A few years ago a small earthquake knocked out power throughout a major metropolitan area on the West Coast. In the days that followed, the observatory in the mountains was overwhelmed with phone calls asking what was happening, what sort of strange celestial events had occurred at the exact time of the earthquake and then in the hours after the crisis ensued. The isolated scientists could not for some time determine what this frenzy was about, as they had observed nothing. But eventually they came to recognize that, with the power out, the city lights had been dark, and there in the dark, the stars had shown down into the city for the first time in the lives of many of its residents. People who had never truly seen the stars were surprised and terrified by their appearance, and these stars had engendered in them a new way of seeing the world around them, as well as the sky above.

Today is the twelfth day of Christmas. Epiphany marks the end of the Advent and Christmas seasons. There have been times in the church’s history in which this was the big celebration. Advent called us to watch, Christmas was the time when we reflected on the nativity and the gracious incarnation, and Epiphany was the day that the church heaved a collective “aha!” This was the day that it all came together, the day that we understood what it all meant. In eastern traditions, some marked the day with the baptism of Jesus. That was the day that, as Jesus rose from the Jordan’s baptismal waters, that people on the shore heard the voice from heaven and knew who this Jesus was. It was their epiphany, the moment that Jesus and his ministry began to make sense. Some remembered Jesus’ first sign at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. As he turned the water into wine for those wedding guests, John’s Gospel tells us that his disciples believed in him, for the first time. And so in like fashion, Epiphany was the day when Christians looked at the signs of Christmas, and like that sign given in Cana of Galilee, they believed. In other western traditions, the day was marked with the story of the magi, because these three kings represented gentiles, outsiders, non- Jews—like us— it was another “aha” moment: what happened in that small stable so many years ago was for them and for the whole world, but it was also for us.

In 1927, a German poet named Stephan Zweig published a collection of stories which he called Star Hours of Humanity. These “star hours” were times in history when a single date, a particular hour, even a particular minute would change a single person’s life, or the course of human history, forever. He wrote in the forward of the book that he chose to call them “star hours” because they seemed to light up the world, like bright and unchanging stars on a dark night. Typical for his time, he chose stories such as the first journey to the South Pole, the first telephone call across the Atlantic, and Lenin’s Soviet revolution, all events that had changed the world in which he lived. In our lives, we may remember Neal Armstrong standing on the moon, the tragedy of September 11th, or Georgia’s embarrassing defeat of Hawaii in the 2008 Sugar Bowl! There are certainly personal star moments for each of us—the day a baby first sees the light of day, the first day of school when that child wanders off alone into the world, meeting him or her, marrying him or her, losing him or her, the day we learn to live again, the day we finally make some sense of Jesus, the day that making some sense of Jesus changes our lives forever—these are the star hours of our lives; these are epiphanies; these are moments that change us forever. Stefan Zweig did not mention the birth of Jesus in his collection, nor is baptism, nor the wedding in Galilee; but reflecting on our Gospel narrative, it is easy to see how they fit his criteria and changed the world forever. Those at the wedding feast, those on the Jordan’s banks, those eastern astrologers who saw his star were in store for a star moment of their own, an epiphany for them and for us.

In the same year that Zweig’s book was published in 1927, T.S. Eliot, an agnostic for half of his life, was baptized and confirmed as an Anglican at the age of 39. After wandering for so many years, he wrote that his own life reflected so much the story of the Magi in search of the star. Looking for so long for reason and meaning in life, he followed many paths until he reached his own epiphany, his own star hour, which he would call finding faith in Christ, something that would change the course of his own life. Like those magi, he saw a star that he could not ignore. Like T.S. Eliot, they came following a star but would be changed along the way.

The first thing that I notice about the story of the magi is that their journey takes them somewhere unexpected. Many astronomers believe that they were influenced by a celestial event in the year 7BC. It was during that year in November that the planets of Jupiter and Saturn were aligned, something that happens only once every three thousand years, and something that would have created an awesome celestial event. Jupiter represented to these astrologers the high king of heaven, and Saturn was called the “protector of Israel.” It was, with that in mind, a fair expectation that they should look in Jerusalem for this new king. But it was Herod’s own servants who reminded him and them of Micah’s prophecy about the messiah. The messiah was not to come in the beauty of Jerusalem, but in the simplicity of Bethlehem. Their star had led them at first to the wrong place.

