Looking for Light

Christmas Eve 2023

As many of you know, I’m the daughter of an astronomer. Specifically, an astronomer who studied supernovae, the luminous explosions of stars at the end of their lives. My father’s passion for the heavens opened literal vistas for me. He showed me that the night sky is alive with cosmic drama: births and deaths of stars, light and energy and gravity and heavenly bodies in relationship with each other. As a college convert to Christianity—long before I ever heard the opening words of John’s Gospel—I had every reason to believe that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not and will not overcome it.

You’ve probably seen pictures of supernovae; my dad himself did research from the Hubble Space Telescope that returned some of the most memorable recent images. However, the word supernova does not mean actually big star or even massive explosion; etymologically it simply means a big new thing. A phenomenon that John himself was trying to describe when he used language like “What has come into being in him was life, the life was the light of all people.” A big new thing, this Jesus Christ. Baby born in a manger, cosmic co-creator with the Trinity, God’s very self. The birth of Christ exploded the myth of a dispassionate God standing apart from creation. And—two millennia of Christmases hence—the church still holds in reverent wonder the possibility that the same God who created all things also chose to dwell in time and creation. Most particularly in that most vulnerable aspect of creation, a human child born in an unstable Middle Eastern country.

Since one of the effects of the exploding stars my father studied is to distribute matter throughout the universe, it would be scientifically reasonable to say that every earthly stable and human child contains the dust of a supernova. Scientists and mystics alike agree that the ordinary—the ground we walk on, the gardens we plant, the waste we discard, the art we admire—it is all shot through with the extraordinary, with the stuff of stars. My father was agnostic, but I’m sure that he and God are having fabulous conversations about the light eternal in which he now dwells. I like to imagine that, even before he died, my father already spoke the language of the creation that God called into being with a word. Let there be light, God said at the beginning of time. Just as surely as God spoke in the first cry of a child, the Word birthed in Bethlehem.

I am eternally grateful to those who research the universe, regardless of what other cosmic realities they believe. From my father I learned that the gravitational rules of the universe made star formation inevitable, which meant that heavy elements would be distributed through the universe, which ultimately made compounds and cells possible. And then the rules of chemistry and natural selection made complex life inevitable. Which makes us the culminating self-awareness of the universe, dad told me with confidence. But then, with greater humility, he admitted that the biggest gap in our scientific knowledge is how life actually came to be. That is to say, “In the beginning, God…” might be as good an explanation as any.

In the Gospel according to astronomy, new stars begin with the collision of old ones. This is recent news from the Gaia spacecraft, which is in the unique position of being able to study the radio emissions of very old supernovae which no longer emit light. But even at their brightest, supernovae are rarely visible from earth because the dust of our own galaxy obscures our view. Detecting supernovae takes enormous telescopes and computational power, or… it takes enormous patience and singular commitment. Like that of Bob Evans, an Australian Methodist minister who holds the world’s record for visual supernova discoveries, mostly using a Newtonian telescope in his backyard in New South Wales.

I met Bob about ten years ago at a conference that my dad was keynoting, and—myself being the only other clergy person at the gathering—I had to ask him why. Why spend years watching the mostly unchanging sky, night after night? “There’s something satisfying,” Bob told me, “about the idea of light traveling for millions of years through space and just at the right moment as it reaches Earth someone looks at the right bit of sky and sees it. It just seems right that an event of that magnitude should be witnessed.” Indeed. We as people of faith are called to look for and bear witness to the extraordinary. Even—perhaps especially—when it’s hard to see.

Bob is also a scholar of evangelical revivals in the southern hemisphere, so he’s a person who has made a life’s work out of searching for the big new thing, spiritually as well as astronomically. But what intrigues me most of all about Bob’s twin passions is that he has unfailingly found the big new thing by patiently watching the small old things. Movements of the spirit in small churches in the outback. Tiny points of light in the southern sky. Night after night he went outside to look at the same old field of stars, expecting that if he stuck with it, an extraordinary new event might be seen. And that the light would not be overcome by the astral clutter standing in the way of his search. In fact, the light could be comprehended, which is possibly a better translation of John’s Greek text.

The Buddha famously said, “I am a finger pointing to the moon. Don’t look at me; look at the moon.” Five hundred years later, John said “he himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.” I think that Bob Evens, with his passions for supernovae the spiritual life, understood the relationship between optical instrument and star, between desire and the thing desired, and between love and the object of our love. But in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God has shown us a big new thing. A theological supernova, if you will. The intimate love of God that we are looking for is also looking for us. And will go seemingly anywhere to find us. Including, but not limited to, backwater towns in Judea. “What good does it do me if Christ was born in Bethlehem once,” asked Origen of Alexandria some 1800 years ago, “if he is not born again in my heart through faith?”

So let me ask you: where is Christ being born in the world today? What is your heartfelt response of faith? And how are we called to bear witness to so extraordinary an event? Here’s my testimony: right here in this city and this church, we have seen God come to light. Which is actually the Spanish verb for the birth of a child: it is to “dar luz,” or to give light. We’ve baptized so many young people this year, and given them the candles that symbolize the eternal light of Christ. We’ve witnessed extravagant acts of compassion and generosity. We’ve seen courageous new moves to share our campus and our talents with others who share the light of love with downtown San Jose. If you haven’t had a chance to witness God’s love expressed in these transformative ways recently, I invite you to come back with the telescope of your hope and your curiosity.

Like the supernova-seeker, like the shepherds and the magi watching the skies, like the brave holy family looking for shelter, the work of people of faith is to just keep looking, trusting that the light is actually is here to be found. Here to be found in our complicated families. Here to be found in our divisive politics. Here to be found in the hurting corners of our city now, just as it was in occupied Bethlehem then. Here to be found in our very hearts, where Christ has been and always is being born anew. Yes, sometimes we might have to look very hard for the light. And surely we will have to exercise patience to find it. But I exhort you, people of God, do not tire in your search! Bear witness when you find it! Because the good news of Christmas, proclaimed year after year, is that the Light of the World really is in our midst to be found, and—in truth—has been seeking us all along.