What do the Magi have for lunch?
Pastronomy
If the Magi are also philosophers, what do they have?
Pastronomy on Why
If the Magi Were Women...
You know what would have happened if there had been three wise WOMEN instead of three wise MEN, don’t you?
The three wise WOMEN would have asked for directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the Baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, and given practical gifts.
Today we celebrate both Epiphany and the beginning of a New Year. That got me thinking about the calendar, and holidays and such.
What is this “Epiphany” thing anyway? Epiphany literally means the “appearing.” It celebrates the coming of the Magi, the appearing of the star, and the incarnation of Christ. Few people realize that the church has been celebrating Epiphany longer than it has celebrated Christmas. Because the Epiphany represents a new dawn or new beginning, it is fitting that we celebrate it at the beginning of each new year.
There is actually no firm date for the arrival of the magi. In fact, there is no firm date for Christmas. There is not even a firm date for beginning of a new year. Personally, I find the whole history of the development of our calendar to be fascinating.
A couple of thousands years ago, the world used a calendar that is known as the Old Roman Calendar. That calendar had only ten months (March, April, May, June, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December). In total, these ten months had only 304 days. It was a mess. Not just days, but entire months had to be added now and then to keep the seasons in the right place. Eventually, the Romans added two permanent new months, January and February. These were not added to the beginning, but to the end so that each new year began on March 1.
In about 45 BC, the Julian calendar was adopted. It continued the use of twelve months with the new year beginning on March 1. The great new invention was that it included a leap day every fourth year. That day was added to February, but was added by making February 23rd last for two days. Because the orbit of the Earth around the sun takes a bit less than 365 and ¼ days, the Julian calendar is off by about 1 day every 128 years.
The next big innovation in the calendar was introduced by a monk named Dionysus Exiguus who decided to divide history and count years based on the birth of Christ. Dionysus miscalculated, making a mistake in the length of the reign of one of the emperors and making a simple mistake in math. As a consequence, instead of being born in the year 1 as Dionysus intended, the actual birth of Jesus must have been in either 5 or 6 BC on his calendar.
Because of the small error in the Julian system for leap years, key dates drift over time. In 1582, the vernal equinox occurred on March 11, instead of the expected March 21. Because the date of Easter is computed based on the equinox, this was causing Easter to drift, which caused concern in the church. Pope Gregory hired an astronomer to fix the problem. The result was the calendar which we use today with a corrected system of leap days, the leap day is added to the end of February, and years begin on January 1.
We tend to think that we have used the same calendar forever. Actually, the Gregorian calendar was not adopted by England, and consequently the American Colonies, until 1751, almost two hundred years after it was introduced.
When we celebrate the birth of Jesus, as we did two weeks ago, we celebrate it on December 25, but nobody knows for sure what date is actually the anniversary of His birth. The December date was chosen in a deliberate effort to Christianize a pagan winter festival called Sol Invictus. So what do we know about the real date?
Shepherds in Palestine keep their flocks out all night during the period from April to September, not in December. As I mentioned earlier, the date has to be in 5 or 6 BC based on historical references like the date for Herod the Great’s death.
Anyone who offers a more specific date is doing so based on the Star. The star plays a key role in the celebration of Epiphany, but what was that star.
If you pick out just about any event in the Bible, you will find some who deny that it ever happened. The star is no different. Haley’s Comet appeared soon after the death of Caesar Augustus in 14 AD. The empyreal cult, those who worshiped the emperors as gods, claimed that the comet was Caesar’s soul returning to heaven. Many modern skeptics assert that Christians invented the story of the star as a way of providing similar cosmological evidence for the divinity of Jesus.
There are some Christians who suggest that we should not look for a natural explanation for the star. They assert that the star was a miraculous event and we won’t find it on any astronomer’s chart.
Most Christians, however, believe that even though the star has a divine purpose, there probably was a natural event that God used for that purpose.
Traditionally, astronomers have looked for spectacular cosmic events, events like super novas or comets, for an explanation. There are two real problems with this. First there is not just one appearance of the star, but two – one that started the magi on their journey and one that later led them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The second problem is the need to explain why these magi, who were probably astrologers from the region that is now Iran and Iraq, would understand this event to represent the birth of a new king in Judea? Astronomers have tried for centuries to provide an answer, and none has been widely accepted.
In 1990, Dr. Michael Molnar, an astronomer, came across a Roman coin that was minted in Syria in 6 AD –a date when Jesus was still a child. The “tails” side of that coin had a picture of the astrological sign of Ares along with a star which was probably the planet Jupiter. Dr. Molnar decided to research the meaning of the coin.
In astrology of the time, Ares was believed to be the sign of the family of Herod and, by extension, the land of Palestine. Jupiter is the symbol of Zeus and represents royalty, so the coin symbolized a king coming out of Palestine, but was it based on an actual astronomical event.
It turns out that on April 17, 6 BC, Jupiter appeared in the east within the constellation Ares. Jupiter was the morning star. It appeared in conjunction with the sun, another regal element, and Saturn. It was also in close conjunction with the moon.
If exactly that same phenomenon occurred today, you and I would not notice. I was not a spectacular event, but it was an event of tremendous significant to ancient astrologers. It would certainly indicate the birth of a new king in Palestine. It is not at all surprising that emissaries would be sent to Jerusalem, Herod’s capital, to pay tribute to this birth.
Given the distance that would need to be traveled and the reluctance to cross the desert in summer, one would expect the magi’s trip to take a number of months. During most of 6 BC, Jupiter remained in Ares.
