Thrilled With a Little Mystery

Just after dusk on Monday evening, December 21, my wife, my younger daughter and I drove about half a mile to the parking lot of a very fundamentalist-oriented church. The parking lot of this very small church has a great view of the southwestern sky, where the sun sets in the Northern Hemisphere this time of year. We went there because we wanted to see the “great conjunction” of Saturn and Jupiter, which had not been visible like this for hundreds of years. A.D. 1226 is the last time it could be seen in the way it could be seen in A.D. 2020.

There was a lot of buzz on social media and in the news about “the star of Bethlehem.” People a lot smarter than I am when it comes to astronomy were saying that a similar great conjunction happened in 7 or 6 B.C., which would make for a reasonable date for the birth of Jesus. Remember, the Bible doesn’t divide time into B.C. and A.D., or to be cool and current, BCE and CE. That’s a human invention. But with the likely death of Herod the Great in 4 B.C., Jesus must have been born prior to that event.  (Click here for info about the possibility of a great conjunction in 7 or 6 B.C.)

Again, my academic discipline isn’t astronomy, but if I taught in one of those universities where you occasionally get a year off to go and study, I might go off and study astronomy. The simple fact that Saturn and Jupiter could have been in a great conjunction in 7 or 6 B.C., again in A.D. 1226, and again in A.D. 2020 speaks to a kind of genius behind the creation of the universe that I’m convinced isn’t accidental. Could this have been the star of Bethlehem” that led the Magi to Jerusalem in search of the one who was born “King of the Jews”? (Matthew 2:2)

While standing in the parking lot of that little fundamentalist church, I kept thinking about the idea of mystery. That’s not a good word among fundamentalists and, for the most part, evangelicals as well. I kept thinking, “Would I have been smart enough to see that star as something really odd? Perhaps something I should pay attention to? Maybe even to follow where it was pointing?”

But I knew this would happen . . . and it did. By Tuesday morning, I began seeing social media posts “proving” that this wasn’t the star of Bethlehem for all kinds of reasons. One person noted that “the ‘Wise Men” saw the star, not Herod,” so it could not possibly have been something lots of people would have seen. Others talked about the time lapse between when the Magi visited and the actual birth of Jesus. There was a whole lot of what my New Testament professor in graduate school, Lewis A. Foster, might have described as “hyper-literalism” in the comments. 

Maybe this wasn’t the star of Bethlehem; maybe it was. What I know for sure is that none of the absolutists posting on social media about whether it was or wasn’t were actually there in what we would describe as 7 or 6 B.C. Their confidence in declaring this wasn’t the same as the star of Bethlehem is a bit beyond what they can actually know. And it smacks of the kind of arrogance that continues to push people away from the manger upon which the light of the world rested in His first night on earth as “the Word that became flesh.”

I have no idea if the great conjunction, like we saw this year, was actually the star of Bethlehem. But it made me happy that the idea of the star of Bethlehem was such a big topic our culture right now. What if, rather than some arrogant, egocentric, hyper-literalistic post about how stupid people are who think “it could have been,” we said, “I’m not sure it this is the same, but I am sure about the baby that star pointed to – whether it was this great conjunction or something else.”

Maybe it is my age. Perhaps it is a life-long study of who Jesus is and what difference He makes. Perhaps it is simply being a bit tired of those who know all the answers, yet never revel in the mystery of our faith. 

But if we want to speak to the world about a baby who changes everything, we probably need to drop the nonsense of “I know all the answers,” and start talking about the mystery of a God who would become flesh and dwell among us in order to redeem us.

If you think that is nonsense, you might want to read Paul in Ephesians and Colossians, and in particular, I Corinthians 2:9, which really isn’t about “heaven,” but about Incarnation.

Mystery.   What a wonderful word!