Reflection on the Word for the Feast of the Epiphany of 2022.
NATIONS SHALL COME TO YOUR LIGHT - Isaiah 60:1-6
60:1 Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
60:2 For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.
60:3 Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
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Hope is a star says the seventh Hymn in the Voices United Hymn Book, and indeed we mostly associate the star of the hope with the star of Betlehem, as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew, that “ the wise men set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. ”
We learned in the Sunday school, perhaps some of us, quite a long time ago, that wise men were truly seeking Jesus. However, the Greek term, used in the Gospel, is the Magi, and it means rather astrologer than sage. There is no surprise in it, that astrologers were involved in the seeking, as the births of a lot of famous people were attended by spectacular sky phenomena according to legends.
They came from the East, which is even a bit beyond Mesopotamia, from Parthia, and it should not be a surprise again, as particularly the Parthian Empire had a permanent interest to take time to time a closer look at what happened in the land of Judea, as the Parthians fought recurring and mutually devastating wars against the Romans to control the Mediterranean East. For example the last ethnically Jewish king, called, Antigonus II Mattathias, came to power by the military help of the Parthian Empire in the year of 40 BCE, in a chain of unscrupulous civil wars.
The well known Herod, at that time just a warlord, called the Romans for help against Antigonus and his allies, the Parthians, and in exchange Rome made Herod the King of the Jews, who himself was an Arab from Idumea. Although the Idumeans hade been converted to Judaism a couple of generations before, the Jews never accepted the kingship of the bloodstained Herodeans over the Jews, it was forced on them by the Roman Empire.
Thus, the appearance of the Parthian Magi astrologers in Judea, looking for an alternative King from the opposing party, it could not have been very welcomed by Herod, that is certain. However, the showing up of the astrologers is less mythical in the historical context, if we know that the Parthian Empire was looking for a candidate in Judea, who might have become their ally against Rome.
They, according to the story, followed the sign on the sky, which was clearly visible in the night for weeks or more, which could have been a planetarian conjunction, like the Jupiter and the Venus standing seemingly together combined with the visible stars around the view. The magi-astrologers could have extended their calculations with the constellations of the Zodiac, in order to summarize their emphasis that they saw the sign of the newborn King among the stars.
It is nothing unusual, at that time almost everybody believed it, even today it is a common belief, that every single person’s fate is written in the starry sky, and every single person belongs to a particular star by fate. Kings and Emperors, prophets and lawgivers, patriarchs and other notables used to have miraculous elements in the circumstances of their births, of course, something peculiar and spectacular. Emperor Augustus was even praised as the peacemaking Savior of the world, whose birth had been foretold centuries before it happened.
In the years of the one-hundred and thirties, the pivotal Jewish warlord, a legendary general, called Simeon bar Kosevah was considered by his contemporaries as the Messiah leader of the Jews, who will finally overcome the Roman Empire. The sage of the Era, Rabbi Akiva gave him the name "Bar Kokhba" meaning the "Son of the Star" in Aramaic, regarding the prophecy from the Book of Numbers, chapter 24, which says that “There shall come a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel, ... .”
The Christian Church fathers pointed this prophecy toward Jesus, as the real enlightening star, born in and to Israel, the one who did not come to wage war, but to bring redemption and the forgiveness of sins to those who truly repent. As it is written in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 4, quoting the Book of Isaiah, referring also to Galilee, where Jesus mostly performed his miracles, that “ The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sat in darkness saw a great light; to those who sat in the region and shadow of death, to them light has dawned.”
Time to time when a great sage or a great prophet was born to Israel, it is like the light shone in the darkness. It depends on the level of the enlightenment they reached, sometimes it was a little candle enough for a town, sometimes a great torch enough for a city or the nation; and when, according to the Gospels, the Christ came, the light is like the Sun to Earth, as it is not only for a house, not only for a nation, but for the whole world. Even more than the Sun, as we can receive the Sun only by daylight, however the light of the Christ shines to us day and night, as the divine wisdom teaches us even in our night dreams.
Moreover, according to the Gospel of John, although the Christ, himself, spiritually is the source of the light, still his light-carrying and light-radiating mission was embedded in the light-carrying and light radiating mission of Israel.
As Jesus did not act over the heads of the nations from an elevated podium in the clouds, and especially not in an ivory tower, but as a part of a real nation, with real history and culture, surrounded with movements, ambitions, warfare, economical show-downs, colonization by the Roman Empire, intrigues within the contemporary elite, discussion among the scholars, worship and sacrifice in the Temple of Jerusalem, pilgrims on the great feast days from all over the known world.
In this crowded year thousands, Israel served God as a nation, as the light of the nations, in order to prepare the way of the Lord, as it is written in the Book of Isaiah chapter 60 that “Nations will come to your light, and kings to the rightness of your rising. “Lift up your eyes all around, and see: they all gather themselves together. They come to you. Your sons will come from far away, and your daughters will be carried in arms.”
Israel, as a nation, still has this mission of being mandated by God, to keep being the light of the nations, upholding the Jewish Scriptures together with the Ten Commandments as a never fading, divine moral guide for the whole humanity.
The covenant of God, given to them, never expires, it lasts for ever. Jesus did not come, as it is written, as he himself said, to abolish the Covenant given to the Jews, but to fulfill it.
May we give thanks to God for all the persevering faithfulness of our Jewish bothers and sisters, the holy nation, chosen by God as guardians of the Scriptures, as also we, ourselves, we keep striving to earn the admission into Heaven, according to the covenant given to us, following Jesus the Jew, our Master and Teacher, our King and High Priest, brother and friend, now and always, according to the will of God, by the Holy Spirit.
AMEN
