What is the Epiphany, the
feast we celebrate today? Growing up, the Epiphany always had the feel of the
end of something. Practically, the Epiphany marked the end of the Christmas
season. (In the Church, officially, Christmastime ends with the Baptism of the
Lord, which we celebrate tomorrow). The Epiphany was the “best before date” of
the Christmas tree. Decorations were taken down and put into storage for
another year. Family and friends who had visited over Christmastime had gone
home; back to work or school; back to their regular, everyday lives. The seemingly
endless supply of turkey sandwiches made from Christmas and New Year leftovers
had finally dwindled. Christmas carols would no longer be sung or played after
the Epiphany. And, on the Epiphany, our three wise men figurines would at long last
complete their exhausting journey across the living room to the Nativity scene…
Of course, we might imagine, the real journey of the wise men, of which we hear
in today’s Gospel and of which our Nativity scene figurines remind us, was truly
exhausting, even if they did travel with joy to meet our Saviour!
Even in the Church, the
Epiphany has the feel of an ending; a destination. In fact this, I would say,
is the purpose of every Mass; every time we gather to worship in this place,
not only the Epiphany. Like the wise men in Matthew’s Gospel, we bring gifts.
We bring ourselves here to adore the Christ, our Lord; “to pay him homage.” And
yet what if I were to say that, while the Epiphany, like every time we gather
here to worship, is a kind of destination, it is also a beginning?
After all, what is an
“epiphany”? “Epiphany” is originally a Greek word that means “showing forth” or
“making known.” And so who is made known on the Epiphany? Of course, God is
made known; Jesus Christ, God made human, is made known on his Epiphany.
Our readings today are clear
that this celebration of the Epiphany is God’s
Epiphany; God’s being “made known” to and in our world. St. Paul uses the language
of making known word for word in his letter to the Ephesians from which we hear
today. The message St. Paul proclaims, that of his “commission of” and ongoing
encounter with “God’s grace,” is a message centered on an ongoing epiphany over
time. Through St. Paul’s letters, our Gospels, our Bible— Old and New
Testaments— God’s Epiphany has been made timeless. And God continues to be made
known to us today.
God’s Epiphany, God’s making
himself known to our world, began from the moment God breathed his spirit over
the deep and said, “‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” God’s Epiphany
continued through the Law of Moses and the prophets, the “revelation” to which
St. Paul refers in his letter to the Ephesians. God has been made known to us in
full as Jesus Christ, God’s Epiphany in human form. And God’s Epiphany, this
process of eternity being made known to us in and over time, will be completed
at the end of time when Jesus Christ returns in glory.
Is it not remarkable, though,
that in all this process of epiphany, God does not make himself known as an
obviously powerful ruler? In fact the only earthly ruler involved in this
Epiphany event as Matthew presents it is the weak and fearful Herod. No, among
the first people to experience this high point of God’s Epiphany, the birth of
our Messiah, Jesus Christ, are magi from the East, probably astrologers, who
looked to the stars for signs of the divine. They are outsiders; non-Jews from
another land. They do not even belong to Jesus’ own people.
Yet God includes these magi
among the first to witness his greatest Epiphany, the Lord and Saviour of the
universe God created and blessed, the stars to which the magi looked. God meets
these magi where they are. And from there God guides the magi to the Messiah by
a star, the best way these magi knew to encounter God.
God guides the magi from the
truth they know, the presence of God in the created universe, already a kind of
epiphany or God’s “making known,” to a still greater Truth. The God of almost
fourteen billion majestic light years (and counting) of visible universe now
makes himself known to magi as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem!
God encounters these “wise men
from the East,” searchers for God in the stars, and guides them by a star to where God is made known to
the world as a human infant in a manger. God guides these magi from truth to
Truth; from epiphany to Epiphany. The magi arrive with their “gifts of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh” to adore the newborn Messiah. Matthew says that “when
they saw that the star had stopped, the magi were overwhelmed with joy.” In
their great joy, “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod”—
because true joy never denies the sin of the world that Herod represents, nor
will the sin of the world ever extinguish our joy in God made known to us— the
magi return “to their own country.”
It is at this point, where
Matthew’s Gospel leaves off today, when the work of the magi is only beginning.
Back in “their own country,” we might imagine, the magi will be entrusted with
proclaiming the Epiphany, God of the heavens made known as a human infant in a
manger, to their own people. And the same is true of us. Our work of Christmas;
our work of being God’s Epiphany, of making God known in our world, begins ever-anew,
here and now.
We are, in a sense, the magi
of our time, whom God is leading from truth to Truth, to make God known in our
world, to bring with us the gift of our presence; our worship; our joy; our
works of justice and peace to pay homage to our Messiah. After this Eucharistic
celebration, we will return to our homes. In the Church, we will return to
Ordinary Time; to keeping time until Christ returns in glory. Our friends and extended
family members may have returned to their homes, too. Decorations have been
stored for another year. Christmas trees have been taken down. But we, like the
magi, are not at the end but at the beginning of a journey, on the cusp of an
epiphany, because we are God’s Epiphany to our world today.
How is this so? Howard
Thurman, an African American theologian and civil rights leader in the United
States in the 1960s, wrote a poem entitled, “When the Song of the Angels is
Stilled” to remind us of how we are to make God known to our world by our
striving for social justice. Our work for justice only begins with our Christmas
and Epiphany celebrations, Thurman once said, “When the song of angels is
stilled.”
A few days ago, a Sister of
St. Joseph who taught a course on Catholic Social Teaching I took in seminary
in Toronto shared an adaptation of Thurman’s poem, written by Michael
Dougherty, co-chair of the Social Justice Committee at Sacred Heart Cathedral
in Whitehorse. (Dougherty’s reflection is in the next-to-most-recent edition of
the Prairie Messenger, for anybody who wants to find it and pray over it.)
Dougherty writes:
When the carols have been
stilled,
when the star-topped tree is
taken down,
when family and friends are
gone home,
when we are back to our schedules,
the work of Christmas begins:
To welcome the refugee,
to heal a broken planet,
to feed the hungry,
to build bridges of trust, not
walls of fear,
to share our gifts,
to seek justice and peace for
all people,
to bring his light to the
world.
My sisters and
brothers, these are ways in which we might be like the magi to our time; to our
world. Our “work of Christmas”; our work of bringing God’s Epiphany to our “own
country”; to our world, making the light of Christ, our God, known in our world
and in our time, now begins.
