The Mystery of the Star
The star is the most difficult item on the Nativity ‘agenda’, so to speak; the most difficult to understand, to digest. On those dark winter evenings, round the fire, when the storyteller begins this most rapturous story of all, he knows that the star will be the hurdle at which he runs most risk of falling. Yet it rarely happens. Folk just accept the stark, brief account of the star which finds and makes known the birthplace. So why is your narrator so apprehensive?
Imagine stepping outdoors on the brightest, moonless night, no clouds to obscure the countless assembly of stars. Now look directly up and try to determine which star is directly over your home, your sacred roof tree. About one minute into the epic film, “Ben – Hur”, there is a lovely sequence showing a beautiful picture of the star arriving over the stable, stopping, then just to be sure we go to the right place, the star shines a gentle beam of light on the stable, a mere 100 metres below, while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing their hearts out. The picture is wonderful. It would make a perfect Christmas card, and no-one ever suggests that the star should be a shade – bigger, mayhap?
Now the bible simply tells that the star was seen to appear to wise men who followed it to Bethlehem, although we have confirmation the star (or stars- there are plenty of possibilities) did exist and at the right time, because others, mainly the Chinese and the Persians, did record it and documented it in detail. They tell us it may briefly have been two stars in transit (one obscuring the other) so making it extra bright, that it did appear to stop for a while then continued, then having appeared from nowhere, it disappeared back to nowhere.
The puzzle is this- How did the Magi connect millions of tons of burning rock, hurtling through the galaxy, with a stable? It was more likely a hovel, because all poor dwellings housed both humans and livestock. Everyone had a manger; the cattle in the home compensated for the lack of heating. The Magi didn’t have the use of a sextant; it wouldn’t be invented for hundreds of years, yet, but they did have an instrument called an astrolabe. This was an item consisting of wheels within wheels. Think of a clock without the spring. It could determine longitude. By recording the direction of the star, and the direction of another known body, fixed, say the pole star, and relating the two. Now picture the world- like an orange with the segments running from pole to pole. The astrolabe could tell you how far up the segment line the star was. You must bear in mind, first, at that time, it was common belief that everything orbited the earth, and second, that this humble storyteller is very much in the dark, here, but bear with me, my Masters. With the astrolabe, we now have the vertical hair on the eyepiece, so to speak. Now for the horizontal.
We need to refer to the beginning of the journey of the star. It was first commissioned, along with all the other stars, on the third day of Genesis. But the stars weren’t just flung across the sky at random. They were set in intricate patterns of interdependence – Constellations. Many were in thrall to others in that they orbited them. Some were wandering stars in that they passed out of one influence, or gravitational pull, into another. Our star was such a one. It had a long way to go; it had a purpose, a mission.
Imagine the star making a broad sweep as a partial orbit, horizontal to our gaze. In the vicinity of Bethlehem, we see the star moving, say left to right, and as it begins to round the curve, it appears to slow down, slower, slower still until at the right-hand limit of the curve, where it is approaching us, head on, it appears to stop for a brief time. Then as it starts on the near quadrant, it starts to move left, apparently- back the way it came.
Now our Magi, learned and familiar as they are in their arts and skills, would be more than capable of anticipating this development, and having ensconced themselves on the hills above the town, would be in readiness to mark that second hairline, so providing what would later be called ‘co-ordinates’. You must appreciate that even such a precise placing can only give us, at best, a quarter of the town, a district. It can’t give us ‘last dwelling down the pump yard of the inn at the sign of the Star, in the Artificers’ quarter.
Now I beg you, my Masters, do not rail at me that you have come all this way at the cajoling of your unworthy servant, led astray by the whims of this scoundrel. Of your mercy, hear me a little longer. I have brought the story as far as I may.
By the arts and devices of mere mortal man we have travelled thus far, from the moment when God swung his mighty arm to fling the stars across the heavens, to the moment when a babe’s cry is barely heard- somewhere in Bethlehem. We have still some way to go. But what light have we to guide us? Why faith of course. What other guide have we need of? Hold out your hands, in faith. Seek the hands of the Magi. Let them guide you to where God sends them, and there you will find the babe wrapped in swathing bands and lying in a manger.
God is good.
THANKS BE TO GOD.
Neil Smalley, 01/12/2022