"THE VIEW FROM ABOVE - THE SHINING STAR""
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Advent II
Sunday, December 10, 2000
Text: Job 38:1-7 and
Revelation 22:10-17
It was three days before Christmas and I was lying in a hospital room; I was only thirteen years old and had just had a series of very unpleasant operations. The head nurse walked into the ward where I was and said to the three of us in the tiny ward, "We're now going to move you. You will be in one great big ward for the Christmas period." The girl who was lying in the bed next to me, named Florence, from Jamaica, said, "But if you move us now, Nursing Sister, Santa Claus won't know where to find us!" And we all looked anxious. The Nursing Sister said, "Oh, don't worry Florence. Santa Claus knows who you are; don't worry. We'll make sure Santa Claus knows which room to go into." So we were wheeled from our room into this one huge ward. They did this because many of the other children were going home for Christmas and it appeared that we were not. So there we were, eight or nine of us in this single ward in a hospital in the middle of nowhere in Essex, England. The nurses did their very best to make sure that we had a wonderful Christmas. That evening they came in with presents and sang carols and brought in a Santa Claus (or at least one that looked like Santa Claus but we suspected was the Head Caretaker of the other ward.) They sang and made merry and gave us food that we hadn't been able to eat for days and suddenly the food had a flavour (which when you've been in hospital is a miraculous thing.) Yet there was one thing missing.
All the other boys and girls in the ward, with the exception of Florence and myself, had their parents come to this party. I was waiting for my mother, who was staying with my uncle and aunt about thirty miles away, to arrive. The party went on and the gifts were given, the carols were sung and the paper plates were being put away. I got into my wheelchair and went to the window. A fog had descended on a cold Colchester night. You could hardly see anything. I just sat there waiting for my mother to arrive. The nurses said, " Oh, don't worry about your mother. Come back to the party. Everything will be just fine. Don't worry. Here, snap a cracker, put on a hat, have a Mars Bar!" But I still sat by the window with my heart sinking, waiting. Finally, when the party was over some lights appeared through the fog, around the corner and my heart beat a little faster as I recognized the car, for it was my mother. She had finally made it. As she pulled into the parking lot I wheeled my wheelchair onto the ramp and finally she got out of the car with a present under her arm and came up the ramp. She was finally there! It seemed as if nothing else really mattered that Christmas. Nothing else was going to grasp my heart; the most important thing was that my mother was there.
I think I felt a little bit that night like Job. Job has had all he had in this life taken away from him. He was a man who had lost his family, lost his health, whose friends were of little comfort to him. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar had really had nothing to say to him to comfort him in his moments of misery. Finally he said, "Oh, cursed is the day that ever I was born!" Then God comes to him in a storm and says to Job, "Why are you speaking like this? You talk a lot and you know little!" (Job must have been the first preacher, I think.) God said, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the world? Where were you when I measured its dimensions, where were you when I gave the measuring line, where were you when I laid the cornerstone? Where were you when the morning stars began to sing and all the angels shouted for joy? Tell me, Job. What do you really know?" God was saying to Job that Job's perception of life and reality was flawed, that he was seeing through a fog and that the real light was coming around the corner. In his despair, in his dismay, in his inner angst and searching, God was reminding Job that he must never forget that even in all his sorrow God is sovereign and God is Lord.
This is a profound belief. It is a belief that finds its way throughout the whole of the scriptures. Even in moments of despair, even in moments of sadness or injustice or loss, God is still sovereign in the midst of it. This is in contrast, of course, to Greek mythology. Over the last couple of weeks I have been reading Herodius' Theogasy, about all the way in which the different cosmologies in Greek mythology created the world. How Gaia, the earth, was separated from her sun partner, Uranus, by Zeus, who was the ruler of all the gods. How all of a sudden, with this heavenly activity that was going on apart from human activity. The myths tell the story of how the world might have come into being and how light and darkness might have been divided, but all of this heavenly activity was devoid of earthly passion or earthly activity. We human beings are standing in awe of the gods but do not really feel their love or feel their grace or power. We are somehow detached from the mythological gods who play their games in heaven.
