The Light of the World: A Meditation for Epiphany

When the Magi headed off to greet the true king of the Jews, the dark nights and uncertain roads ahead of them were offset by a star that eventually got them to Bethlehem safely. A minor wonder in the story is that they ever made it through Jerusalem on their way. Rashly, we might recall, they there named the star as “his” star in the very presence of King Herod, whose star it most definitely was not.

There is something supremely --- actually,divinely --- fitting about a star signaling the birth of a man who would become, in one rendering, the Light to the Gentiles, and in another, the Light of the World. Charles Wesley used a close to hand solar rather than a distant stellar image for the sign: “Hail the Sun of Righteousness!” But he still captured the one, really big point of both Matthew’s and John’s narratives: “Light and life to all he brings.”

It is not likely that we will ever stop situating those Wise Men from the East alongside the shepherds and angels from an altogether different narrative, amd staging all of them next to a pondering mother and an overwhelmed father somewhere out east of David’s city at census time. I wish we could, though. Feeding troughs are more down to earth without them, and “We Three Kings” makes for better music long after the Christmas wrappings and trees have been disposed of and our minds can turn again to the real meaning of all the preparation, gifts, and exhaustion. The Orthodox tradition understands this much better than Protestants tend to do.

By the time Jesus was born in Bethlehem, it was clear that the liberation of humankind was going to take more than the best efforts of any and every earthly society, Jewish or Gentile, to become “a light for peoples.” (Isaiah 49:6) No one merely human being, not even a David --- old or new --- , and not even a God-chosen community would be up to the job. Only God Godself could do it. And because this was so, earthly symbols that he would do it, like caves and swaddling clothes, had to be given over to heavenly ones as well: a star, a rising sun, an ascension into heaven, and eventually the descending of a Holy City, the New Jerusalem.

So, why not look to that one, and only one, eternally significant star, without which the darkness can so easily overtake and overcome us ? Why not look to Jesus, as the one, and only one, eternally significant savior with whom all the world’s peoples eventually will have to deal? Is it not, after all, he, and none other, who is the light and life for all humankind, outside of whom there is no salvation at all? Why would you want to be a Herod, or a Siddartha, or a Muhammed, when you can be a Caspar, or a Melchior, or a Balthassar?

Well, for one thing, newborn babies may be easy to gaze upon, but bright light is not, especially when the light is like that of a blazing star right in front of you. Try staring into the sun for a second --- please, only for a second --- and you will see, painfully, what I am getting at. Things go better when we use the sun’s light the way we should use it, to see everything but the sun better because of it. The Light of the World is like that. He shines in the darkness, so that all things in that darkness can be seen as God has seen them from the very beginning, as things once called good and things having to be made good all over again, repeatedly. That light, the darkness will never overcome.

The other reason for not staying at the manger too long is that a desperate world needs both for its sanity and survival all the shepherds and Magi that we can muster to tell it on every mountain everywhere what the light shining all around us is for. It is for helping everyone --- the good and the bad, the committed and the indifferent, the believer and the sceptic, yes, even the traditionalist and the progressive --- to see the one thing in an ever-changing, sometimes threatening, but always glorious universe that never changes, and never fails: love. Love that reaches out, embraces, gathers in, affirms, encourages, reassures. Love that creates people anew and whole, lost in wonder and praise, grace and mercy, hope and joy, through all the ages to come.