There is a beautiful, somewhat overlooked carol that sometimes gets sung around this time of the year. It’s called “I Wonder As I Wander,” and was written by American folklorist and singer John Jacob Niles around 1933.
He told a story that he was in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, and at a meeting of Christian evangelicals who were being harassed bby police, he heard a young girl named Annie Morgan sing just a fragment of a song, and the melody and three lines of a verse she sang captured his imagination. He later took the fragments and used them in composing his song “I Wonder As I Wander.” His melody later was included by composer Benjamin Britten’s collection of folk song arrangements, and has since been covered by Barbra Streisand, Vanessa Williams, and been arranged for choir by Carl Rütti and John Rutter. Its lyrics go like this:
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus, the Savior, had come for to die
For poor orn'ry people, like you and like I.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
When Mary birthed Jesus, t'was in a cow's stall
With wisemen and farmers and shepherds and all,
But high in God's heaven a star's light did fall,
And the promise of ages, it then did recall.
If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's angels in heaven for to sing
He surely could have it, for he was the king!
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus, the Savior, had come for to die
For poor orn'ry people like you and like I.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
The song captures the sense of wonder people used to have when they looked up on clear nights and saw the spangled expanse of the Milky Way. You can imagine seeing some bright star, possibly Polaris, or Sirius, or Alpha Centauri, or Arcturus, and thinking of the tale of the star that blazed over the place where the infant Jesus lay. Today our night skies are veiled and dimmed—when we even are willing to look up in the first place. But hopefully, once this storm is over, you might try to look up into the night sky, and try to remember that same sense of awe and wonder.
This activities of stars like that described in our gospel kind of sign had meaning to ancient people. First, even ancient seafaring people used the stars to navigate by just like those Wise Men, and people still attempt this today—there’s even a wikihow page devoted to this topic. The guiding star used in celestial navigation is called the “lodestar.” A lodestar could also be used to make reference to one’s true love as in Shakespeare’s sonnet 116, when he speaks of true love as
“the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”(1)
For us, we are reminded that Jesus comes to us as Love Incarnate, and is the lodestar of our lives to guide us in way of justice, mercy, and peace.
For the Romans, the stars were signs of power. The Romans—and the imperial apparatus—used astrology to augment their claims of legitimacy, even as many learned Romans actually scoffed. The Emperor Augustus, second in the line of Emperors, shored up his claims to power by claiming divinity as the “Son of God.” He did this by claiming that at the death of his adoptive father and uncle, Julius Caesar, the appearance in the sky of a comet the Romans called “the Julian Star” was a sign from the gods that Julius Caesar had been made a god at his death. That then made Augustus, the ruler of Rome at Jesus’s birth, the real “Son of God.”
And so that explains the inclusion of this story of a star suddenly appearing at the birth of Jesus. If Caesar got a star as a pagan God, of course the true Son of God had to get one, too.
And it also follows that Herod sees foreigners acting upon this celestial sign, and sees it as threatening his own claim to power. This also holds significance and hope for us in our own time, as we encounter our own Herods in our common lives. And so, on the Feast of Epiphany, which is the season of light, we always start with the story of the Magi or Wise Men or Three Kings, led by a star.
The star is the sign, which goes back to the discussion of light as a guidepost in Isaiah. The Magi are able to interpret these signs independently; Herod’s flunkies can only see when they are forewarned, and yet the exact location of the baby is hidden from all of them. Thus the Magi represent that God’s plan and love is for all of us, God reaches out to all who can open their eyes, and have the faith to interpret and see the signs.
These wandering astrologers are seekers—and so this story resonates with us. We too are engaged on a quest to find Jesus, but in our everyday lives. To find that kind of inner peace and sense of purpose that Jesus gives, as seekers we have to be willing to acknowledge, to ourselves first of all, what we are seeking. Then we can be willing to inspire others to seek him, too. The Wise Ones are willing to travel hundreds of miles on their quest for knowledge. They are willing to form a hypothesis based partially on their own faith in their ability to see and recognize signs—signs that in those days were filled with portent; signs in the night skies that we would all mostly miss today, with all the light pollution and other distractions we have to keep us from even going outside to view an lunar eclipse when it’s right there for us to see. There were willing to wonder, and wander in search of illumination to satisfy their need to know.
How might our imagination—that holy part of our minds and our souls that God gave us to be God’s true children and image—be sparked by this idea of seeking after the light? We all know that we are in the midst of an unprecedented turning away from organized religion.
And if we are brave enough to be honest, there are many understandable reasons for some of this rejection. Churches acting as institutions for worldly power rather than seeing their identities of humble followers of Jesus. The clergy-abuse scandals that have appeared in every denomination, but has been especially devastating in the Roman Catholic Church. The clericalism that has enabled that abuse for centuries and makes laypeople mere pawns who are supposed to shut up and obey—no questions asked. Pastors teaching women and children in abusive relationship to stay and be more subservient as the answer to their problems. The outcasting of our LGBTQ kindred. These things may be done by some in Jesus’s name, God help us. But they are not OF Jesus. This is a message that too often gets drowned out.
And here’s a sad truth: too many people when they think of Christianity think of a predominant theology that focuses on breaking people down as condemned sinners and scaring them with visions of eternal torment. This is not why that baby Jesus came to us. Jesus came rather to leading us to the light of true repentance by affirming our worth while also acknowledging our sinfulness. Jesus comes among us now to inspire us to honestly confess and then seek forgiveness, atonement, and restoration or relationships damaged by sinfulness. Jesus comes among us now to inspire our own journeys and our own embrace of each other as all beloved of God.
But the truth of the story of Magi is that they were willing to put everything aside in order to find out not just where Jesus was, but who he was. They were willing to seek, and take risks of being thought fools. And think of how seeing that little child changed them—and has changed the lives of so many people in the world today. And how, if WE are brave enough as seekers and fellow pilgrims in our time on this earth, to
I close with a poem.
Shining Forth
We know now
the night sky as ancient record-
the ages and eons required
for the light of each star to fall on our eyes.
If we look up.
We may even
look upon what has flared out and died
when life was new and God’s song of creation
echoed still through galaxies, the final blast of light
trailing behind, Schroedinger’s star,
dead and alive at once,
perhaps memory only, but like all memories
still serving as guide in the now.
Lured by a star, did they
stop as dawn drew a blue
diaphanous veil between earth and heaven?
Or did they
continue westward, shifting their allegiance to the sun?
But here they are now, turning up
dusty, grimy from the road, uneasy.
They shake sand from their beards as if ruefully disagreeing.
The door is low—bowing they enter,
then bowing again, offering
gold, frankincense, myrrh
power, worship, anointing.
All that meets their eyes
could be dismissed as humble. Yet
as the infant gaze blinks and falls upon them,
and in eyes as wide and wise as centuries
the star’s birth flares anew,
alpha and omega.
After cradling him gently in callused, weathered hands,
one by one that fire descended and swelled within each heart.
As if awakened from a dream,
they stumbled through the low-slung door
to draw all nations to awe and praise.
The road is now elsewhere.
They go home now by another way. (2)
May we search for and seek Jesus in all we do. For if we do, we cannot help to find our way home altered, and our destination made holy.
Amen.
Preached at St. Martin's Church, Ellisville, Missouri, on January 4-5, 2025.
Readings:
Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72:1-7,10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
Citations:
1)William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, found at Shakespeare Online.
2) Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, "Shining Forth," first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's "Speaking to the Soul," January 5, 2023, copyright 2023.