The more I thought about this mythology the more I realized that the biblical testimony of the sovereignty of the one God is radically different from all the mythologies of the Greek world, for when the people of the Old Testament gazed at the stars, when the psalmist looked at the stars he saw the fingers of God at work. When Ecclesiastes sees the stars he sees the brilliance of God. When you read of the stars of Orion, Mazzaroth, Arcturus and Plaeiades (all of which are found in the Old Testament) all of the stars in the universe ultimately must come and bow down before the one God who created it all ex nihilo, out of nothing. This, my friends, is a powerful thought because it tells us that the God who created this magnificent universe is intimately involved and concerned for the life of the whole of that creation and all those he created. That is why when we read this magnificent passage in the Book of Revelation there is a sense in which God has done now something even more unique, even more special. In this passage at the end of Revelation, which is always a mysterious book (Calvin found it so mysterious that he couldn't even write a commentary of it. He said that he wouldn't know what to say about it) we have Jesus appearing to John in a vision saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am the offspring, the root, of David and I am the Bright Morning Star." What Jesus was saying to those who were reading this passage in its original form is that when you face persecution, difficulties, when the power of the Roman Empire is coming to stomp you out there is a light that is going to come through the fog, around the corner and remind you that God loves you and it is me, the Bright Morning Star.
I want to look at the Bright Morning Star in three ways because this is the ultimate affirmation of God's love and grace in our lives. First is that the Shining Star in Revelation is none other than Jesus himself. In this vision, Jesus comes to John and says, "I am from the root of David." By saying this he is affirming that there is a continuity that exists between the Old Testament God of Israel, the God of King David, and the God who is incarnate in Jesus Christ. We're not talking here about some sort of Gnostic redeemer, we're not talking about some detached body or mythological figure, we are talking about someone who takes on flesh, who becomes a human being and dwells among us, a root of the offspring of David. That is always something that the New Testament holds on to time and time again, for the message of the incarnation is that this Bright Morning Star (which really represents the very power of creation, the very first thing that God does) actually comes and dwells in the offspring of David, in a child, in a human being.
He also says not only that he is an offshoot of David, he also calls himself the Bright Morning Star. This theme is picked up in II Peter in another passage where Peter talks about this Morning Star rising in our hearts, that this Morning Star grasps us, that it reminds us that God is intimately with us in this life. I can honestly say from the depths of my being that at moments such as when I was in my wheelchair and peering around the corner at the moment when my mother arrived and the lights appeared from around the corner, it seems that whenever I face moments like that that the Bright Morning Star arises. The Bright Morning Star arises in my very life and in my very heart. So I believe it is true for all of God's creation if we will open ourselves to it.
Alfred Lord Tennyson was writing a magnificent piece on the death of his friend and when he felt everything was lost and gone and that God had somehow departed this world, he wrote these words:
Oh me, for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world
But had not force to shape it as he would
”˜til the high God behold it from beyond
And enter it and make it beautiful.
The gift of Jesus Christ is precisely the gift of God entering the world, of God incarnate dwelling among us. Unlike all the mythologies which have the gods separate from ourselves the Christian message is that God became one of us and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
There is also a sense that the Bright Morning Star shines in the darkness. One of the most difficult things about being a star is that you stand out. This applies to human beings as well as to the heavens. A story is told about Andrew Lloyd Webber who said to one of his friends who was a lyricist, Allan Jay Lerner. He said, "Why is it that people take an immediate dislike to me?" Lerner replied, "It saves time!" That is one of the great problems you have when you stand out, when you're there to be seen, for everyone to look at you. One of the problems is that so many of the stars in the world today, so many of the politicians who run for political office are such great targets, they are easily shot down and it is hard to be in the public eye and domain. So it was for the Bright Morning Star. When the Bright Morning Star came into the world and was incarnate in Jesus Christ the world, in its darkness, as John rightly says in the prologue to his gospel, cannot stand it and wants to drive it out. Yet the more the light shines in the darkness, the more it glows the more opposition it often gets. So it is with the very power of the life that God gives us.
