Everyday Epiphanies

Today we celebrate Epiphany, and while most American Protestants could not really tell you what Epiphany is all about, the celebration actually is more important than Christmas in much of the Christian world.  When I was in Ethiopia for Christmas one year, I was amazed to discover Christmas came and went with very little fanfare, but the excitement grew quickly as we worked through the 12 days from Christmas to Epiphany, the main Christian holiday for the entire year!  The night before Epiphany, the children all put hay in their shoes or sandals, and left them out for the camels that brought the Magi, or as we call them, the Wise Men.  The camels would eat the hay and leave presents in the shoes for the little ones.  In Ethiopia, the eastern Orthodox celebration of epiphany is all about the baptism of Christ (which we will celebrate next week), but here in the western Christian church our epiphany celebrates the appearance of Christ into our world—specifically bringing the light of Christ to the gentiles, who are represented by the Magi who visit the baby Jesus on Epiphany.  But what I want to explore with you today is whether the epiphany of Christ is just an historical thing of the past, or whether Christ appears to us now in our day and time.  What do you think about modern epiphanies?

Let us join our hearts in prayer.  “Dear God of light, we wait for your appearance in our modern world; shine on us, appear to us, become an Epiphany to us, today.  Amen.”

What a strange cast of characters Matthew brings to us in our passage today.  Some wise men from the east arrive on scene.  These are called magi in the Greek—from the same root where we get our word magic.  If we tried to place characters into Matthew’s story that were any different from Jesus, we couldn’t possibly find anyone as strange as the Magi.  Racially different than Jesus, culturally different, theologically different, religiously different.  Magi followed stars for wisdom.  They turned to radical new ideas and different thoughts than Jesus’ family or tribe or nation.

But our story is about these very different people coming from far away.  They are seekers, seeking something amazing within the normal everyday life of ancient Bethlehem.  Sometimes the most beautiful radical amazing things are right under our noses and we miss them altogether because they are just everyday occurrences. Saturday I was walking along the shore of Lake Whitney and was transfixed by the beautiful ice on the lake.  The amazing change of sheen and subtle change in color from liquid water to shimmering ice floating on the water.  All the same substance, but right before me, water in amazing liquid and crystalline diversity.  Now folks, I know you winter-hardened New Englanders don’t consider pond ice amazing, but for a California guy, I was transported by the beauty, fragility and wonder of plain pond ice.  It was magically beautiful.  The Wise men also came looking for something that was everyday beautiful, just like pond ice.  An everyday child born in an everyday barn and laid in an everyday animal feed trough.  But this child was exquisite and beautiful beyond words.

Now we all think of our own newborn child as exquisite like this.  This is one of the unfailing joys of parenthood or grandparenthood—the astonishing beauty of our children or grandchildren.  But these wise men were looking for something that transcended human family beauty into something that was divinely beautiful.  And they found it in Jesus.  Herod couldn’t see this exquisite beauty.  The Pharisees couldn’t see it.  The Romans, with all of their power and wealth couldn’t see it.  It was right under their collective noses, but they saw nothing.  No beautiful ice, no divinely beautiful child.  No epiphany at all.   All they saw was just the same ol’ same ol’.

In the story of Jesus, these appearances of divinity, or epiphanies into the world, came many times for those who were watching for it.  Each miracle was an epiphany.  Each wisdom-filled parable with many meanings and many truths was an epiphany of God. Jesus by the well.  Jesus at the lake.  Jesus in the temple.  Jesus’ baptism, with the heavens opening and the dovely holy spirit coming down—that was an epiphany.  And the transfiguration, and all of the appearances of Christ after the crucifixion?  All epiphanies--the coming of the light among us.  There was not just one epiphany, but many exquisitely beautiful epiphanies in the life of Jesus.

And for us today, every answered prayer, every unexplained coincidence of grace, every manifestation of God-with-us is a modern epiphany.  Every moment in this world when we allow ourselves to be reborn like a child and see the world with new untainted eyes, every one of those new moments can be an epiphany of seeing an appearance of God in our world today.  God is always right under our ordinary noses, right in the muck of the animal barn we live in, right here in our everyday ordinariness.  Right here, if we but open our eyes and dare to dream that God loves us and is with us until the end.

So I invite you to a modern epiphany today, right here, in the ordinary bread and grape juice of our communion table.  A meal just as plain and ordinary as any everyday barn or manger.  Just as plain and everyday as just another baby born in ancient Bethlehem on any ordinary day.  Just another right-under-your-nose miracle, right here.  An epiphany of God-with-us.

Because, in the messiness of this world, in the frustration of the daily news, in the ho-hum ordinariness of this dark and evil world, we have been promised that a light is appearing before us.  Even when darkness over-whelms us in life’s valleys, the light of Christ outshines the darkness, if we just take a moment to look with eyes that see and listen with ears that hear our still-speaking God.  Even when those we love are lost to death, disease or weariness, the love of God and light of Christ outshine even these seemingly permanent cloaks of darkness. Christ changes darkness into light.

So when our days are filled with shadows, and we forget our true home in God’s love, Christ appears here in the middle of our everyday world and into our very ordinary right-now lives.  We do not have to look “out there” for the light of Christ.  It is here among us, a star appearing within each of us, marking this place [pound heart] where God appears and lives in light and truth and new life.  Each of us, when we live in the Gospel of love, are living epiphanies of the eternal God.

So let us gather around this table of light together.  Our meal here looks like bread and juice, but our meal here is an appetizer of Christ’s truth and light, a soup of grace and peace, with a main course of love and com-passion.  Jesus appeared before those different strange foreign magical men many, many years ago—reminding us that gentiles were the first to see Christ’s love-light and believe it would change the world.  Jesus also appears here among us today, in an epiphany of love and grace, appearing whenever we gather and share the communion meal.  For you see, epiphanies are not just long ago in someone else’s story, but epiphanies are also here and now at this table of grace and love.  This meal today can change everything forever if you remember the story of Jesus and God’s love, and live that love into your life.  Look and listen and taste now for God’s epiphany banquet of love, appearing here among us, for us, forever.  Amen.