The lessons of Epiphany
Commentary
Object:
In many countries, January 6 is a public holiday with parades, parties, and festivities celebrating the visit of the wise men. For some Christian churches, the main celebration of Christ's incarnation occurs on this day. But in the United States, Monday, January 6, 2014, is nothing special in the public sphere. For most of us, this day marks the beginning of our first full week back at work or school after the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Depending on our circumstances, we may meet this return to routine with regret or relief, but it is worth considering how the bright promise of Epiphany intersects with our returns to ordinary life.
Isaiah 60:1-6
This passage comes from Third Isaiah, a period after the Babylonian exile. The exiles had returned to Judah, but found that coming home was anything but glorious. The promises made to the exiles in Second Isaiah had yet to be fulfilled. Instead, economic hardship and an associated resurgence of pagan rituals dominated the land. The temple was beginning to be rebuilt, but recovery was slow. Hope was still desperately needed.
In such dark days, this prophecy proclaims that full restoration is yet to come, and when it does it will be as glorious and joyful as anyone can imagine. The whole world will look to Jerusalem in wonder. Riches will flow into the city as caravan after caravan of camels unload treasure from all the surrounding lands; families still divided by the exile will be joyfully reunited. The LORD will be recognized and honored by costly offerings in a fully restored and glorious temple (Isaiah 60:7).
Third Isaiah speaks to the already-not yet tension that so many of us experience. After celebrating Christmas, we return to daily life and the news of our ever-suffering world and wonder what difference any of it has made. The hopes, joyful celebrations, promises of peace on earth -- where are they now? Like the exiles returned from Babylon, we may find our dreams and hopes withering in the face of all the work before us. Third Isaiah honors this despair and promises that God's full glory is yet to come. Disappointment may be a way station on the path of following God and hearing God's promises, but it is not the end. The fullness of God's glory is still to come. Third Isaiah invites us to continue to live in hope.
Ephesians 3:1-12
Scholarly opinion is divided as to whether Paul himself wrote the letter we now call the Letter to the Ephesians, or whether a disciple of Paul's wrote the letter pseudonymously sometime after Paul's death. Regardless of author, this letter likely was not limited to the church in Ephesus but circulated through a number of Christian communities.
In contrast to Isaiah's promises of a hopeful future to the Jewish people, the author of Ephesians is concerned with God's promises to the Gentiles. Paul, a Jew, received the revelation of Christ's expansive glory that led to his ministry to the Gentiles. "This," the opening word in Ephesians 3:1, refers to Paul's discussion in 2:11-22 of how the Gentiles, formerly strangers and outside the fold of God's chosen people, have been brought into the fold and made fellow citizens of God's household. There are no longer two groups of Jew and Gentile, divided, but a single new humanity (Ephesians 2:15).
Boundless riches are no longer brought to the Jewish people by caravans of camels from other nations, as in Isaiah, but Christ's boundless riches flow out to the Gentiles (Ephesians 3:8). This news is so glorious that Paul's temporal imprisonment cannot dim its cosmic wonder (Ephesians 3:13).
Matthew 2:1-12
In Matthew, we return to a text written for a Jewish audience. Here the Gentiles, in the form of the Magi, approach the newborn Jesus to worship and offer costly gifts. Read in conjunction with today's prophecy from Isaiah, it is possible to see Jesus as the new, promised Jerusalem of the prophets. No longer is the temple a physical structure, but God incarnate. The guiding star brings the nations to its light and kings to the brightness of its dawn (Isaiah 60:3). Unlike Paul's Gentile audience, who apparently needed some reminders of their Jewish origins, Matthew's gospel addressed Jewish Christians who needed assurance that the early church's mission to the Gentiles was indeed God's will. Matthew consults and quotes the prophets repeatedly in interpreting Jesus' messianic mission to Jew and Gentile alike.
