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At any time of the year, you know what stars and which constellations are supposed to be where…excepting five of them. Those five are the “Planetes” which means “Wanderers” because they seem to stray from their course through the sky. They are in the night sky for several months at a time, sometimes at dawn, sometimes at dusk, and sometimes all night long. Sometimes they disappear altogether for several months. Sometimes they would even seem to go backwards. In retrograde it’s called. They wander. They stray. Like true Baptists, they even backslide from time to time.
The scientists, astrologers to us today, say the Wanderers act like they have minds of their own, like gods, and may even be the embodiment of one of the gods so they named them Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. When a particular Wanderer is in a particular constellation, it means something. If a planet is in retrograde while in a particular constellation, that really means something. Sometimes the Wanders cross in front of each other and sometimes they form a perfect arch across the sky. They line up. These are signs. If you can interpret the signs, then you can know the course of your life, the future. Thus, you spend night after night gazing at the stars watching for signs.
Being a stargazer, you are a part of a fellowship of scientists (astrologers, magi) with a repository of knowledge reaching back for as long as time itself. Recently, like in the last 1000-2000 years, stargazers noticed a change in the way the stars were moving in what was believed to be a predetermined, changeless course. Something happened with the Spring Equinox, the day on which the Northern Hemisphere begins to tilt towards the sun due to its orbit. For as long as anyone has known, the Equinox progresses across the sky from year to year along a particular trajectory. On the Equinox, the sun was supposed to rise within or near the constellation of Taurus. Something has happened in recent memory of the stargazers, in the last 1000-2000 years, that has caused the equinox to change its trajectory and begin to move away from Taurus and towards and eventually into the Constellation of Aries. What did that sign mean? The changeless, seemingly predetermined course of the stars in the sky changed. What did that sign mean?
Today we know that the earth wobbles on its axis so that the angle of the tilt of Earth’s axis changes a few degrees every 26,000 years which changes the way we see the stars in the sky. That change the ancient stargazers noticed was the moment the earth’s wobble began to wobble back the other way. As far as its meaning, the ancient stargazers explained it as the beginning of a new Cosmic Age, a shift of power among the relationships of the gods. It was like the “60’s man and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. What’s your sign?” Many people began to write a mythical story to explain it. They said that Helios, the god of the Sun, had assassinated Zeus, who was sometimes represented as Taurus the Bull. He was the most powerful of the gods. Then Helios ceded power to Aries the Ram, god of the agrarian worker. It was becoming the Age of the Farmer. Did this sign mean it was the end of kings and empires and was now the time for the worker to rise to power something we would call a cosmic Marxist Revolution?
There was a cult, a Messianic cult, that rose up within the Roman world coincidental with the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, that attempted to explain this cosmic shift. As best as can be determined it started in Rome where it was likely invented by a Roman of Persian (Iranian) descent. It told the story that the god Mithras, a messiah-like soldier rooted in Persian religion, slew the mighty Bull Taurus setting in motion a new age of spirituality. It was very popular among the Roman military who did their job but were tired of going to war and practising cruelty in the service of insane emperors in the hopes of being made a Roman citizen one day. (Oops, I’m supposed to be giving the politics a break today.)
Mithraism, as we call it, is categorized as a Mystery religion in that most of its rituals were secret and it leaned heavily on ecstatic experience. When someone was initiated into the cult, they were led into a pit which was covered with a large grate. A bull was then brought over top and sacrificed on the grate so that its blood poured down upon the initiates who then began to speak in tongues or manifest other ecstatic, trance-like behaviours. Having participated in the slaughtering of Taurus they were now alive in the dawning of a New Age.
Mithraism was likely Christianity’s most persistent rival until the late 400’s AD. In its early years, Christianity and Mithraism had things in common. Secrecy surrounding rituals and ecstatic experience top the list. The general public believed that Christians by Baptism participated in the death and resurrection of Jesus and were washed in his blood and thereby had entered a new age in Christ by the gift of his Spirit. People also believed that Christians were cannibals of a sort because they were purported to drink Jesus’ blood and eat his flesh at their “love feasts”. In worship, particularly among non-Jewish Christian churches, there was a lot of tongue-speaking and prophesying. These were sort of half-truths and misrepresentations of Christians among the general public because of the secrecy and it often led to persecution. The followers of Mithras were on the other hand widely accepted. Jesus was the Lord of a new spiritual Kingdom that was popular among the working class, slaves, and the poor and that was rivaling Caesar and the Imperial Cult. Mithraism was popular among the soldiers and some political elites. They both had in common that they were bringing in a new age.
So, looking at Luke for a moment, we pick up with Jesus having just been inside the temple watching hypocrites make elaborate donations. Then came this widow who gave her last two coins. No one seemed to care that she had nothing left to live on. You would agree with me that there was something wrong with that? They come outside and people start talking about how beautifully adorned the Temple was due to all those lavish donations. It would have been a greater display of beauty if the people inside would have followed the requirements of the Law and looked after the needs of the widow. Jesus remarks to them that the day is coming that this sham ends. Those people in turn ask, “When will this be? What will be the sign that this is about to take place?” They believe the God of Israel is supreme among the gods. For his temple to be destroyed, there’s going to have to be signs in the stars comparable to Taurus the Bull being supplanted by Aries the Ram at the Spring Equinox, a cosmic shift.
Jesus’ answer to them is remarkable, “Be careful that you are not made a wanderer.” Many imposter messiahs will come claiming to be him, don’t go retrograde after them. There will be wars and insurrections. Nations and kingdoms going against each other. Earthquakes, famines, plagues, terrorisms, even signs in the heavens. These are all things that people at that time would believe to be indicative of a cosmic upheaval. Now I’m going to paraphrase a little, he says, “But the end won’t come until you, my followers, have to give account for your loyalty to me.” They will be persecuted, arrested, put on trial, put to death, betrayed, and hated. But Jesus will give them what to say and not a hair on their heads will perish meaning they will not suffer an eternal death.
Jesus’ last words on the matter: “By your endurance you will gain your lives.” By your endurance you will attain what it is to truly live, the life that will persist into the age that is coming. You might call it eternal life. Endurance. The Greek word there means to stand fast in acts of hope. It is to live according to the hope of new life in Christ Jesus.
These days there is a cosmic upheaval occurring so to speak. The Church these days, well, we’ve lost our most favoured status. We’re being maligned not so much because of Jesus but because the general public assumes that all Christians are like those Wanderers who have allied themselves with corrupted political leaders whom they believe are God-sent and political parties who have co-opted Jesus’ name just so they can abuse power and gain wealth. But that’s not us. We will continue to be compassionate, to find ways to better help the poor, the immigrant, the refugee, the marginalized, the grieving, the broken-hearted, the broken of home. We will continue to find ways to bring healing in our communities. In the name of Jesus, we will speak the Truth and hold the Wanderers accountable. We will be known for the way we love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength; and our neighbour as ourselves. It has been said that at any given time in the history of Christianity, 2/3 of the Church is following heresy. This is certainly true today. But we are of the 1/3. Friends, endure. Stand strong as beacons of hope. Amen.
