Sermon: “Like Seeing God”, Matthew 2:1-12, January 4, 2026

Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12,

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

 Title: “Like Seeing God”

Jesu, joy of our desiring,
Holy wisdom, love most bright;
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light.[i]

Lighten our darkness by your Spirit, enlarge our hope,
increase our faith in you. Amen.

Neither math nor science have ever been my strong suit. I math in grade 10, and did the bare minimum of science. So, the moral kids—if you struggle in math or science there is always a career for you in religion. A living, though not a lucrative one.

Kidding aside, though, recently I’ve been all about science and religion in a book God: the Science, the Evidence, the Dawn of a Revolution.[ii] Authored by a couple of Frenchmen: Michel-Yves Bollore and Olivier Bonnassies, it gathers together recent breakthroughs in physics, mathematics, and biology. In order to make the strongest case for the universe being the result of a Creator. The case for God.

Now, I am usually skeptical of books like this, ones that say “science proves god.” Because they tend to be trying to fit science into a very exact reading of the Bible. I have a neighbour who keeps trying to convince me that the world is flat, for example.

This book isn’t like that, though. It assumes that the present scientific consensus is true. The age of the universe, the “big bang.” The earth is round—though apparently the universe is flat (don’t ask me how that works). Regardless, they accept that “the science” as we know it is true. And believe that all of it adds up in the column in favour of the proposition that God exists, rather than against it.

One of the many examples in the book of “Cosmic Background Radiation.” At this point I just want to apologize to all the science majors and enthusiasts in the congregation just in case I butcher this. And if you’re new to St. George’s this is definitely not what most sermons are like here.

But “Cosmic Background Radiation” is this faint radiation that fills the entire universe. It’s the leftover heat from the earliest universe, released about 380,000 years after the Big Bang when atoms first formed and light could travel freely. It’s gradually cooled as the universe has expanded. And we’re somehow able to detect it, being a few degrees above absolute zero. From it we can measure the universe’s age, its composition, and its structure.

Honestly, I don’t think I entirely understand what this picture means. But apparently it got a lot of scientists hugely excited. It’s essentially residue from the big bang, the original light that sparked the universe.

The late George Smoot, the Astrophysicist and cosmologist, won the 2006 Nobel prize for these images. Here’s how he described them: “if you’re religious, it’s like looking at God,” he said.

“It’s like looking at God. The order is so beautiful and the symmetry so beautiful that you think there’s some design behind it.” When he received the prize, he said this: “It is like seeing God… I saw the universe at its very beginning, I saw the anisotropy [meaning outward moving pattern] that allowed the universe to exist.”[iii]

Basically, the existence of this radiation is clear evidence that the universe had a beginning. It didn’t come out of an accident of natural causes because there were no natural causes prior. It’s an echo of the very moment of creation itself. Not only that, but the way it unfolded is so ordered and precise, the sign of a deeper intelligence behind the universe.

This is why Smoot says it’s like seeing God, or at least evidence of God’s works. “Let there be light, and there was light.” If it’s not airtight evidence for a Creator, it’s certainly suggestive of one. And meshes quite easily with the creation account in the Bible. One that’s not against science, but with it.

So for those of us who worry that Christian belief doesn’t mesh up with the scientific origins of the universe… we can breathe much easier when it comes to our anxieties about whether our belief in a Creator is rational or not. Because it is.

Now, as true as this is. There is still a problem.

Because even if the scientific consensus about the origin of the universe, the fine tuning of natural laws, the origins of life, and even the eventual “heat death” of the cosmos point to a Creator—which I do believe they do. Even then, they still don’t tell us much about who this Creator is. What they must be like, or what they might want from the universe they’ve created. Is this Creator loving? Or not? Or is this Creator above it all, somehow uninterested? Involved? Or aloof? A relentless cruel judge, or an incredibly merciful Father?

The Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov once put our problem like this, rather sarcastically. “Man descended from apes, therefore we must love one another.”[iv] Like, the fact we evolved from other animals says nothing about how we should live, nor does cosmic background radiation. In the same way our best science may suggest that “the heavens declare the glory of God,” in the words of the 19th Psalm, and “the skies the work of God’s hands.” It still says little—if next to nothing—about who this God is who is glorified. Or what exactly this God fashioned us for by the work of his hands.

There may be very good evidence that there is a God. But it still says little, if nothing about who this God is. What this God is like.

Which brings me in a roundabout way today’s scripture. Because it is all about the revealing of God.

The wisemen, you know (they’re not kings—a later addition), they’re scientists of a sort. They’re court magicians, hence “magi.” They come from the East, likely the Persian empire. And they are really like ancient scientists.