Over the last couple of weeks my heart has been deeply worried about something. Because I believe in my heart of hearts that God is sovereign, because I believe that God created us, each one of us, for the singular purpose of praising him and for caring for one another, one of the sad things that I think we human beings do in losing sight of that, is to lose sight of how precious the life that we have been given really is. I know that there is talk right now, once again because of what has been happening in Europe, that maybe when people get to the end of their lives we should accelerate their deaths out of compassion and love for people who are suffering. I understand that feeling. Perhaps this year I understand that feeling more that I ever have before, and yet, I do worry because I do believe that sometimes even in our human suffering, even in our last moments on earth, even when we are like Job and say ”˜cursed is the day that I was born', the Bright Morning Star in the midst of that darkness can still speak to us and give us strength and lead us to our eternal end. Oh, we must be compassionate and we must be gentle, we must do everything that we can to provide care to the very end, we must not leave people in their moments of death, we must try and alleviate suffering (God only knows we should alleviate suffering) but we must be careful and thoughtful. When I looked around that hospital room as a young child and I remember the state that some of those children were in, for many did not go home from that hospital, I remember the last days that I spent with some of them. I recall the conversations we had. I remember the prayers we shared and the songs we sang together. Even in the waning moments, even as a child, I could see the grace of God's light in their lives. We must be slow to take that life away for God is the one who gave it. It is God who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. We must have compassion but we must rejoice in life.
There is a wonderful story told of Leopold Stokowski who was an orchestra leader. In his orchestra was a trumpet player who was to play a part in Beethoven's Overture. One things Stokowski wanted the trumpeter to do was to have him play off-stage so put him in a spot off-stage. The Overture began and the moment arrived when the trumpeter was to play but there was no sound coming. Leopold got redder and redder and continued to conduct until the second spot for the off-stage trumpeter to come in arrived and again there was only silence. Leopold was absolutely beside himself but continued with the rest of the Overture until it was over. He stormed off the stage and stomped over to where the trumpeter was, exactly where Stokowski had placed him. The problem was that a security guard had wrapped his arms around the trumpeter and repeated what he had said, "You must stop playing out here, there's a concert going on in there!" My friends in Christ, I believe in this world each of God's children is a trumpeter. I think this world needs us all. I think God, in God's great mercy and love, created us for a reason and I don't care whether you are dying, whether you're physically or mentally ill, I don't care if you're old or young, remember that God said to Job, "Who is it that created the heavens? Who is it who created these stars? Who laid the foundation of the earth, Job? I did!" Even in the moments of darkness that God is still sovereign.
There is one final thing: the star should shine in our lives. Right after Jesus had said these words to John he says, ”˜Come, come drink at the fountain of life, come if you are thirsty. Come to me and I will give you these things that you need in your lives. You can depend on me.' As I was flying over Glasgow this past August I looked down on the number of great churches and my mind went to one of the greatest of all that was ministered to in the 1900s by a great preacher named George Matheson. He was born in 1842 and within a matter of months his parents realized that he would probably go blind. Throughout his academic years George struggled with poor eyesight. He went to University and got his degree and at that very time his eyesight completely went. He continued to study divinity, became a minister, preached in one of the great churches of Glasgow, a man who, although blind, wrote twelve books, who spoke all over the world, who wrote devotional meditation pieces and even with this challenge of blindness, he used to say to people that he was given a vision, an insight that came from the Morning Star, Jesus Christ. After twenty years of ministry in that church he wrote these words:
O love that will not let me go
I rest my weary soul in thee
I give thee back the life I owe
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer fuller be.
For a man who seemingly had lost everything he knew what Jesus was saying to John, that if you come, the waters are there, the gift is there, of God's wonderful life.
One final story, the epilogue to the pre-Christmas I spent in hospital. That night, after my mother had come around the corner with the lights of her car shining, and given me the gift, she gave me a message. She said, "Tomorrow morning you and I are going home." On Christmas Eve, bright in the morning, we got into the car. I crammed my gifts and Mars Bars and everything else into the trunk, said farewell to the nurses and hugged and kissed them, I said farewell to Florence and we got in the car and I still think, in my whole life (with the exception on my wedding day!) that was the most joyful day of my life. We'd driven home, I'd got the word that my father who had been in Bermuda finishing his contract, was flying into Heathrow that night and on Christmas Eve we would all be together. On Christmas morning, even though I found it hard to get out of the bed for I had been in hospital for months and didn't really know what to do, we opened our presents and sat by the tree and drank hot apple cider and sang our carols and thanked the Lord. But there was something missing…….what was missing was Florence. We got in the car, still foggy and misty, drove back to the hospital, up the ramp and through the door. There was Florence, all alone. The only one without parents. We sat beside her bed and sang and exchanged gifts and we prayed and I realized then exactly what God, in Jesus Christ, was doing for the world. He was saying, "I have come to you with this great gift of life, now go and share it with others in my name, for the Bright Morning Star will always rise." Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.