Because planets also are in orbit around the sun, when one plots their apparent motion across the sky there are times when a planet first appears to stand still and then reverses direction. Today we call this retrograde motion. In the Greek, the technical term for retrograde motion was “standing over.” If our Magi were in Jerusalem on December 19, 6 BC, they wood have seen Jupiter “standing over” in Ares which would now be to their south, the direction of Bethlehem.
For those who are interested, I have put a link to Dr. Molnar’s website on our website.
So has Dr. Molnar solved the problem? Was Jesus born on April 17 and did the magi come on December 19, both in the year 6 BC? Who can say for sure? But I do suspect that Dr. Molnar is correct in suggesting that if we seek that ancient star, the answer is more likely to be found in ancient astrology than in modern astronomy.
No matter what we conclude that the star was, the real question is “What does it mean?”.
Our text this morning was written hundreds of years before our star and before the coming of Christ. What was that about?
If you remember your Old Testament history, in 605 BC Babylon captured Jerusalem and over the next several years took much of the population into exile. The City of Jerusalem was destroyed. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia concurred Babylon. The Jews were allowed to return and the rebuilding of the city began.
The passage that we read from Isaiah was written as a celebration of this return. The thought is that Jerusalem will be reestablished as the City of God and it will be a beacon of hope to the surrounding nations. Remember that at the moment of the return, Jerusalem was a city in ruins. It was only those with enough insight, with enough faith, who could see the new work that was being started. There is a special image used in this passage. The reestablishment of Jerusalem is compared to the creation of the world.
Do you recall the creation story for Genesis 1? Darkness covered the face of the primordial earth. God spoke and there was light. Light signaled the beginning of creation. Listen again as we read Isaiah’s words.
“Darkness covers the earth.
Thick darkness spreads over the nations.
But I will rise and shine on you.
My glory will appear over you.”
It is in the midst of this new creation that we glimpse the glory of God. More than that, this new creation is not something that we should hoard, but something that we should share. It is a new creation that begins in Jerusalem, but spreads out to the nations transforming them as well.
“Nations will come to your light.
Kings will come to the brightness of your new day.”
Early Christian’s understood the star in exactly the same way. While the Jews of Jesus day were not in exile, they were under subjugation to Rome and Roman soldiers occupied their city. Beyond being under political domination, they lived in a world that was consumed by sin. It is God who breaks through the darkness of that age and announces the new creation by placing a light in the sky. The presence of the magi is the first indication that this is an event for all people, not just the Jews. But it is not the light in the sky that matters. For those who have eyes to see, the true light of this new creation is found in the person of a baby who is the new King who has come to recreate the world.
Recall the passage from the prologue to the Gospel of John.
“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood”
“Some people did accept him. They believed in his name. He gave them the right to become children of God”
So here we stand at the beginning of a new year. We too recognize that we live in a world of darkness, and darkness is one of our most primal fears. The terrible natural tragedy that we are currently watching unfold in Asia tugs at our hearts. Our personal sense of security has been under assault since the events on 9/11. We know what it is like to feel that others are in control of our lives. We know pain, sorrow, and anguish. We too walk in a world of darkness.
It is traditional for us to make resolutions this time of year, but, since this is January 2nd, most of those have been broken by now. Resolutions do have value. They are a way for us honestly to evaluate where we are, to consider where we want to be, and to make those changes that will help us get there. There is nothing wrong with this, although if you are like me, they are rarely effective. It is horrendously difficult to break bad habits or to form new good habits.
My own experience with resolutions is so bad that I have decided to try a new approach. I have resolved to gain at least twenty pounds this year. Based on past experience, I expect to need to have this robe taken in.
Actually I am starting a new diet. Every morning for breakfast I eat limburger cheese. With my lunch I have 3 cloves of garlic. At supper, I add a whole onion. With this diet, I might not loose weight, but I’ll look smaller from a distance.
The unhappy truth is that the problems that we face are often beyond us. We are too short sighted and too parochial to know what we need to do. We are too weak and faltering to be able to resolve those problems under our own power. So what are we to do?
First consider what we should not do. Imagine that you made the trip and paid the price to go to a professional football game. Now, imagine that instead of playing the game, for the entire time the teams just had huddles. That isn’t what you paid for, you want to see some action. But we as a church have often spent too much time in the huddle. We talk with one another and make plans, but when it comes to action, we fall short.
So what should we do? Let’s look to the text.
Arise
Let’s decide right here and right now that this is the year when we will make a difference. It is time to move forward - time to take a stand. . At the same time, we have to be patient as we take small steps, often in a direction that we fail to grasp. We have to rely on the gift of God’s faithfulness and allow that to light our way. This is not a philosophy that says do small things. To the contrary, it is a call to action, but it is guided by a wisdom beyond our own.
Shine
It is not enough to act, but we need to act in a way that the light of God’s love shines through us.
Just as light dispels darkness, so God’s love dispels the darkness of our world. We need to be the vehicles of compassion and the examples of righteousness. We need to do both in the midst of a world characterized by sinfulness and indifference.
We too have to surrender ourselves to the guidance of God. We have a great advantage over many in our society. We have purpose. We have meaning. We have the assurance of God’s love. And we have the support of one another when times get tough.
Glory
We are promised that the glory, the magnificence, the presence of God goes with us. We are not on our mission, but on His. God promises blessings on those who bring His love into a world of darkness.
This is a special year for our church. It will be a year of challenge and a year of change. We are being called to become a congregation that actively works to transform our community. Are you ready for this? I am not sure that I am, but I know that wherever God guides, God provides. God does not call the equipped, but equips the called. We are assured of God’s presence in our efforts, but the challenges are real for us.
So now we will rise, we will shine, and we will seek to find the glory of God in our mission to our world.
