What star is this, with beams so bright
more lovely than the noonday light?
'Tis sent to announce a newborn king
glad tidings of our God to bring
What star is this? Around which, all the heavenly scene is set. The greater lights and the lesser lights are poised to harmonize to the tune sung by this light, this Christ star. To those who know the stars, who are familiar with the stories they have long been reputed to tell, even they have cause to ask "what star is this?" - the star, perhaps a comet, likely a comet, seen at its rising, till it had risen, then it began to fall and fall some more with a shower of light in its train, paying its celestial testimony. What star is this which asks "what child is this?"
'Tis now fulfilled what God decreed
"From Jacob shall a star proceed"
and lo! the eastern sages stand
to read in Heaven the Lord's command
Numbers 24:17 records: "I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel..." Revelation 12:1 tells us "a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head." The twelve tribes of Israel have "given birth" to a son, and he will rule with a scepter, perhaps imaged by the pole-like shape of the comet in the midst of the Virgo constellation: read in the Scriptures and in the heavens alike by Eastern astrologers, otherwise strangers to the people and ways of Israel.
While outward signs the star displays
an inward light the Lord conveys
and urges them with tender might
to seek the giver of the light
From the time of seeing the star, it is thought that the Magi journeyed 500 miles to pay their respects to the great King who was being born. Was the inner journey as great as the outer? Clearly it was, as it ended with a bow before the King of Kings. Is there anything more mighty in its sheer scope and universal theatricality than the stars? And yet is there anything more tender and quiet than their silence, their distance, their vastness? The uncountable stars, the uncountable seed of Abraham? The voice of David in Psalm 8: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them? Human beings, that you care for them?" I was occasionally prone to write lullaby-type songs, one of which had this line: "even if your thoughts could be charted on the wall, they could not be numbered, were I to count them all." The thought that the stars could evoke tenderness, that "What Star is This" could be sung to a tune as tender as Puer Nobis is surely a Christian development. In the pagan world, the stars foretold fatalistic and fearful things. In the Christian world, they shine upon the Bethlehem door of a mother and her young boy.
O Jesus while the star of grace
Impels us on to seek your face
let not our slothful hearts refuse
the guidance of your light to use
Why does God come to us this way? Why does the universe become a theater for him to depict his ways to us? Human beings are always worse than they seem. And yet human beings are always better than they seem. Blaise Pascal wrote: "All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. Yet, all men complain...what sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe!" (Pascal, quoted by Richard Horner in Comment Magazine) I was speaking with a friend about the power of affections in the Christian life, and how what I spend my time doing or thinking about or spending money is clearly what I really want out of life. When a sinner like me turns to God and considers the heavens, the vastness of the stars in the sky, how God made them all, and then turns back to my individual soul, a space I had come to believe was quite small, cramped, and boring, I find that the world inside me is at least as vast and mysterious and unknowable as the heavens above. As is my hunger to know and be known. Only Jesus can satisfy this hunger inside of us.
To God the Father, heavn'ly light
To Christ, revealed in earthly night
To God the Holy Ghost we raise
Our equal and unceasing praise
(The stanzas in Italics come from the hymn "What Star is This". I am indebted to The Great Christ Comet by Colin R. Nicholl for some of what I write about the star.)
No comments:
Post a Comment