Don Friesen
My grandfather raised horses, sometimes running as many as 300 horses! He died years before I was born, but knowing horses as he did I think he would have given me the following sound advice: when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Some have suggested, however, that in modern business, education and government other strategies are often tried with respect to dead horses, like:
I find our daily paper's attitude a cynical one, so imagine my surprise on Friday when on page four I found some "new" news. It was a story about scientific surprises in 2003, based on discoveries made in Canada, of all places! The article stated that "...in labs across the land, Canadian scientists had a banner year doing what they do best: experiments whose results confound our sense of the possible and make us see the world anew." (Jacob Berkowitz, "A year of scientific surprises," Ottawa Citizen, January 2, 2004)
I didn't find the first discovery too exciting. It was announced in August that the largest animals ever to walk the earth--the 30-tonne, long-necked sauropod dinosaurs--were also the earth's biggest floaters. Using computer models of animal buoyancy, a researcher at the University of Calgary discovered that these creatures were like "colossal corks". I imagine that one can discover just about anything using computer models, especially about creatures we've never seen, but perhaps my attitude is a cynical one.
The next scientific discovery seemed more promising and worthy of application. A professor of physics at the University of Toronto discovered that light can be bent the "wrong" way, a discovery that confounds several centuries of conventional scientific and household wisdom and promises the possibility of writing even more information on CDs and microchips. This, of course, would allow us to burn even more stolen songs onto a blank CD!
The third discovery took place at the University of Alberta, where researchers are fine-tuning a computer program designed to win at poker! It's called PsOpti, for pseudo-optimal poker program, and apparently this digital opponent can bluff with the best! Isn't that good news.
What Makes this Star so Different?
It 's tempting to adopt a jaded attitude toward life, but we do so at the risk of losing our sense of wonder, and our scientific curiosity, for that matter. Today's gospel reading, however, immortalizes the wonder and awe of three strangers visiting Jesus, and it serves as a good antidote to the modern easily-wearied attitude.
Today we remember the visit of the wise men from the East who travelled to Bethlehem from another country with the guidance of nothing but a star. I have to wonder whether I would have shared their curiosity about that star. When I look at the stars, I see a lot of them and none of them too clearly, but when Paul D looks at the stars he becomes animated, pointing out the various stars and their names, and long after I have become disinterested and my neck is getting stiff from looking up Paul is still gazing up with wonder! I'm not sure a star would have been enough to get me to Bethlehem!
I imagine that the wise men who followed the star to Bethlehem were a lot more like Paul, for Matthew tells us that they "observed (the) star at its rising...." (Matthew 2:2) They had been studying this star for some time. They took the star's trajectory seriously, though they too had their moment of confusion. They had followed the star to Judah, but their meeting with Herod indicated that their quest was anything but straightforward. Upon leaving Jerusalem, however, they rediscovered the star, and Matthew tells us: "When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy...." (2:10, KJV) Their confusion faded, and they hastened on with certainty to complete their mission and pay homage to Jesus. (2:11)
I would have been flummoxed by the star, one star among so many, and at the first sight of opposition from Herod I would have high-tailed it back to my country. The wise men, however, saw more than meets the common eye in that star. It was for them an epiphany, a moment when things fell into place, and they proceeded in confidence.
The gospel story represents a revelation, not only to the visiting wise men, but to the New Testament Church as well! That Gentiles from afar would visit and worship Jesus was itself an epiphany for the church, for it challenged their presuppositions, confounding their sense of the possible and making them see, as if for the first time, a new glimpse of the universal purpose of God.
The story of the wise men is a story of surprises, a good story for those of us who are no longer easily surprised. The ancient rabbis warned about "growing old" in our thinking and in our ways of seeing and experiencing things. Some of us are stuck in the rut of "same old, same old" and so our recollection of the Christmas holidays might run something like this: We visited the same old friends; same old relatives, Uncle Joe up to his same old tricks. The gifts were predictable; the meals were predictable; the weight gain was predictable--same old Christmas blues to follow, and so on, and so forth, und so weiter.
Scientists and Saints Who ‘Saw the Light'
No doubt some of us see congregational life and worship this way--same old, same old story--sin, Jesus, love, salvation, peace--same old, same old. When's the last time you learned something new in church?
Well, there was one young fellow sitting in church one day who made a startling discovery during the sermon. He was a pre-med student, only nineteen years old, and perhaps he was listening to the sermon--we don't know--but he began to watch the altar lantern sway--back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. He started timing the swings, using his own pulse as a clock. His discovery changed his life; he dropped the study of medicine and began studying mathematics and physics.