There is similar imagery in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. French police inspector Javert had devoted his life to hunting down a career criminal, and he had once sworn by the stars that he would not rest until he had found him. In a dramatic twist, he later looks up at the stars, lamenting that they have turned black and cold, as he finally realizes that the man he has devoted his life to finding is an innocent and generous person. Jean ValJean saved the life of police detective Javert from a group of angry French peasants. The stars had led him to the wrong place, and he decided to end his life. I think it is fair to say that our stars, like those Magi, like the character Javert, often lead us to the wrong place, where we only believed that we wanted to go. So what do we do when we realize that our “star moments” may lead us in the wrong direction? We keep going. In the end, we should recognize that the magi were only nine miles off. That is as far as it is from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, 9 miles. Sometimes the star hours of our own lives may show us that we are off course, but God can show us a better way.

The magi, once they had found Jesus, understood something new about the mystery of God and of love in the world. They were looking for royalty and palaces and grandeur, and they found a teenage mother in a stable, a proclamation of God’s love and favor to everyone, even the lowly and meek of the earth. It is a beautiful image that I imagine as they unpack their gifts, go down on one knee, accepting that God has done something new in this baby. It was not the answer that they had expected, but they were open to God’s ability to shock, surprise, and do something new. I think that Christmas, compounded by the larger Jesus event, must teach us that about God, that God may still shock and surprise us, that God is often less predictable than we are, that God still has newness and rebirth in store at every turn in the road.

Often times we are turned off by the “otherness” of God, loathing that more of God cannot be known, but this Jesus event has taught us that more has been revealed than we may know. More may be known than we confess. In his poem “Chose Something Like a Star,” Robert Frost considers the “otherness” of God. His words express a desire to reach out and understand this star, lamenting that this star cannot be totally understood. But in reaching out to it, he, like the magi, seems to learn something more about the star, perhaps about God. His poem say this:

Oh, Star! (The fairest one in sight.)
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud;
It will not do to say of night
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud,
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart, and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, “I burn.”
But say with what degree of heat!
Talk Farenheit. Talk centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And, steadfast as Keat’s Eremite
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height.
So, when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on, and be staid.

–Choose Something Like a Star, Robert Frost

It is true that the dark moments of our experiences tempt us to believe that we are alone, lost in the dark, but Frost’s observations remind us that it is in the dark that we see the light of God most clearly. It was certainly true for the people of that West Coast city years ago, and it is true for us. When we asked God to speak to us in “language we could comprehend,” God spoke in the plainest way that divinity could, through a person. Like those Magi, Robert Frost has had a new vision of this star, of God, so that when at times people are swayed to believe whatever they chose to believe, we may instead rely on something more reliable, this new vision of God. We have found this new epiphany from God to center our lives on, something on which Frost says our lives may “be staid.” To do this requires more than spiritual stargazing. It is the burgeoning hope of real faith, trust, and redemption; knowing something that once seemed unknowable.

The final thing I will observe today about the Magi is that they went home a different way with less to carry, with less of a burden. Epiphany reminds us that the light has come, sometimes it reminds us that the light is already here, and sometimes, despite what we are tempted to believe, that the light never left. None of these can leave us unchanged. It is a light of hope that we have watched week by week on our advent wreaths, now a light of fulfillment that explodes for us in the sky. As we terminate this year’s “star hour” celebration of Christmas, as we put away our lights and wreathes, as we throw out our trees, we cannot presume that we were not changed. I hope we can still hear Isaiah calling out to us through the telephone line of time, from the first week of Advent, begging us to beat our own swords into plowshares, the spears of our hearts into pruning hooks in order to welcome the prince of peace; to still hear Paul’s cry to us to awake to the newness of life that is found in Christ; to hear with those first disciples the words from heaven delivered on the banks of the Jordan river; to believe like the guests of Cana’s wedding feast; to observe with the magi that this “star hour” is for everyone, and for us too. I will forgo the temptation to say something cheesy like “make it Christmas all year.” I would instead opt to say something more appropriate: it is time to move on with our lives, but having been changed, we can travel home a different way.

Irving Berlin débuted a song in 1927, the same year that Zweig published Star Hours for Humanity, and the same year that T.S. Eliot related his spiritual journey to the journey of our friends the magi. Irving Berlin’s song is a fitting message for Epiphany, as we reflect on what we have seen, and as we put away this “star hour” for humanity. “The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.”