Star Stories (Matthew 2:1-12)

Star Stories

First UMC of Pocatello

January 4, 2025

Epiphany Service at Trinity Episcopal Church

I’m not aways the most diligent follower of the lectionary, but I do know that the appointed Psalm for tomorrow’s worship is Psalm 147, the second of five Hallelujah Psalms that conclude the Psalter. Here is Psalm 147 verses 3 and 4:

[God] heals the brokenhearted

and bandages their wounds.

[God] counts the number of the stars;

[God] gives names to all of them.

One commentary on my shelf titles its chapter on this psalm “God of Stars and Broken Hearts.”[1] And that’s the truth of it: God — the one who created all things and whose purposes and love extend to the whole universe, even to the stars  — that God cares about our pain. And this Christmas season we celebrate that God did not just care from afar, but condescended to our level, bridged the unbridgeable gap between divinity and humanity, to meet us in the person of Jesus Christ. He comes to heal our broken hearts through his own suffering love.

                God counts the number of the stars, the Psalm says, and here and there throughout the Bible we get to read a good star story. Stories like the two included in our service this morning, one from Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, and one from St Matthew, the first book of the New. I wonder if there’s something to be pondered about beginnings and stars.

They make a curious pairing, don’t they, these two star stories. In the first, a man who has been on a long journey with no end in sight asks God for a bit of clarity. In chapter 12 of Genesis we read that Abram leaves his native land behind after God spoke to him. God promised Abram that we would receive descendants and a homeplace if he said Yes to the journey. More, God promised him a legacy, a new story: “all the families on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12:3, NLT).

But by Genesis 15 ten years have passed, and in a moment of frustration, Abram demands a fresh speaking of the promise. In a wonderfully intimate scene, God brings Abram outside, out of confined space into open air, and says, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be” (15:5). As Abram looks up into a night sky glittering with stars, as he peers into the luminous haze of galaxies, his heart revives, and a patient, righteous faith is born in him. It was the sheer number of the stars that Abram was told to contemplate that night, a vision so awesome and beautiful that it calmed his soul.

Now let’s compare that to Matthew’s Magi. Immediately we see that it was not the grandness of a star-filled sky that caught their attention. No, they pondered that sky every night, charting its movements, developing a theory of its patterns, unpacking its signs. The American writer Wendell Berry has a poem that begins, “In a country you know by heart / it is impossible to go the same way twice, ”[2] which means, among other things, that the more familiar you are with a place the more capable you are of seeing something new. As a birder I can attest to this; its knowing the common birds in a place that makes the rare visitor so thrilling, even visible in the first place.

Well, the night sky was the Magi’s native country, and God reached out to them by manifesting a single difference within it. Not ten thousand stars. Just one. But that unexpected shift in the familiar picture was more than enough to set them off on their own journey into unfamiliar territory to seek the meaning of it for themselves.

I’d like to place one more star story into conversation with these others. Many of you are familiar with the beloved children’s book writer and illustrator Eric Carle, known for books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Walter the Baker. About a year ago, when my son and I were over at the Marshall Public Library raiding the Eric Carle section, we discovered an out-of-print book of Carle’s called Draw Me a Star.[3] We ended up enjoying it so much that I went online and purchased a used copy for us to keep at home.  

Draw Me a Star begins like this: “Draw me a star. And the artist drew a star. It was a good star. Draw me a sun, said the star. And the artist drew the sun. It was a warm sun. Draw me a tree, said the sun. And the artist drew a tree.” And on it goes, each creative act of the artist, beginning with that first star, calling for the creation of something else. The artist in the book proceeds to make a beautiful, full world – to make a life. The artist begins as a small child, laboring over each line of his star. By the time he is a young man, the star “is good” and full of color. The artist disappears for a while until, as a middle-aged man, he appears again, putting the finishing touches on a rainbow that arcs over a scene of dogs and cats; birds, butterflies, and flowers; trees, clouds, and a house. Turn the page and the man is elderly, called to draw “a dark night.” The night asks for a moon, and the moon for a star. The book ends with these words: “Hold on to me, said the star to the artist. Then, together, they traveled across the night sky.”

