and we return, different people, radiant with wonder and joy
and we return to the place we have always known
by a different route

One of the more strange and wonderful stories in the Old Testament is about Balaam, son of Beor, and his adventures with Balak, son of Zippor of Moab. You can find the whole story in chapters 22 through 24 of the book of Numbers.

The Israelites, having been set free from slavery in Egypt, having been given the gift of the law on Mt. Sinai, are now making their way toward the land of promise, guided by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Moses has them camp on the far side of the River Jordan, on the plains of Moab, across from Jericho.

Well, they may have made it out of Egypt—but, out of the frying pan into the fire! Balak, the king of Moab, is very nervous about this bunch of tribes camping out upon *his* land. So he takes pains to find someone who can help him; and Balak’s search extends all the way to Mesopotamia—the Euphrates—present-day Iraq. Some 400 miles away.

“He sent messengers to Balaam at Pethor, which is on the Euphrates, in the land of Amaw, to summon him, saying, ‘A people has come out of Egypt; they have spread over the face of the earth, and they have settled next to me. Come, now, curse this people for me;…perhaps I shall be able to defeat them….’

“So the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed with the fees for divination in their hand; and they came to Balaam, and gave him Balak’s message.”

Balaam says, stick around; I’ll let you know what the LORD says to me.

Right away, we notice something peculiar: Balaam is very far from the chosen people. Not an Israelite, not an observer of God’s law—and yet the LORD—the God of Israel—evidently speaks to *him*!

And what the LORD says to Balaam is, “Who are these guys?” Balaam explains; and God says, “You shall not go with them; you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed.” So Balaam tells the Moabite and Midianite ambassadors, “Sorry.” They go back and tell King Balak—who only redoubles his efforts.

“Once again King Balak sent officials, more numerous and more distinguished than these.” This time the king promises to do Balaam great honor; therefore, “Come, curse this people for me.” And Balaam once again says, “Sorry!” “Although Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the LORD my God, to do less or more.” But that night the LORD comes to Balaam and says, Well, OK, you might as well go; “but do only what I tell you to do.”

“So Balaam got up in the morning, saddled his donkey, and went with the oficials of Moab.” Mind you, a 400-mile trip. No sooner does Balaam saddle his donkey (which used to be translated by a different word) than the story interrupts itself with an even funnier story about an angel that the donkey can see but Balaam can’t, and the amusing conversations that result between Balaam and his “donkey”—but that’s a story-within-a-story for a different day.

So Balaam arrives at the court of Balak, king of Moab, and they offer sacrifices. Balak takes Balaam up on a crag where they can see part of the people of Israel. They offer more sacrifices. Balaam confers with God, who puts a word in Balaam’s mouth. In part:

“How can I curse whom God has not cursed?
How can I denounce those whom the LORD has not denounced?” (23:8)

“Then Balak said to Balaam, ‘What have you done to me? I brought you to curse my enemies, but now you have done nothing but bless them.’ [Balaam] answered, ‘Must I not take care to say what the LORD puts into my mouth?’

“So Balak said to him, ‘Come with me to another place from which you may see them;…then curse them for me from there.’ ”

So they go to *another* mountain top, offer sacrifice, God speaks to Balaam, and Balaam says—in part—“See, I received a command to bless; he has blessed, and I cannot revoke it.”

Balak suggests that perhaps if Balaam is going to refuse to curse the Israelites, maybe he could *at least* do him the courtesy of refusing to *bless* them. But then the king thinks better of it: “So Balak said to Balaam, ‘Come now, I will take you to another place; perhaps it will please God that you may curse them for me from there.’ ”

Up they go. On they sacrifice. The spirit of God comes upon Balaam, who utters an oracle; in part,

“How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your encampments, O Israel! …
Blessed is everyone who blesses you, and cursed is everyone who curses you.” (24:5, 9b)

“Then Balak’s anger was kindled against Balaam, and he struck his hands together. Balak said to Balaam, ‘I summoned you to curse my enemies, but instead you have blessed them these three times. Now be off with you! Go home!’ ”

Balaam responds, Well, look, I told you so. And utters one final oracle, telling what will become of this little band of Israelites camped out in the wilderness of Moab:

“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near—
a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;
…one out of Jacob shall rule.” (24:17ab, 19)

“Then Balaam got up and went back to his place, and Balak also went his way.”

“A star shall come out of Jacob”: that’s where we get the star. King David, the star of David, the sign of kingship and divine favor.

And the story of Balaam and Balak gives us the wise foreigner from a distant land, tuned in somehow, mysteriously, to the Spirit of God. The “Gentile” who sees in the tent-camp of a wandering people present and future blessing. A blessing from an unlikely source that they are nevertheless happy to receive. And the story gives us the confrontation between a stupid and stubborn ruler who, in the intensity of his need to curse, refuses to listen; and the wise and holy sage who refuses to be cowed but answers instead to a higher authority. (Certain things just seem to be perennial.)

The star of David did indeed rise, and ascended even further during the reign of his son, King Solomon the wise.

