This morning we’re celebrating Epiphany. Bit of a church liturgy lesson for you before we begin. Contrary to what the advertising industry would have you believe, the Christmas season starts on Christmas Eve and lasts twelve days, culminating in Epiphany. You know the super annoyingly repetitive Christmas song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, that’s what it is about. These twelve days between Christmas Day and the Feast of the Epiphany. This, fun fact, is why I won’t let you sing Christmas carols in December, because it’s not Christmas in December, it’s Advent.
The Feast of the Epiphany marks the arrival of the wise men to visit the infant Jesus. The wise men’s arrival is important, not because it fills out our manger scene and provides lectors everywhere a chance to stumble trying to pronounce frankincense, but because it demonstrates that the king of the Jews is not just for the Jews. Gentiles too are drawn into this rising light. Some Christian traditions also celebrate the baptism of Jesus and his first miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana. These three events, known as the three great epiphanies, all mark the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, as a creator of communities, as a provider of abundances, and as the beloved Son of God. It is a nod to these traditions, that I scrapped the normal readings for today in favor of these three Gospel stories.
All this is super interesting, but why does it matter? Liturgy shouldn’t be something we do just because this is the way we’ve always done it. If the practices stop having meaning to us, then the practices themselves should stop. What does Epiphany really mean?
Well for that question, I used one of my favorite techniques. I looked up the definition of the word “epiphany.” Epiphany, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “an usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.” Which, again, interesting, but it still felt lacking. OK, so Epiphany is the manifestation of Christ. That makes sense. There’s a hymn about it, which we would definitely be singing today if I’d written this sermon before the bulletin went to print, but alas I didn’t so we are not, “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise.” It goes, “Songs of thankfulness and praise, Jesus, Lord to thee we raise; manifested by the star to the sages from afar… Manifest at Jordan’s stream, prophet priest and king supreme; manifest in pow’r divine, changing water into wine.” And then you might remember the chorus, “anthems be to thee addressed, God in flesh made manifest.”
But describing Epiphany as “the manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of Christ” still didn’t do it for me. It still felt too formal, too academic, more like a moderately interesting theological talking point than something that really mattered to my being. So I took my dictionary definition one step further, and I looked up the word manifestation. Which Merriam Webster defines as “an event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies something.” And for whatever reason, that definition did it for me. Suddenly the whole thing clicked into place, the whole purpose, the whole reason, that Epiphany is helpful and useful. Because Epiphany offers us yet another way, maybe even three more ways, to see the central promise of Christmas, that the Word became flesh, that the divine came into our world and was embodied before us in the person of Jesus. The event of Christ’s birth, the action of his being born, the object of Jesus himself clearly shows us, embodies for us a God who loves us so much that God comes down to us, in an embodied form.
The birth of Jesus is the great epiphany, the great revelation, the great manifestation of God with us that began this Christmas season. And just to make sure we cannot miss it, this season of Christmas, of Christ with us, ends with three more epiphanies, each revealing a different and deeper aspect of this thing that is God. My pastor in California once described God as a theater in the round, looking at what is directly in front of us only reveals a portion of the scene. These multiple epiphany stories let us move our field of vision to see more of the nature of God in Christ. In the coming of the Wise Men to the infant Jesus we see a God who is not just for the chosen people of Israel, but is for all people, both Jews and gentiles. The wise men followed their own path, their own knowledge of the stars, and it led them to Jesus. We see the building conflict between King Jesus and King Herod, between the kingdom of the world as portrayed in Herod, a character portrayed as seemingly powerful and independent, rich, heartless and cruel, and yet in reality he was a prisoner of his own paranoia, and the kingdom of God, a kingdom ruled inexplicably by the weakest, most dependent being imaginable, a newborn human infant. The event of the Wise Men coming to Jesus, the action of Herod’s inability to contain it, clearly show for us a God that is so powerful that even in the form of an infant, God causes the rulers of the world to tremble, so expansive that gentiles following their own traditions find a place for themselves around the manger.
In the event of Christ’s baptism are clearly shown a God who comes to where the people are gathered, who enters into the people’s own traditions, who models for us the importance of engaging in ritual activities to experience God’s promise in our own embodied beings. In the action of the heavens being rended, we are clearly shown a God who will tear apart heaven and earth to be with us. In the object of the Holy Spirit descending, in the sound of a voice from heaven we hear the proclamation, you are my Son, my Daughter, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.
And Jesus’ first miracle, which in John’s Gospel are appropriately called signs, in the action of turning water into wine, we are clearly shown a God who provides in abundance, more than enough and the best of the best. A God who brings joy, and fun, and celebration.
All of these different aspects of God are shown to us in these epiphany stories. They do not reveal everything about God, for God is too vast, too deep, too rich for our comprehending. But they make manifest, they clearly show God embodied with us in the person of Jesus, and what that embodied love looks like in our world.
All these stories, all these different glimpses of the way God is made manifest, is making God’s presence known, is clearly showing up and being shown to us, helps us learn to look for how God is revealing Godself to us still. In the waters of our baptism, in the bread and wine of communion, in a gathered community who stands up for the alone and outcast. Throughout this season after Epiphany, we will be celebrating that while we live in a world of competing values and conflicting loyalities, God still shows up here, in this place, to us. You’ll notice we have a new banner this morning. Today the banner is white and gold, a sparkling reminder of the divinity and kingship of God. As the season goes on it will grow greener as we move deeper through the season, the green a reminder of our own walks of faith, the daily practice of discipleship and spirituality that grows faith in us. Then it will slowly transition back into white and gold as we transition into the Transfiguration. This shifting, dancing blend of green and gold echoes the movement of God in our world, growing us, moving us, yet still ever, presently, solidly God. For it is not God that changes in these epiphany stories, it is us. We who have more of God revealed to us, find ourselves growing, changing, shifting, to encompass our uncovering understanding of God’s love.
Dear people of God, the good news of the Epiphany is not that God is now with us, it is that God always was with us, and we are learning more the depth of what God’s presence means. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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