Application
The Feast of Epiphany is also called in some churches "The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles," and in making the transition from ancient times to modern, it is worth wondering who we would consider as Gentiles today. In the transition from Christmas celebrations back to the workaday world, many of us are moving from time spent with "insiders" -- family, friends, communities of faith -- to time spent with "outsiders" -- work colleagues and fellow students, members of the public, people with whom we may have much less in common. These outsiders are of various faiths or none at all, of varying ethnicities and social classes. The word Gentile derives from the Latin gentilis, which means relating to a tribe or clan. It is used to translate the Hebrew goy (plural is goyim), which generally means "nations," though it can also carry a connotation of swarms of animals. The story of the Magi visiting the infant Jesus is a humbling one if we truly listen to it: In Matthew's gospel, it was people outside the faith who first recognized and named the presence of God-with-us. It was people who looked different, who dressed differently, who spoke different languages, who came from different countries. Who are the outsiders in the communities where you serve? Are they immigrants who look and sound and act differently from local norms? Are they the homeless, carrying their possessions or pushing overflowing shopping carts around town? Are they disaffected youth hanging around with tattoos, strange hair, and multiple piercings? It may be that they, these outsiders, have abilities to lead the way to God that we lack. What could happen if we genuinely listen to them?
Epiphany presents a time when we can challenge a few of the pervasive cultural assumptions about the Magi. Nowhere does Matthew's gospel (and Matthew is the only gospel that tells their story) say there were three. We know there was more than one; perhaps there were two, perhaps a dozen or more? The assumption of three came from the three gifts, but that does not mean there were three givers. The glorious hymn "We Three Kings of Orient Are" has profoundly shaped our images of these men, but the Bible does not say these men were kings or even wise. The Greek word is magi, which is related to the word "magic." The Magi were magicians, astrologers perhaps, which at that time often carried the negative connotation of trickster or con artist -- entertainers, yes, but not to be trusted. Think of the bumbling fortune-teller Professor Marvel who Dorothy meets early on in The Wizard of Oz, traveling on with his caravan from one town to the next. The Magi may have been wise, royal kings from the East, or they may have been itinerant jesters, staying one step ahead of the law as they moved from one town to the next. If you wish to bring in Luke's Christmas story, you could also discuss how the shepherds too were outsiders -- scruffy, unbathed men who lived outside of town and regular domestic life, except perhaps when they got paid and came into town on a spree. These are the people to whom the angels appear announcing Jesus' birth. And a band of traveling, possible charlatans are the ones who spy and follow the star. Both shepherds and Magi were out in the wild nighttime to be scanning the skies, when good, godly people would have been safely closed up indoors. The guiding light, the heavenly hosts are to be found in the darkness, not in the safety of unexamined lives and unchallenged assumptions. Consider what the darkness might be: our fears, a grave illness, a death, the unknown, a personal failure, spiritual doubt. You will have your own stories and knowledge from your own lives and those of your parishioners to consider. Light comes in the darkness, be it in Isaiah's prophecy to a discouraged people or in the stories of Christmas and Epiphany. To find the light, we may need to step into the darkness or listen to the outsiders in our lives.
An Alternative Application
In the post-Christmas letdown, as we anticipate bills rather than festivities and new toys are already broken or cast aside, it may be worth considering the use of gold and frankincense in our readings from Isaiah and Matthew. In both cases, these costly treasures were gifts to God, freely given in adoration and worship. No bottom line considered, no appreciation from the recipient anticipated. The joy was in the gift itself and in simply being in the presence of the holy. If we come out of Christmas feeling used up, perhaps we need to ask ourselves if, like the Magi, we have simply stopped and rested in adoration of God in Jesus. God calls us to good works, but God also calls us to worship -- to give ourselves to God's glory, because that is one of the best ways God has to renew and heal us. We worship with all that we have -- our voices, bodies, worldly goods -- and in giving all to God, God enters into all that we have and are. The English theologian Evelyn Underhill considered worship the supreme expression of human life in relation to God, so much so that her culminating theological work bore simply the name Worship. In Worship she offers a generous list of what she calls "various expressions of genuine Christian worship":
The monk or nun rising to recite the Night Office that the Church's praise of God may never cease, and the Quaker waiting in silent assurance on the Spirit given at Pentecost; the ritualist, ordering with care every detail of a complicated ceremonial that God may be glorified thereby, and the old woman content to boil her potatoes in the same sacred intention; the Catholic burning a candle before the symbolic image of the Sacred Heart or confidently seeking the same Divine Presence in the tabernacle, and the Methodist or Lutheran pouring out his devotion in hymns to the Name of Jesus; the Orthodox bowed down in speechless adoration at the culminating moment of the divine mysteries, and the Salvationist marching to drum and tambourine behind the banner of the Cross -- all these are here at one.
