beneath the simplest moments of interchange in ordinary life. In the words of the Episcopal priest Elizabeth Canham,

God invites us to come and see God’s divine presence in all of nature; to care for the earth that is entrusted to our care. And God calls out to us, Come and See, as we consent to make the journey into our own soul-life, borne forward by a desire to know where God is and finding that we too are led to the Light of the World, who lives in the very center of our being. (“Come and See,” Weavings, January/February 2004)

The wise men go to Jerusalem and take gold and rare spices, frankincense and myrrh, in search of the new king of all peace and prosperity. But when Herod, the current king in Jerusalem, hears of these plans, he is frightened. A new king is a threat to the old king and the old order.

And so in the narrative of Epiphany is the story of these two human capacities: fear, exemplified in Herod, and hope, which we see from the magi and in the star of glory that leads them. Walter Brueggeman describes the contrast even further in his comparison of the two communities.

There is Jerusalem, Brueggeman writes,

with its great pretensions, and Bethlehem, with its modest promises. We can choose a “return to normalcy,” a life of self-sufficiency that contains within it its own seeds of destruction. Or we can choose an alternative that comes in innocence and a hope that confounds our usual pretensions. We can receive life given in vulnerability. It is amazing—the true accent of epiphany—that the wise men do not resist this alternative but go on to the village. Rather than hesitate or resist, they reorganize their wealth and learning and reorient themselves and their lives around a baby with no credentials. (“Off by Nine Miles,” Christian Century, December, 2001)

The magi seek the holy one. The light leads them, and they live in hope. When they arrive at the manger, they are overwhelmed with joy, and they kneel and pray. And they do not return to the fear of Herod. They leave him to carry on in the shadows. They return home by another way.

In a spiritual pilgrimage of her own, author Deborah Smith Douglas went to visit Julian of Norwich’s church and shrine, the site where the fourteenth-century mystic had her visions or “showings.” When Julian prayed to know the meaning of her visions, she received an answer: that the love of God is at the center of all things.

Very little is known of Julian of Norwich. Douglas explains that the mystic lived in a cell, or anchorhold, built against the outside wall of the church. As was typical of this medieval construction of an anchorhold, there was a window opening onto the church’s nave, through which Julian could observe the mass and receive Holy Communion. There would also have been a window on the outside wall to admit light and air and also to see and hear people coming for guidance. She lived a contemplative life, with a window onto the church and a window onto the world.

One of the teachings that is inscribed in the glass pane between the cell and the church is Julian’s most famous line: “All shall be well.” Douglas points out that this was an odd assertion to hear in the midst of the fourteenth century in Norwich, England, which lost an estimated half of its population to the bubonic plague in three separate outbreaks. Julian received her visions four years after the third outbreak, in the midst of an unspecified, nearly fatal illness of her own. And yet her clear assurance “All shall be well” was, as Douglas writes, “no facile optimism but the ringing assurance of a soul that had found its center, and the eternal love of God at the center of that” (“Love at the Center,” Weavings, January/February 1998).

After a long stay at this pilgrimage place, at the destination of her “call” and the journey’s end, Douglas again reflected on Julian’s visions while looking out the window onto the church. “See, I am God,” wrote Julian out of her visions. “See, I am in all things. . . . I never removed my hands from my works. . . . See, I guide all things to the end that I ordain them for, before time began, with the same power and wisdom and love with which I made them” (“Love at the Center”).

And so, like the magi, we set about a journey of faith in this season. And while we begin with a purpose that seems clear enough, we realize upon our arrival that there is further insight to be gained. We see now through a window of choice: we can stay in Jerusalem, where Herod’s shadow of fear can rule our lives, or we can become like pilgrims and take off on a journey to follow the star of glory to see the Christ child in Bethlehem.

The wise men, and the eager nations ready for an alternative, made the trip. Perhaps we can too.

Author Jean Bloomquist writes, “I can’t help but think that the magi experienced home in a new and more satisfying way because of their encounter with the holy.” There is a both/and in the faith life: a movement toward—a seeking of the holy, a journey of discovery—and also a resting in God’s presence. God holds us in grace.

How is one to balance moving toward God and being in God? It is this dynamic tension that animates our faith. We ask, “Where, God, do you live? Where do you dwell?” We recognize the answer is both transcendent and immanent. The desire that led us on our quest, what we thought we came for, is but a fragment from which we derive even deeper understanding of the core lure of our faith: the love of God made known in Christ Jesus the Lord. (See Jean M. Bloomquist, “Come and See,” Weavings, January/February 2004.)

There was something new those magi took with them after encountering Jesus, and we can imagine today what it might have been. Somewhere in their journey—following that star to the place where the baby lay—their call from God, which tugged at their hearts, took on another level. Beyond the scientific statistics, that majestic and awe-inspiring and hopeful sight of the child in the light of that glorious star, with beams so bright, stirred their imaginations with the possibilities and the wonder of the world and their place in it.

Maybe they had an epiphany that day, after kneeling before the child and paying him homage. I imagine that when they turned to stand up, they looked through the window of that barn in Bethlehem with excitement, and they glanced for a moment at the road from which they had come and decided instead to look toward a new way home. The light that had led them there to that holy place was now alive in them. May it be so for us. Amen.