For as long as I can remember my parents’ church has owned a large metallic star. This star plays a central role in the annual Christmas pageant as the Bethlehem star. For years it hung from an eight-foot-long stick, which could then be moved to lead the Wise Men to the Baby Jesus. However, after a nervous moment in last year’s Christmas pageant where the star proved too heavy for the kid assigned the part of holding it and came dangerously close to impaling Joseph, this year the decision was made to hang the star from the rafters in the front of the church. There was some discussion as to whether it was theologically appropriate to hang the star above the cross that sits in the front of the sanctuary, but it was decided that the survival of the characters of the Christmas pageant was more important than theological appropriateness.
So on Christmas Eve, there the star hung, twelve feet in the air, centered over the table, just slightly off-center from the cross. As the pastor led us through the familiar Words of Institution, I pondered the location of the star in our sanctuary that evening, and the line its sharp point formed through the cross to the table. That star in our midst served, as its namesake had so many centuries ago, to direct us to the one whom we celebrated that night.
The Bethlehem star reminds us that we celebrate the birth of a child who is God with us. And that in itself, that the virgin should conceive and bear a son, and that son would be God, is a miracle. But had Jesus just been born, it would not have been enough. The Bethlehem star also points to the cross. As we celebrate Christ’s birth, we remember that soon we will also celebrate his death. That the tiny baby whose birth we have awaited, will die on a cross.
But again, had Jesus just died on a cross, that would still not have been enough. Thousands of people died on crosses at the hands of the Romans. Had Jesus just died on the cross, he would still have been a great moral teacher, but great teachings are not what we celebrate. We celebrate a man, who was God, who died without sin and rose again, so that we might have eternal life. We celebrate a God who loved us so much that death could not separate God from us, a God who is still coming to us today. And so our Bethlehem star must also point to the table where we meet Jesus in the bread and the wine. So it is fitting that on Christmas Eve night, the same thing that led the Wise Men to the Christ-child so many centuries ago still leads us to the Christ in our midst. Thanks be to God who came as a child in Bethlehem, who died on a cross at Golgotha, and who still comes in the bread and wine, in the water and the Word, into our lives today. Amen.