(Evelyn Underhill, Worship [Harper & Brothers, 1937], p. 68)
A weekday celebration of the Epiphany with a smaller congregation could lend itself to a less formal sermon time in which the congregation could be invited to reflect on their own experiences of worship and then simply sit in silence together for a time. Regardless, if the busyness of the holiday season has squeezed out a sense of genuine worship from parishioners' lives, Epiphany can provide a day and a season to reclaim it.
Isaiah 60:1-6
This passage comes from Third Isaiah, a period after the Babylonian exile. The exiles had returned to Judah, but found that coming home was anything but glorious. The promises made to the exiles in Second Isaiah had yet to be fulfilled. Instead, economic hardship and an associated resurgence of pagan rituals dominated the land. The temple was beginning to be rebuilt, but recovery was slow. Hope was still desperately needed.
In such dark days, this prophecy proclaims that full restoration is yet to come, and when it does it will be as glorious and joyful as anyone can imagine. The whole world will look to Jerusalem in wonder. Riches will flow into the city as caravan after caravan of camels unload treasure from all the surrounding lands; families still divided by the exile will be joyfully reunited. The LORD will be recognized and honored by costly offerings in a fully restored and glorious temple (Isaiah 60:7).
Third Isaiah speaks to the already-not yet tension that so many of us experience. After celebrating Christmas, we return to daily life and the news of our ever-suffering world and wonder what difference any of it has made. The hopes, joyful celebrations, promises of peace on earth -- where are they now? Like the exiles returned from Babylon, we may find our dreams and hopes withering in the face of all the work before us. Third Isaiah honors this despair and promises that God's full glory is yet to come. Disappointment may be a way station on the path of following God and hearing God's promises, but it is not the end. The fullness of God's glory is still to come. Third Isaiah invites us to continue to live in hope.
Ephesians 3:1-12
Scholarly opinion is divided as to whether Paul himself wrote the letter we now call the Letter to the Ephesians, or whether a disciple of Paul's wrote the letter pseudonymously sometime after Paul's death. Regardless of author, this letter likely was not limited to the church in Ephesus but circulated through a number of Christian communities.
In contrast to Isaiah's promises of a hopeful future to the Jewish people, the author of Ephesians is concerned with God's promises to the Gentiles. Paul, a Jew, received the revelation of Christ's expansive glory that led to his ministry to the Gentiles. "This," the opening word in Ephesians 3:1, refers to Paul's discussion in 2:11-22 of how the Gentiles, formerly strangers and outside the fold of God's chosen people, have been brought into the fold and made fellow citizens of God's household. There are no longer two groups of Jew and Gentile, divided, but a single new humanity (Ephesians 2:15).
Boundless riches are no longer brought to the Jewish people by caravans of camels from other nations, as in Isaiah, but Christ's boundless riches flow out to the Gentiles (Ephesians 3:8). This news is so glorious that Paul's temporal imprisonment cannot dim its cosmic wonder (Ephesians 3:13).
Matthew 2:1-12
In Matthew, we return to a text written for a Jewish audience. Here the Gentiles, in the form of the Magi, approach the newborn Jesus to worship and offer costly gifts. Read in conjunction with today's prophecy from Isaiah, it is possible to see Jesus as the new, promised Jerusalem of the prophets. No longer is the temple a physical structure, but God incarnate. The guiding star brings the nations to its light and kings to the brightness of its dawn (Isaiah 60:3). Unlike Paul's Gentile audience, who apparently needed some reminders of their Jewish origins, Matthew's gospel addressed Jewish Christians who needed assurance that the early church's mission to the Gentiles was indeed God's will. Matthew consults and quotes the prophets repeatedly in interpreting Jesus' messianic mission to Jew and Gentile alike.
Application
The Feast of Epiphany is also called in some churches "The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles," and in making the transition from ancient times to modern, it is worth wondering who we would consider as Gentiles today. In the transition from Christmas celebrations back to the workaday world, many of us are moving from time spent with "insiders" -- family, friends, communities of faith -- to time spent with "outsiders" -- work colleagues and fellow students, members of the public, people with whom we may have much less in common. These outsiders are of various faiths or none at all, of varying ethnicities and social classes. The word Gentile derives from the Latin gentilis, which means relating to a tribe or clan. It is used to translate the Hebrew goy (plural is goyim), which generally means "nations," though it can also carry a connotation of swarms of animals. The story of the Magi visiting the infant Jesus is a humbling one if we truly listen to it: In Matthew's gospel, it was people outside the faith who first recognized and named the presence of God-with-us. It was people who looked different, who dressed differently, who spoke different languages, who came from different countries. Who are the outsiders in the communities where you serve? Are they immigrants who look and sound and act differently from local norms? Are they the homeless, carrying their possessions or pushing overflowing shopping carts around town? Are they disaffected youth hanging around with tattoos, strange hair, and multiple piercings? It may be that they, these outsiders, have abilities to lead the way to God that we lack. What could happen if we genuinely listen to them?