His name was Galileo (Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642), and his discovery of the laws of the pendulum changed the history of time itself. At the time the very best clocks in the world easily lost--or gained--fifteen minutes a day. A few decades later all the best clocks were using pendulums and they were losing or gaining only ten seconds a day! No doubt hundreds of people had sat in that church watching that lantern sway--back and forth, back and forth--but Galileo saw much more. Whereas others saw the same old, same old oily lantern swaying back and forth, Galileo thought, Aha! This could prove very useful. Albert von Szent-Gyorgi (1893-1986), a biochemist who won a Nobel Prize in 1937, wrote, "Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen (but) thinking what no one else has thought."
New thoughts aren't always welcome, of course, a rather painful discovery for Galileo. Some people resist thinking new thoughts. Galileo also applied the telescope to astronomy, thereby observing craters on the moon, sunspots, the stars of the Milky Way, Jupiter's satellites, as well as the phases of Venus. And when he invited ordinary people to look through his telescope he found them quite receptive to his new ideas. Ironically, educated people had much more trouble with these ideas; one of them told Galileo, "You have made me see this business so plainly and sensibly that, did not the text of Aristotle assert the contrary--I should be constrained to confess your opinion to be true."
I imagine that epiphanies come less often to the resistant mind, and though they may come in a moment I also imagine that they benefit from preparation. Albert von Szent-Gyorgi also wrote, "A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind." Very wise man, von Szent-Gyorgi was. A few years earlier astronomer Clyde Tombaugh had discovered the planet Pluto. Astronomers had already calculated a probable orbit for this "suspected" heavenly body, but Tombaugh's search was an arduous one nonetheless. Taking up the search in March, 1929, he examined scores of telescopic photographs under a dual microscope. Each photograph showed tens of thousands of star images in pairs and it often took three days to scan a single pair. It was exhausting, mind-boggling, eye-weary work; Tombaugh called it "brutal tediousness". It went on for months. Star by star, Tombaugh examined 20 million images. Then on February 18, 1930, as he was blinking at a pair of photographs in the constellation Gemini, he reports, "I suddenly came upon the image of Pluto!" It was the most dramatic discovery in astronomy in nearly a hundred years!
Discoveries often involve a lot of effort, but there is nonetheless great joy in discovery. Research scientists talk yearningly about those rare moments of discovery when the pieces of the puzzle fit together--when suddenly, for a brief moment, the proverbial light bulb comes on! That's what an epiphany is--catching a glimpse of light in a situation previously clouded and dark. It is sometimes described as the "Eureka" phenomenon or an "Aha!" experience. The moment is often sudden and brief, but it's a moment of connectivity, in which disparate thoughts are connected and it's accompanied by a feeling of confidence that the revelation received is correct and true.
An epiphany can be triggered by a very ordinary thing, like an altar lantern, or a simple conversation. In a novel by James Joyce, the leading character (Stephen Hero) overhears a conversation on the streets of Dublin which, he recalls, "...was a triviality, really, but somehow it threw a sudden light across my appreciation for other people." (cited in "What's an Epiphany?" by Robert A. Wallace, A Present Help)
There are moments, words, or images that have the power to bring things into focus for us, a moment when some major elements of life fall into place and we never look at life again without reference to that moment. Someone (Fred Kane) has referred to such a moment as a "faith-quake". Such moments have great spiritual implications. Consider, for example, a New Testament saint who imagined God putting together a great work of art--a mosaic, possibly, made of thousands of coloured stones; or a tapestry made of thousands of coloured threads; or a stained glass window made of thousands of bits of coloured glass. He imagined this great work of art demonstrating God's great genius--and the name of that work of art is "The Church". Many of us look at the church and see just another human organization, beset by human foibles and populated by fragile human egos. The Apostle Paul, however, saw much more; he saw a design of intricate patterns that spoke of beauty and redemption!
The Apostle Peter had a similar epiphany; he had looked at Gentiles all his life but he had never really seen them. Then, all of a sudden it came to him--the gospel was for everyone! Aha! "I truly understand," he said, "that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him." (Acts 10:34-35) Peter ended up preaching the gospel to people he had never thought he could tolerate, and he helped to build the church out of people who normally didn't get along!
I think too of Jesus' encounter with the woman at a well in Samaria. (John 4) She had an "Aha!" moment when--despite centuries of racism mitigating against such a revelation--she recognized Jesus as the giver of life-giving water. It was also an "Aha!" moment for Jesus' disciples, as they witnessed that all can drink of this water, including Samaritans!
Meeting Jesus Is a Journey of Discovery
The season of Epiphany begins a time of the church year in which we witness many encounters with Jesus as we read through the Gospel stories. Each encounter provided the person encountering Jesus with insight into Jesus' character and mission, and insight into themselves. People who encountered Jesus were amazed; they had heard the same old, same old Pharisees over and over again, but Jesus was different.
