[Ancient Faith Radio; December 19, 2007]
I was interviewed by a TV show, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, which appears on PBS, for a story they were doing about the Bethlehem star. The interviewer told me that she had talked to an astronomer who had done a lot of research into the astronomical records that were kept by the Chinese and by the Egyptians, to gain more information about this star. There are various theories about it; what kind of dramatic heavenly event might have brought constellations together, or brought together comets to fill the role of that star.
But I always thought, how could it have been a regular star? You couldn’t follow a star; it rises in the east, it sets in the west, that would be all you knew; you could just keep going west. A star couldn’t direct you to a particular town.
The bible says that the wise men followed the star which they’d seen in the east until it came to rest over the place where the child was. How could a star point out a particular house, and a particular child? As much as I admired the diligence of Christians who were trying to find evidence for the Bethlehem star, I always thought, you know, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
Well, I am vindicated! I did a little research before the interview, and here’s what St. John Chrysostom says. He says this is obviously not a regular star, and he makes four points. He says for one thing, if it led the wise men from the Chaldees, or from Persia, to Israel, then it wasn’t moving east to west, like a star moves. It was more like northeast to southwest; it was more of a north-south direction. Stars don’t do that.
He poins out that apparently the light turned on and then turned off. It got them to Jerusalem, and then they didn’t know where they were supposed to go from there; they had to ask directions. Then they see it again. A star can’t do that.
The star was visible by day. Again, the sun blots out every star. Nothing that was just a star could be visible by day.
And then last of all, he makes that point I made, that a star’s not close enough to earth to point out something that precisely; it couldn’t point out a particular house.
So here’s what Chrysostom says; “In my opinion, this star was not an ordinary one. Or rather, not a star at all, but some invisible power transformed into this appearance.” It was not in fact a star but some creature of light, perhaps an angel that had taken on the form of pure light, just glowing.
I think something very similar must have happened when Israel was wandering in the wilderness with Moses, because the Bible says that they were led by a cloud by day and by a pillar of fire by night. It sounds sort of similar—something that’s in a guiding and directing and leading role. And it was light, that it was fire. It was something that people could actually see and follow, rather than a star far away. As big as the moon is, and as close to earth as it is, you couldn’t really follow the moon to a specific place.
Anytime that you have to talk with people about the star, or anything else in the Scriptures that’s miraculous, you get a lot of doubters, even among Christians. Even Christians will say, ‘Well, probably it was a comet. The shepherds were confused.’ I think that if you have already accepted the Incarnation, if you accept that God became a human being, then you’ve already accepted a big miracle. These smaller things—could God create a great light, like a star, and could he make it lead and point things out? Sure. In comparison, that’s easy. Once you’ve got the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man in the flesh, it’s sort of late to be objecting to miracles like God using some kind of light that is seen to be like a star.
I think it’s funny how people object to miracles, and make a separate category for Jesus—like Jesus came to earth and then he went away and now this world is completely material and God is not involved in it at all. I certainly knew plenty of people when I was in seminary that had a categorical belief that there could not be miracles. I remember the catchphrase was, ‘God will not break the rules that He has established.’ As if, He’s established rules like entropy and gravity and magnetism, that’s His orderliness, and He’s not going to go against His own rules. But they are God’s rules, and it’s not breaking them if He decides to suspend them or to alter them, or to do something completely marvelous and wonderful with them. That is not a contradiction of what God is able to do. As we say in hymns about the Theotokos’ conception of Christ, “When God so wills, the order of nature is overturned.”
It seems to me that a lot of Christians don’t have an expectation that God is really present with us. Even granting the Incarnation, we tend to think of that as a historical event that’s over with now. But I think it would be better for us to recover this sense that God can create stars, he can direct stars, he can make stars do His bidding. That God is filling and dwelling within every bit of human life and animal life and material life on this earth.
It is not so surprising that he can make a great light, like a star, do His bidding. What’s miraculous is that Ido His bidding. I’m a lot harder to control and direct than an angel taking the form of a star. So His miracles keep going on all the time, and the Nativity of Christ, the Incarnation of our Lord, is not just a historic artifact that happened once and now it’s over with. It’s something that marks the in-breaking of God, the indwelling of God, coming into our earthly existence, in a way that is permanent and is lasting. If we will only yield to it, perhaps we can also be useful in leading people that need to know our Lord, and leading them to the manger.