A supernova occurs when a giant star at an incomprehensible distance from the Earth explodes in a spectacular burst of light estimated to be equal in energy to 100 billion suns. That’s a lot of light! By the time that light reaches us, it is an unexpected twinkle at a particular spot in the sky that would otherwise be left in darkness.
Pastor Evans began supernova hunting in the 1950’s, but he didn’t make his first official discovery until 1981. It takes a lot of patience to see something most people don’t see. By the end of 2005, he had made forty discoveries. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson records the star-watching pastor saying, “There’s some-thing satisfying, I think, 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.”
Pastor Evans has trained his eyes to watch empty spaces in the sky so that at just the right moment, by looking at just the right place, he observes a burst of light that the rest of us – too busy to wait, too anxious to watch, too immersed in the present to peer into a light come from the past – are unprepared and unable to see. He watches and waits for just the right moment when he can be the witness of that moment when a light that has been coming our way for millions of years finally appears.
The writer of the fourth Gospel – John – could never have imagined what Pastor Evans knows about supernovae. John’s Gospel bears witness to a light that shines in the darkness, which the darkness has never been able to extinguish. It was, in fact, the light that burst forth in an amazing explosion of light hundreds of millions of years ago on the first day of creation. It was the light through which the world and everything in it came into being. Most of the world, preoccupied with the darkness, didn’t recognize the light when it came. But there were some who, like Pastor Evans, became witnesses to that light. They believed it was nothing less than the light of the glory of God in human flesh, leading John to declare, “No one has ever seen God. God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made God known. (John 1:18).
Advent is the season in which we watch, wait, and prepare to bear witness to the coming of the true light of God’s presence in Jesus Christ. Through worship, Scripture, and prayer, we train our eyes to see what the world never sees so that in the hubbub of the holidays, we are prepared to celebrate a “holy day” – the day when God came down among us in human flesh.
Charles Wesley celebrated the coming of Christ in the Christmas carol “Glory Be to God on High.” Lines from the 1st verse of the carol capture the central theme of our Advent season: “Now God comes down…God the invisible appears…And Jesus is His name.”
The stargazing pastor said, “It just seems right that an event of that magnitude should be witnessed.” This Advent season, we will meet some of the people who witnessed the miracle of the Incarnation – God becoming flesh in Jesus. You are invited to enter the season then with expectation that as their stories become our story, we can also become witnesses to the light that the darkness has never been able to overcome. Let’s do some Advent stargazing!