Of course, we now know that a lot of their theories are untrue. But, like modern day astronomers and astrophysicists, they have this deep intuition that the sky, the heavenly bodies, and indeed the universe itself is rife with meaning. They can’t help but peer up beyond and think they are seeing something divine at work. What brings them to Judea is that they are literally watching the stars, and this one star seems significant, peculiar. The kind they see when a new king is born. They follow it to Jerusalem.

Their observation brings them to Jerusalem. To the capital, the holy city of God’s people. But, guess what? Their best science doesn’t bring them all the way to where this child lay. Like all our best science brings us to God’s doorstep, their best science won’t bring them through to the Messiah.

So what does?

They approach Herod, the King who’s the brutal puppet dictator for the Romans, and as him if he knows where this baby’s supposed to be born.

Now, Herod wants to have this new king killed cuz he’s the king, right? So he consults his priests and scribes. Like the wise men they’re scholars, but scholars of a different kind. They search the scriptures rather than the sky. The wisdom of Israel, the Hebrew Bible, the record of God’s dealings with God’s people since the beginning. And they come up with a mashup of Micah and 2 Samuel saying the baby’s supposed to be born in Bethlehem. So he summons the wisemen, gives them the info, telling them “yeah… when you find them let me know where. I’d… also… like to… “pay homage” to the new king.”

And you know, I love this part, because as soon as they aim their telescopes the star reappears. They follow it all the way not only to Bethlehem, but the very home where Mary nurses Jesus on her lap. And when they get there… “overwhelmed with joy.”

Why “joy”? Well, because they are having a true epiphany. It’s where the name of the day comes from Epiphany meaning “manifestation.” We believe that at this moment Jesus’ divine identity is manifested to the world. So when they look into Jesus’ eyes… they are looking into the face of the Creator of the universe.

What brought them there? The star led them, their intuition led them, their best science led them. But they could only go so far. It was the scriptures who brought them the rest of the way. And where did it bring them? To Jesus Christ. And they empty out their treasures and worship him.

The scriptures bring them to Jesus. And Jesus is the answer to that question that our best science may get us to the doorstep of, but not through—what is God like? Jesus is who God is. Jesus is what God is like.

This is the realm of revelation. “For it is the God who said,” in the words of the Apostle Paul. “For it is the God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” It says that this same God whose fingerprints George Smoot sees in cosmic background radiation, has made himself known to us on a personal level.

It’s all in the gifts the magi empty before him. Frankincense—the only type of incense allowed to be used in the altar of the temple, meaning that this is God in the flesh. Myrrh, used to anoint for burial, pointing towards Jesus and his death on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, the depth of his love. And gold—meaning he’s a king, one who reigns even over the heat death of the universe, the King of Creation, the one to whom we were created to love and serve eternally. The one whose object is the everlasting joy of his creatures. And his creation.

While our best science answers the question as to “how” the universe was created, Jesus is our answer as the who created it. You could say that it’s not that first star that lead to him, but ultimately every star that leads to him in the end. Look at Jesus and you’ll see the God behind, and in all the math and the equations and the data. Jesus is who the God is. And what God is like.

Which is, in the end, is the best possible news. Because not only is there a God who created it all from the first seconds of it all, right on down to you and to me. Not only that, but the God who created it all is a good God. A God who is like Jesus. A God who is Jesus. A God who is love who not only created all things out of love, but for love.

So much so, that he would take on flesh, suffer and die and be raised for the sake of his most seemingly insignificant creatures—you and me—in order for us to be with him forever.

The late Glenn Jackson, retired minister who attended St. George’s used to say that “you’re a speck of dust on a speck of dust, but the Creator of the universe would die for you.” And that’s just about right.

So, with that in mind, on this Epiphany day, we stand where the Magi once stood—having followed the light as far as it could take us. May the stars, the beauty of God’s creation awaken our wonder, and may it stretch our minds. And most importantly, may the One who was born in Bethlehem meet us face to face to reveal the depth of his love, and our eternal destiny. In him, the light that first burst forth at creation now shines with mercy, humility, and love. And like the Magi, may our response be to worship: to kneel, to offer what we have, and to go home changed, carrying that light into a world still longing to see it.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[i] Martin Janus, “Jesu, Joy of Our Desiring,” trans. Robert Seymour Bridges, Voices United #328.

[ii] Michel-Yves Bollore and Olivier Bonnassies, God the Science the Evidence: The Dawn of a Revolution, trans. Rebecca M. West and Christine Elizabeth Jones (Luxemborg: Polemar, 2025).

[iii] Quoted in Ibid., 269.

[iv] Quoted in Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 596.