The Divine Universe

Matthew has crafted what would have been, to his Jewish readers, a very confronting story. His message is that their Messiah is as important to the Gentiles as he is to the Jews. He has grasped Paul’s ongoing theme of the global impact of Christ: that Jesus is the world’s Messiah, not only the Jewish one.

The central role of the star in the story suggests that Matthew’s “magi” were astrologers. In most societies in the Middle East of that time astrologers were important people. Not so for the Jews. They regarded them as idolatrous heathens. Herod was impressed and deeply disturbed by the information these men brought, but he was a neurotic and superstitious ratbag. The first people to recognise the infant Jesus as a king were not only gentiles, they were a particularly despised kind of gentile. And they were years ahead of any respectable Jews. (I don’t count Luke’s shepherds because they were social outcasts.) They were not guided by any knowledge of Jewish prophetic writings or motivated by nationalistic aspirations; they were guided by what they saw in the here and now. They studied natural phenomena. They were, you might say, the scientists of their day.

Astrologers believe that distant bodies in the universe directly influence our lives. Modern cosmologists don’t believe that, but nor do they believe that the rest of the universe is entirely separate and irrelevant to us. They now see the universe as a single, living, evolving organism. We humans are products of cosmic energies and cosmic process; we are made of the dust of ancient, long-dead stars.

Some of today’s leading scientists are also Christian theologians. But many more, less formally religious, are moving in their thinking and writing towards something very similar to religious belief, suggestive of the cosmic Christ or Brahma, a Source of all Being, a non-material (ie, spiritual) cosmic guide, though they use scientific, not religious language.

Many people are most comfortable resting in the certainties of a simple, unquestioning faith, based on a fairly literal interpretation of Scripture but, although Matthew refers often to Scripture, he points beyond that in today’s story. These days he might be into inter-faith dialogue. Isaiah, Micah and other prophets had also expressed universalist ideals: when Messiah comes all peoples will come “to worship on Zion, God’s holy mountain.” The messianic age would offer something beyond the ethnic and nationalistic tradition of the Jews. (Of course, religious people are still nationalistic, Christians as much as any others; and many are racist as well.)

So people of different cultures, different ethnic roots and different religious traditions must find the true and living God by their own pathways. Although membership of the Anglican Communion commits us to a certain consensus of doctrine, we have a great deal of freedom to find our own way. This can lead to stress and tension at times, as it does at present, but, if we hold on with tolerance, respect and charity, it is a creative tension, a struggle that can lead us into greater truth.

No discussion of this story would be complete without some reference to the star. Astronomers today entertain several theories as to what that might have been. My personal favourite is a supernova in the constellation of Taurus, about 6,300 l/y away. As supernovae do, it quickly burned up its fuel and imploded, and the Hubble telesope provides a detailed picture of what now remains. Part of the star’s mass has imploded into what is called a neutron star, only a few kilometres in diameter, but about equal in mass to the Sun. Each cubic centimetre weighs several tons and it spins at 1800 rpm (a day is 1/30th of a second). It makes you dizzy just thinking about it! Its magnetic field also emits pulses of radio waves detectable with a radio telescope. (It is what is called a pulsar.) The rest of the remains of the star are scattered millions of kilometres into space in a glowing cloud of hot gas and dust. It is called the Crab Nebular because of its shape.

That’s all very interesting, perhaps, but what has a supernova to do with Messiah? Like the Messiah, the supernova was a product of nature; like a baby, it was also something new and exciting. To those who studied the sky the supernova was a wonderful event. To those, like John the Baptist and others who were looking for the coming of Messiah, Jesus was a wonderful event too.

I like the supernova theory because it suggests to me an allegory. After Jesus Christ, “Superstar”, what remains? An important feature, forming very quickly, is a clump of very dense text – the four Gospels – totalling only 135 pages in my Bible: half the size of a whodunit. But it weighs, in importance, as much as a whole theological college library. The Gospels form, so to speak, a literary neutron star, a pulsar, sending out a significant signal to those equipped to hear. And now, extended across time and space, there is what the author of the Letter to the Hebrews called a great cloud of witnesses. I would like to think that we are part of that cloud: not as intensely burning as its origin, but still hot enough to be visible in the darkness of our world.

But the Epiphany, the manifestation, the revelation we all yearn for is not an object in the sky; it is a certain kind of society, made up of a certain kind of person: the kingdom of heaven, manifest in kingdom people. They are here. Many of them are not Christians, but they are known by their works. They glow with the warmth of love and shine with the light of wisdom – God’s wisdom, which often seems to us foolish, shocking, even subversive.

Ordinary stars also shine in and through the Crab Nebula. In the midst of all the confusion and darkness of human history, there have been individuals who shone like stars, who showed exceptional love and compassion, who lived lives of heroic faith. Today we have not just individuals but organizations that manifest the kingdom: The Vincent de Paul Society, Amnesty International, Medicins Sans Frontiéres: there are hundreds of them striving for a better world. In the best societies, even public standards of decency are improving: new needs are being recognised and addressed; old injustices are being corrected.

The Epiphany is not finished; it is still going on.