Epiphany presents a time when we can challenge a few of the pervasive cultural assumptions about the Magi. Nowhere does Matthew's gospel (and Matthew is the only gospel that tells their story) say there were three. We know there was more than one; perhaps there were two, perhaps a dozen or more? The assumption of three came from the three gifts, but that does not mean there were three givers. The glorious hymn "We Three Kings of Orient Are" has profoundly shaped our images of these men, but the Bible does not say these men were kings or even wise. The Greek word is magi, which is related to the word "magic." The Magi were magicians, astrologers perhaps, which at that time often carried the negative connotation of trickster or con artist -- entertainers, yes, but not to be trusted. Think of the bumbling fortune-teller Professor Marvel who Dorothy meets early on in The Wizard of Oz, traveling on with his caravan from one town to the next. The Magi may have been wise, royal kings from the East, or they may have been itinerant jesters, staying one step ahead of the law as they moved from one town to the next. If you wish to bring in Luke's Christmas story, you could also discuss how the shepherds too were outsiders -- scruffy, unbathed men who lived outside of town and regular domestic life, except perhaps when they got paid and came into town on a spree. These are the people to whom the angels appear announcing Jesus' birth. And a band of traveling, possible charlatans are the ones who spy and follow the star. Both shepherds and Magi were out in the wild nighttime to be scanning the skies, when good, godly people would have been safely closed up indoors. The guiding light, the heavenly hosts are to be found in the darkness, not in the safety of unexamined lives and unchallenged assumptions. Consider what the darkness might be: our fears, a grave illness, a death, the unknown, a personal failure, spiritual doubt. You will have your own stories and knowledge from your own lives and those of your parishioners to consider. Light comes in the darkness, be it in Isaiah's prophecy to a discouraged people or in the stories of Christmas and Epiphany. To find the light, we may need to step into the darkness or listen to the outsiders in our lives.
An Alternative Application
In the post-Christmas letdown, as we anticipate bills rather than festivities and new toys are already broken or cast aside, it may be worth considering the use of gold and frankincense in our readings from Isaiah and Matthew. In both cases, these costly treasures were gifts to God, freely given in adoration and worship. No bottom line considered, no appreciation from the recipient anticipated. The joy was in the gift itself and in simply being in the presence of the holy. If we come out of Christmas feeling used up, perhaps we need to ask ourselves if, like the Magi, we have simply stopped and rested in adoration of God in Jesus. God calls us to good works, but God also calls us to worship -- to give ourselves to God's glory, because that is one of the best ways God has to renew and heal us. We worship with all that we have -- our voices, bodies, worldly goods -- and in giving all to God, God enters into all that we have and are. The English theologian Evelyn Underhill considered worship the supreme expression of human life in relation to God, so much so that her culminating theological work bore simply the name Worship. In Worship she offers a generous list of what she calls "various expressions of genuine Christian worship":
The monk or nun rising to recite the Night Office that the Church's praise of God may never cease, and the Quaker waiting in silent assurance on the Spirit given at Pentecost; the ritualist, ordering with care every detail of a complicated ceremonial that God may be glorified thereby, and the old woman content to boil her potatoes in the same sacred intention; the Catholic burning a candle before the symbolic image of the Sacred Heart or confidently seeking the same Divine Presence in the tabernacle, and the Methodist or Lutheran pouring out his devotion in hymns to the Name of Jesus; the Orthodox bowed down in speechless adoration at the culminating moment of the divine mysteries, and the Salvationist marching to drum and tambourine behind the banner of the Cross -- all these are here at one.
(Evelyn Underhill, Worship [Harper & Brothers, 1937], p. 68)
A weekday celebration of the Epiphany with a smaller congregation could lend itself to a less formal sermon time in which the congregation could be invited to reflect on their own experiences of worship and then simply sit in silence together for a time. Regardless, if the busyness of the holiday season has squeezed out a sense of genuine worship from parishioners' lives, Epiphany can provide a day and a season to reclaim it.
