Star Course: The King Awakens

“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” [The magi]

“Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.”…

“After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.” The Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 2

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Star course:  A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

“Our starting point has to be ‘what is a star?’  The visible Universe is, to a very good approximation, made up of hydrogen and helium, the two simplest elements formed in the first few minutes after the Big Bang. After around a billion years of expansion, the Universe was cool enough for slightly denser regions in the gas clouds to start clumping together under their own gravity.  These were the seeds of the galaxies, and within them, around smaller clumps, the first stars began to form.” Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw, The Quantum Universe

Life Star or stellar nucleogenesis:

“Every atom of carbon in every living being was once inside a star, since the interior nuclear furnaces of the stars are the only places in the universe where this element can be made.” John Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth (emphasis added)

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The stars in the bright sky looked down where He lay

The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay…

The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes

But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes (Well, after all, this little baby spoke the Big Bang! What could scare Him?!)

The Stars Align

The Star of Bethlehem or perhaps Venus or a confluence of the star Regulus with Jupiter and Venus was creations’ royal birth notice.  Astrologers of the East took notice of the star’s position.  They left on their long journey tracking the star’s brilliance to the very space and time of the king’s invasion – Mary and Bethlehem and the Roman empire (and w/o NORAD, too!)

“We, with our modern democratic and arithmetical presuppositions would so have liked and expected all men to start equal in their search for God. One has the picture of a great centripetal roads coming from all directions with well-disposed people, all meaning the same thing, and getting closer and closer together. How shockingly opposite to that is the Christian story!

 One people picked out of the whole earth; that people purged and proved again and again. Some are lost in the desert before they reach Palestine; some stay in Babylon; some becoming indifferent. The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear – a Jewish girl at her prayers.

 That is what the whole of human nature has harrowed down to before the Incarnation takes place. Very unlike what we expected, but, of course, not in the least unlike what seems, in general, as shown by nature, to be God’s way of working.” C.S. Lewis,” The Grand Miracle”, God in the Dock

Star of David nucleogenesis

“The poor baby wakes” …in a star-based body.  God had laid down his garment of resplendent shekinah glory and put on oxygen and carbon and…a baby’s swaddling clothes and…the sin of the whole world.  He did this out of love.  This king would redeem the world He loved.

Earth’s most common element, iron, created by extremely large stars with extremely hot cores would be formed by Romans into nails.    These nails would be used to crucify the invading King.

“The idea of a divine sharing in human life and triumph over death is certainly a powerful myth.  However, as a Christian I believe it is more than that, for it is enacted myth.” John Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth (emphasis added)

Death star or dust to dust, carbon to carbon:

“The doctrine of the Incarnation offers theology a profound insight as it wrestles with the problem of evil and suffering.  The Christian God does not just look down with compassion on the travail of creation, viewed from the invulnerability of heaven, but in the cross of Christ we see that God is truly ‘a fellow sufferer who understands’ (in [A.N.] Whitehead’s phrase), knowing that suffering from the inside, so to speak.  This moving insight seems to me to meet the problem of suffering at the deepest level of diving response and theological insight.”… John Polkinghorne, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth

Incarnation miracle – It was in the stars

“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. Just as every natural event is the manifestation at a particular place and moment of Nature’s total character, so every particular Christian miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the character and significance of the Incarnation.

 There is no question in Christianity of arbitrary interferences just scattered about. It relates not a series of disconnected raids on Nature but the various steps of a strategically coherent invasion—an invasion which intends complete conquest and “occupation.” C.S. Lewis, Miracles

“Pilgrim, we’re home.”

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” The apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians 4: 4-7

The Dark Side

“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”  The Gospel according to John 3:19