When the Queen of Sheba heard of Solomon’s fame, she came to visit, asking difficult questions. First Kings tells us, “She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones; and when she came to Solomon she told him all that was on her mind.” Solomon answered all of her queries with such insight that it took her breath away. (10:2)

“So she said to the king, ‘The report was true that I heard in my own land of your accomplishments and of your wisdom; but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. Not even half had been told me. … Blessed be the LORD your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel!’ … Then she gave the king one hundred twenty talents of gold, a great quantity of spices, and precious stones; never again did spices come in such quantity as that which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.” (10:6 – 7, 9a)

The chapter goes on to describe the “gems of the mountaint and pearls of the ocean,” et cetera, that came to Solomon’s realm. “The fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks” (Note: “or ‘baboons’ ”). Seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five gold rings! (10:22)

“Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. The whole earth sought the presence of Solomon. …Every one of them brought a present.” (10:23 – 25)

After the kingdom of David and Solomon was in ruins, after the exiles had returned home and begun the long and difficult work of reconstruction, Balaam’s star rising out of Jacob came to be understood as the Messiah, God’s anointed one, who would come and restore their fortunes and redeem their lives. The glory of God would fill the whole people with radiance and joy. “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” The abundance of the sea—a multitude of camels—gold and frankincense—offered with praise. (Isaiah 60:3, 6)

So, long before Herod and the wise men, we have the star, the journey, the gifts, and the in-person visit that calls forth wonder and joy, and makes for a different return. Long before the magi and the infant Jesus, we have glimpses of people coming from a very great distance to a place they have never been; people searching for something they lack, and need; people nevertheless coming, not empty-handed, but with gifts of their own.

Strangers of exotic dress and different customs; strangers raised outside the covenant of God’s chosen people—and yet themselves blessed by the Spirit of God and attentive to God’s holy wisdom and word. Noticing, responding to, overturning their lives for, the wonders God has revealed.

At the house where the star stops, gifts are given and received, and all are blessed. But the greatest gift of all, far exceeding the gold and spices, is the gift of the visit itself. The journey that has been undertaken in response to an intimation of wonder; the seeing face to face that takes our breath away, and makes us realize we hadn’t known the half of it.

The Epiphany season is all about learning to live in response to the wonders God has revealed. Learning to notice things, to pay attention, to cultivate a sense of wonder and praise and blessing.

An article from last August in “The New Yorker” is called “The Dark Side: Making War on Light Pollution.” In it, David Owen describes his interviews with astronomer-activists who are deeply alarmed that today those of us who live in urban areas can see in the night sky less than one percent of what Galileo had been able to see back in the year 1610, without a telescope.

Growing numbers of us pass most of our waking hours “in a box, looking at a box,” as [astronomer] Dave Crawford put it; we spend our days inside offices, looking at computer screens, and our evenings inside houses, looking at television screens. Fewer and fewer of us spend much time outside at all, except in automobiles—and when we do venture outdoors after dark we are usually just stepping into yet another box, the glowing canopy that our lights have projected into the sky. (p. 31)

So David goes on a journey: first, to an overly-brightly-glowing Tucson, Arizona; and then to a couple of national parks, to check out the darkest or starriest skies within a distance he can drive. The first is Bryce Canyon, in southern Utah, where his guide is Chad Moore, the program director of the National Park Service’s Night Sky Team. Around four o’clock in the morning,

we walked north along the rim trail, on which the setting moon cast long shadows. The canyon’s edge was just a few feet to our right, but I could easily tell where the path ended and the abyss began. The canyon itself was transformed. In bright sunlight, Bryce’s orange and white limestone hoodoos, which look a little like enormous drip castles, are so vibrant that they almost shimmer; by night, the formations are virtually monochromatic, like mountains at the bottom of the sea. Nightfall inverts the park; the cliffs draw inward, and the sky becomes almost topographical, a canyon turned upside-down.
(32 – 33)

At last the moon disappeared below the horizon….I had no trouble seeing the Milky Way, a broad, densely-speckled stripe extending across the sky. Moore pointed out the Great Rift, a cluster of dark patches caused by clouds of light-blocking interstellar dust, and the constellation Sagittarius, toward the luminous center of our galaxy.

I lay on my back on a bench and watched for meteors, which streaked past every few minutes: in a truly dark sky, shooting stars are too numerous to bother wishing on. We stayed until we noticed the first glow of the approaching sunrise. Stars near the eastern horizon melted away ahead of it, as though the darkness itself were dissolving.

The next afternoon, Moore and I drove across southern Utah to Natural Bridges National Monument,…two hundred and seventy-five miles away.
…

After the sun had set completely, Moore and I headed for Owachomo, one of the park’s three natural bridges, which were created, thousands of years ago, by fast-flowing streams that undercut the sandstone walls of their canyons. Owachomo, at its midpoint, rises more than a hundred feet above the canyon floor and is almost two hundred feet across. As we turned a corner on the path, it suddenly loomed before us, a startling black void against a field of stars. …

Moore and I leaned against some big rocks and simply looked. If I stood still, I could see stars apparently blink off, as the earth’s rotation caused them to be occluded by the sandstone bridge, while, on the other side, others seemed to blink on. The park is so remote that there is little artificial noise, even at night, and the silence deepened the darkness. Thinking about the incomprehensible distances above us made me remember nights forty years before, when I was twelve years old and lying on my back in a mountain meadow at summer camp in Colorado, watching for shooting stars in what was probably the darkest sky I’ve ever seen, or will ever see.

Moore and I stood like that, not saying much, for more than an hour. Then we returned to the visitors’ center and said goodbye. I drove east to the nearest town, where I hoped to get some sleep before continuing to Salt Lake City and my flight home. Moore, who had brought a sleeping bag, went out into the park to spend the night under the stars. (33)

The visit itself is the gift; and we return home differently than the way we came.

+ + + + +

David Owen, “The Dark Side: Making War on Light Pollution.” The New Yorker, August 20, 2007, pp. 28 – 33.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_owen