Who is Jesus for you? Who is Jesus in our faith? These may seem like obvious questions, but the answers, when we pause to reflect, take us deeper into our Christian faith and into the practice of that faith. In this Advent season of waiting once again to celebrate the arrival of God’s beloved son, we prepare our hearts by asking the question of ourselves and of each other – Who is Jesus?
The image we are offered this week in scripture and through the Advent candle lighting ceremony is that of Jesus as the Morning Star. But what exactly does that mean? The image of Jesus as the morning star comes from the 2nd Letter of Peter. It is also used in the book of Revelation. Jesus is our morning star. In 2nd Peter, we are invited to anticipate the dawning of a new day when the morning star rises in our hearts.
We know that moment, don’t we? As prairie people, with the wonderfully broad eastern sky, we have watched and waited for the sunrise, ready to welcome a new day. It is those moments just before the sunrise which are so magical and mystical. The sky has that special colour – more blue than black – as the light of the sun begins to warm the sky long before it breaks the horizon. The stars shimmer – and there is that one star, the morning star, that is especially bright. Actually, the morning star is the planet Venus – a mere 330 million kilometres from us, much closer than any of the nearest stars.
It is Venus that announces the dawn and welcomes the sun, sparkling brightly as we watch and wait for the sun to return to us in its orbit, warming the earth and brightening our homes. It is such a powerful image - the morning star.
We all have those times in our lives when we wait for the dawn, times when life is shadowed, depressing and filled with gloom. Grief, depression, tragedy, loss of a job, divorce, the economy, loss of good health or mobility – there are many circumstances that leave us unable to see what is good in life, what is joyful. It can feel as if a shadow has descended over us, and it is hard to believe that there will be hope and love and joy ever again in our lives.