Epiphany 2004
Deacon Richard Buhrer
Dictionary.com has this to say about “epiphany:”
e·piph·a·ny
n. pl. e·piph·a·nies
1. Epiphany
a. A Christian feast celebrating the manifestation of the divine nature of Jesus to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi.
b. January 6, on which this feast is traditionally observed.
2. A revelatory manifestation of a divine being.
a. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
b. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: “I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself” (Frank Maier).
Epiphany is a very ancient feast in the church. It actually predates the feast of Christmas and has always been celebrated very consistently from the earliest times on January 6. In the eastern church, the feast celebrates three events through which the divinity of Christ was revealed to the world: the coming of the wise men, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, and the wedding feast at Cana when Jesus changed the water into wine and revealed his glory so that his disciples believed in him. In the eastern church, the celebration focuses on the baptism of the Lord and is celebrated by going outside to a place of living water, like a stream or a lake or the sea and blessing the water because (as they believe) Jesus sanctified the waters of the earth by descending into them at his baptism.
In the west, we have focused on the coming of the wise men to the point that in some places the feast is referred to as the feast of the three kings. The problem with this is that the theological significance of the feast is easily lost: it becomes something the wise men did rather than something that God did.
The great truth that we celebrate tonight is that God has, in great mercy, chosen to reveal the divinity to us, not just to the People of Israel, but to the whole human family through the coming in the flesh of his Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The story we read today in the Gospel is a Jewish form of discourse called “Midrash.” Once a canon (i.e., approved scriptural text) is closed, the problem facing the community is the problem of "searching out" the canon. Midrash is a method of reading the Bible as an Eternal text, and is the result of applying a set of interpretive principles used by the community to guide one in reading the scripture, in order to focus one's reading. The ultimate goal of midrash is to "search out" the fullness of what was spoken by the Divine Voice. It can be in the form of parable, interpretation or legend. This is a story told to open and unfold the truth of the Scripture about the place of Gentiles in the kingdom of God.
It is very important for us to focus on how God chooses to reveal Herself to us. For all of the beautiful pictures of richly clad and crowned wise men coming to the manger in Bethlehem, this was not really any kind of “photo-op.” Had there been newspapers and TV at the time, none of this would have come to the notice of audiences worldwide. This was not an event equivalent in scope and magnitude to the Tsunami in Asia or the war in Iraq. None of us would have set up and taken notice of what happened.
God chose to manifest Himself in poverty and hiddeness, in weakness and dependency, in humble surroundings with all the weakness and dependency of human infants. For all of the Old Testament poetry about the Lord manifest in the storm and the cataclysm, that same Lord chose the most unimpressive possible manifestation of his Glory to the World at large.
All this is, of course shown in contrast to King Herod in the frame of Matthew’s gospel. Herod was a real historical figure and the events of this story are entirely in keeping with his character as it comes down to us from the historical record. Herod was an Idumean, a member of a Bedouin tribe from the wilderness of the Near East near Jerusalem. In his cruel and paranoid rise to power, he purchased the kingship of Judea from the Roman overlords by a series of enormous public works in the region. As an example, he built the city of Caesarea that we read so much of in the New Testament. And of course, he was in the process of rebuilding the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the time of the ministry of Jesus. He was a master of media manipulation in the setting of the Roman Empire of the first century. He and Saddam Hussein were cut from the same bolt of cloth. Both ruled a nation by means of terror and oppression. Apart from the adjustment to the technology of the modern world, Herod would have felt at home in so much of our world since power is so often maintained through terror. Both Herod and Saddam lived in a large family with high levels of contempt and competition between siblings and between father and sons. Violence was a constant experience within the family and in the Kingdom.
His choice to hunt down the newborn king of the Jews and kill him was not an unintelligent one. Nearly any Jew would have been preferable to the Jewish establishment as the leader of the Kingdom of Judea. His position could only be maintained through constant vigilance and the demonstration of fearful power. He probably did not slaughter the innocents (because no record of such a horrendous deed survives in the historical record) but he we entirely capable of doing this.
Jesus, on the other hand, represents a different king of king—a King royal through the complete gift of himself on behalf of those he loved, a self-emptying king (not a self-interested king like Herod). Jesus survives because his father could dream dreams and because His family could flee from the power of the king to preserve the life of the king.
We, in our turn, are called to imitate this self-emptying love, to abandon self-interest and self-protection and to offer the gift of ourselves to the world, just as Jesus did. Christianity and civilization are at odds with each other over the issue of self-interest and self-protection
We are called to be the light that draws the nations to God. We are the city on the hilltop. We are the lamp on the lamp stand. We are the light of the world. We are the epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.
Jesus gave us the example: we are not called to summon the media, to advertise the coming attractions, to be the next big thing. We are called to do this as Jesus did it: in smallness and hiddenness, in weakness and brokenness, in humility and trust, in faith, hope and love.
Let us contemplate the smallness and hiddenness of the first epiphany and be ready in our hearts to imitate it in all of the tiny, insignificant interactions of our lives. Let us pray to be true to the meaning of Christ’s infancy, to be protected from the Herods of this world, and to accomplish our mission that we received in the Lord at our Baptism. AMEN.