As readers, we don’t know who spoke that first imperative – “Draw me a star” – to the little child. Was it God? Was it the true self? Was it the artistic spirit laying claim to a life? Do we have to choose? The point is that the call came and that the artist responded, setting off a chain reaction of desire and creation. Every fulfillment opening onto something new. Every end a new beginning. The artist’s task was to submit himself to hearing and doing the next right thing.

As you leave the service a bit later, you’ll be handed your very own Epiphany Star. These stars were created by our friends at First Presbyterian Church. Each star has a word or a Bible verse written on it, and we offer it to you as a way focusing your reflections, prayers, and actions in the coming weeks. How will you write your own star story? And in case that sounds daunting, let me assure you that these other stories – Abram, the Magi, and Eric Carle’s artist – grant us a lot of room for imagining how we might live our own.

Perhaps, like Abram, you’re already on a journey – of a life, a calling, a commitment – but you’re stuck, frustrated, confused. You set out when the call and the promise were fresh and new, but what your heart craves now is a new experience of the wonder of it all. If that’s you, use your star to name these very complaints and questions before God. Ask God to gently lead you outside, out beyond your attempts to understand or predict or control. Ask God to meet you right there in the darkness of your not-knowing and to give you a broader, illuminated view of things. Maybe the best thing you can do for yourself is set aside some time to simply be – to be with God in silence, to be with your story, to be somewhere out in the world that causes you to look up. And there are people who will gladly guide you into these spacious places: spiritual directors, pastors, friends, one of the saints in your church. Perhaps this season is a time to ask for help.

But maybe, like the Magi, this is a season that will initiate a journey for you, that will disrupt your routine, upset your ordinary. They were just at home doing their thing, after all, looking at the sky. But they were present enough to their life and their surroundings that they were able to notice the new star when it appeared among the others. And not just notice it out there; they also noticed the questions it raised; they noticed how it made them feel. The Magi embraced a small change in their ordinary world and through the full weight of their energy at searching out its meaning.

Maybe that’ll be your task this Epiphany. You wouldn’t describe your life as a journey right now, but that’s just because you haven’t given yourself over yet to the subtle shift in the ordinary. You know, the one that’s been nagging at the back of your mind for weeks now, the question or vision surfacing to consciousness in your idle moments and day dreams. The person you’ve been wondering about. The place you’ve been wanting to see. The invitation that seems to keep coming. For you, a bit of journaling or daily prayerful examination to help you notice the subtleties, and then, some risk! A bit of seizing the moment, trusting your gut. Getting up and going to see. Perhaps the star you receive will help shake something loose or bring something into focus. Epiphany, for you, will bring the start of something new.

And for many of us, this might be an Eric-Carle’s-artist kind of Epiphany. Very often, all that God wants us to ask in our lives is this: ‘What’s the next right thing for me to do?’ In his brilliant little book Passions of the Soul, Rowan Williams says, “In the long run, the pattern of integrated, restored human life that we’re called to and drawn to in the labour of prayer and service and love is in all sorts of ways…a matter of doing the next thing.”[4] Williams calls us to “concentrate on the question ‘What has God asked me to just get on with?’” as a way of avoiding unnecessary sojourns into despair or pride or apathy. It’s the old writer’s rule: this follows that. And that doesn’t have to be boring at all. Doing the next right thing means adding the next layer of sediment, the next layer of color. It’s the cumulative beauty of a faithful life, fulfilment and desire giving birth to each other. Maybe your star will simply help you know what’s next: later today or tomorrow or several weeks down the line.

The point I want to emphasize in all this is that God is alive and creative and not bound by rules. God is a personal force, a constant call. Which means God is known in our going. God is encountered in our seeking.

For Abram, the stars provided strength to keep going.

For the Magi, the star of Bethlehem got them going.

For the artist, the star began a lifelong unfolding of creative potential.

In a new year when we will be ever tempted to adhere to old divisions, old labels, old habits, and old stories, may we remain willing to look up, to search out the meaning of new signs, and to do the next right thing.

In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] Leslie C. Allen, Psalms 101-120, Volume 21, Word Biblical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 304.

[2] Wendell Berry, Another Day: Sabbath Poems, 2013-2023 (San Francisco: Counterpoint, 2024), 6.

[3] Eric Carle, Draw Me a Star (New York: Philomel Books, 1992).

[4] Rowan Williams, Passions of the Soul (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2024), 16.