1-6-20 - Happy Epiphany!

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

One of the main Epiphany stories is the one about the wise men chasing their star to Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1-12). Today we celebrate their arrival at that humble house, their gifts to the child. More important, we celebrate their seeing with their eyes what they already accepted on faith – that this king existed and was important, no matter how insignificant he appeared.

This story of the epiphany, revelation of truth to the magi is a great Epiphany story in church tradition, but it is not the only one. The miracle at Cana, where Jesus turned gallons of water into finest wine, is a traditional Epiphany reading, as Jesus reveals his power at a wedding feast. So is the story of his transfiguration, and so is the gospel appointed for next Sunday, Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River at the beginning of his public ministry. This light of Christ is too great to be contained in just one story or one group of people – it keeps popping forth to this one and that one, all over the place.

Until the fourth century, when the Roman church began to focus celebrations of Christ’s nativity at the supposed date of his birth, shortly after the winter solstice, the Church celebrated his birth at Epiphany, especially at the great centers of Christendom like Constantinople, Jerusalem and Alexandria. Epiphany was the great festival of God's light inbreaking the world’s darkness, as auspicious an occasion for baptism as Easter. Epiphany celebrated the unveiling, the revealing, the manifesting, the making known of the mystery of the ages about God’s great plan to bring the world back into restored relationship through Christ. It encapsulates all the “a-ha!” moments the world has known.

When and how has that truth been revealed to you? Today, take a little time to recall the moments when God has seemed present, or you have experienced Christ in some way, or felt the power of God’s Spirit move in you. Your epiphany might have come through your intellect, grasping a part of the Christian story in some way you hadn’t before.

Or it might come through your emotions, feeling overcome by joy or gratitude or love – or belovedness. It might come through your senses, as you have tasted or felt or smelled or heard or seen evidence of God. It might have come when you were on the move, or still.

That’s a wonderful thing about God in Christ – through the Holy Spirit, God makes God’s self accessible to us in ways that fit us best, in all our multiple diversity, in all our unique singularity.

I pray that remembering just one moment of connection, of “a-ha!,” will fill us with joy and wonder, and strengthen us to make the light of Christ known for another. For when we see someone else “get it,” lo and behold, we get another epiphany ourselves. it's a gift we never stop receiving, and more as we give it away.

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