Schwarzschild’s Star
We all, myself very much included, so wanted this to be the year that we could gather together safely and happily, unmasked and stress-free. This, my second Christmas Eve with you all, was supposed to be back to normal, back to the quietly joyful Christmas Eve candlelight service we all so look forward to. But here we are—many on Zoom; a much smaller number than usual in the pews. Still waiting. I can’t help but always go back to a quote from the theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Advent is a time of waiting. Our whole life, however, is Advent—that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: ‘On earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.’ Learn to wait, because he has promised to come.”
We can still look forward to Christmas tomorrow morning. We can still be with our families and open presents and celebrate the birth of Jesus. But we’re still waiting, aren’t we? We’re still stuck in what seems like this never-ending cycle of variants and mutations, politicizing basic things like keeping each other as safe and healthy as possible. Our waiting for Christmas 2021 will be over tomorrow. But our waiting for peace on earth, for a new heaven and a new earth continues. Our whole life is Advent.
My favorite book I read this year, which is now one of my favorite books period, was a book by the author Benjamin Labatut called When We Cease to Understand the World. It’s a strange little book, partly nonfiction, partly fiction about science and physics and the cosmos, and about the agony, and sometimes madness, that comes from making ground-breaking, but frightening scientific discoveries. One section of the book is about the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild, the man who, in the early 1900’s, discovered the equation that showed the existence of black holes. But before his universe-changing discovery, before his traumatic experience fighting in the trenches in WWI, he was simply a boy who was obsessed with the sky. Labatut writes,
“[Schwarzschild] had grown up obsessed by light. At seven, he took apart his father’s glasses and placed the lenses inside a rolled-up newspaper to show his brother the rings of Saturn. He passed entire nights without sleep, peering up at the sky, even when it was completely cloudy. His father, unnerved to see his son spellbound by that darkened firmament, asked him what he was searching for. The boy told him there was a star hiding behind the clouds that he alone could see.”
A star hiding that he alone could see. What I would give to have some of young Schwarzschild’s idealism right now. What I would give to have some of his imagination and obsession with lights that we cannot see, but we know without a doubt, deep down, are there.
Because tonight, this service, this whole season of Advent—it’s all about finding a light in the darkness. It’s all about following a star to the hope, to peace, to joy, to love. But it’s also about waiting for that light. And it’s about trusting that it’s always there, even when it’s impossible to see.
As with many brilliant minds, Schwarzschild was incredibly sensitive to the world around him, and increasingly anxious about politics and the violence that led to WWI, the uncertainty and fragility of society, of the world, of the universe. And the more brilliant discoveries he made about the cosmos, the more anxious and frightened he became. Because the more he uncovered, the less the universe seemed to make sense. When he discovered the probable existence of black holes, he spiraled. Labatut imagines Schwarzschild desperately wondering, “Just imagine how far we have fallen into uncertainty if the human imagination cannot find a single place to lay its anchor, if not a single stone in the world has the right to be considered immobile!” He spent much of the rest of his life, when he wasn’t fighting the trenches of WWI, actually working to prove himself wrong. He was obsessed with finding order in the world, he was obsessed with finding this anchor, something to ground him, some discovery, some equation, that would make perfect sense of the universe. After all, isn’t that why scientists, artists, etc., do what they do? We all want to make sense of the universe. We want to stop living in fear, in uncertainty. The thing that really sent Schwarzschild into despair was, when it came to black holes, Labatut writes, was that “Light could never escape from it, so our eyes were incapable of seeing it.”
But I’m still thinking of Schwarzschild as a little boy. I’m thinking of him looking up at that star hidden behind the clouds that only he could see. I’m thinking about how this invisible star, this imagined star, didn’t frighten him, but rather excited him, made him passionately curious. It was before the Germany he lived in crumbled, before the violence and the uncertainty of the world he lived in filled him dread, with despair. It was when he could still see those stars obscured by dark, foreboding clouds.
In the stories and passages we’ll hear tonight, there will be light in the darkness. The shepherds and the magi will follow a bright star to humankind’s own light, in the form of a baby in a humble manger. But a light in the darkness is easy to see. A bright star on a clear night is a natural compass to bring us exactly where we need to go. But these days, the skies don’t seem so clear. These days, the light is harder to see. Just when we thought the clouds were parting, the sky became overcast again, obscuring the path we’re supposed to take.
So tonight, we can find some hope in these stories of dark, clear nights that led royalty and humble shepherds alike to the baby Jesus. But under our masks, our winter coats, under this cloud of COVID and partisanship and violence that has enveloped our country, it’s hard to imagine a star could ever be so clear right now.
And so even after tonight, we continue to wait for that star, that light, to break free from its prison of clouds. So as we wait, in the meantime, let us remember a young Karl Schwarzschild, before the horrors of war and this uncertain world brought upon despair upon him—let’s remember that brilliant, imaginative, and hopeful child looking up at the cloudy sky absolutely knowing that there was a guiding star there. Let’s remember Schwarzschild’s star. And let’s know that even in these dark and clouded times, that hope is there, that light is ever present, even when we cannot see it. Amen.