We all have presuppositions about Jesus, but if we want to see more than the same old, same old swinging lantern we should listen to the stories again, as if for the first time. Maybe Jesus is not who we thought him to be. Maybe Jesus is more liberal than you think! Maybe Jesus is more conservative than you think! Maybe those labels--and many others--aren't all that helpful! Maybe they reflect our own biases more than they do the biblical narrative.
The Apostle Paul wrote, "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12, NIV) As we read through the Gospel in the weeks ahead we have the opportunity to let the nature of Jesus emerge more fully in our hearts and minds.
Douglas John Hall, professor of Theology at McGill, contends that there are many assessments or images of Jesus that are not all that helpful. (Douglas John Hall, "We Would See Jesus") Some Christians, for example, emphasize Jesus' divinity, using it as a test of faith, and if your response to the question of Jesus' divinity is not an unqualified "Yes" you are not admitted to the true fold. Even a cursory reading of church history, however, reveals heresies which were designated such precisely because of this image of Jesus. One does not have to deny Jesus' divinity, says Hall, but when it is not held in tension with Christ's real, recognizable humanity, it becomes a distortion of the biblical record; it becomes a theology of escapism, and does little for a world that the New Testament asserts God loves and wishes to redeem.
Other Christians have fashioned a very comfortable Jesus, the "Accepting Jesus". Our faith in an "accepting Jesus" shields us from the brutalities of the world rather than motivating us to come to grips with them. We reduce the whole Scriptural tradition to love--a noble concept--but that alone becomes the ontological and moral premise of our lives. Love, understood in the biblical sense, however, doesn't accept everything. Love cares about the condition of the beloved; "Jesus loves me" doesn't mean that Jesus makes no demands upon me. The Jesus who is not ready to accept me just as I am, says Hall, is also not ready to accept the world just as it is. "If we can trust any of the illustrations of God's love for the world that we find in the (Scriptures), we most conclude that this love, far from accepting the status quo, wills to alter it drastically...."
The season of Epiphany invites us to meet, not just a divine Jesus, not just a human Jesus, not just an accepting Jesus, but a transforming Jesus. Jesus transcends our assumptions about his identity, character and purpose. If, true to the nature of Epiphany, we are willing to be surprised by Jesus, then encountering Jesus becomes itself a journey of discovery. Our perception of Jesus is important, too important to be left to a hastily assembled hodge-podge of whims and personal likes and dislikes. T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) encouraged his readers not to "cease from exploration," for...
There is great joy in knowing something or someone again as if for the first time. There may be someone you have looked at all your life--even a brother or a sister--and then one day you look and see that person again, as if for the first time. Aha! That's who that person is!
I find our reading from Jeremiah interesting and somewhat surprising. Jeremiah lived through the time of Babylon's conquest of Judah and Jerusalem, and he is usually associated with messages of doom and destruction and the end of the kingdom. His words speak of enormous loss, death and grief. In chapter 4, Jeremiah writes:
"I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking.... I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins...." (Jeremiah 4:23-26)
Jeremiah himself seems a rather morose sort. No doubt Jeremiah would have liked the Old Testament philosopher's summary of human discovery--that "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
The tone of today's reading, however, is very different; it conveys a message of hope and promise. It is a joyful passage, with an explosion of imagery capturing the hope that Jeremiah sees for the future. The people of Israel were profoundly changed by their experiences of loss and exile. As painful as the experience was, it was an "Aha" experience for them, an experience that allowed a lost and vulnerable people to find delight in God's promise of salvation! "Sing aloud with gladness..., and raise shouts," writes Jeremiah. "...the young women (shall) rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will ...give them gladness for sorrow." (Jeremiah 31:7 and 13) Their glimpse of redemption may have been brief, but it was vivid, and it made all the difference.
The ancient rabbis warned us not to grow old in our thinking and in our ways of seeing and experiencing things. Perhaps we are too easily fooled by the old in the new, rather than ready to see the new in the old! The season of Epiphany invites us to remain open to the discovery of the Divine in the everyday, for therein lies joy.
It's the beginning of a new year, but often it feels like we're still flogging a dead horse. I find that our daily newspaper does little to allay this feeling, repeating the same negative messages day after day after day: our political leaders are corrupt; the public service is not serving the public; the city government is out of control; the military is suffering; and according to one of its darling, if deranged columnists, we aren't invading enough countries! It's the usual suspects saying some very predictable things.
"the end of all our exploring
The Joy of Discovery -- Aha!
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
(T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding," Four Quartets, 1942)
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.