Epiphanies

Epiphany is a bit of an odd feast for Christians. The idea is very clearly borrowed from earlier religious traditions. The greeks used the word Epiphany to describe any manifestation or arrival. You could speak about the dawn as an Epiphany of the sun, but the word was most commonly used to talk about the appearance of a god, which apparently happened a great deal in Ancient Greece. All those various gods, with their various agenda, showed up on the human stage regularly, brokering marriages, provoking wars, generally misbehaving. And every time a god appeared it was called an Epiphany.

Before we jump into the story of the wise ones (and just as a note, our translation gets the original wrong. The Biblical Greek is not clear about the gender of the three. It’s very possible at least one of the magi was a wise woman. You know the old joke right? What would have happened if there had been three wise women instead of wise men? Three Wise Women would have “asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, brought practical gifts and there would be Peace on Earth.”

Before we zoom in on our particular Epiphany, I want to hold open the older more general idea of Epiphany because the word names a fundamental truth for people of faith. There are moments when we feel particularly close to God, to the Spirit, however we name the divine. Some of these moments come in worship, in holy spaces where we expect to encounter God. Others surprise us. Epiphanies happen in hospital rooms, or are shared over a long meal with good friends. For me Epiphanies often arrive in the orange and pink light of a high desert sunset.

For many, the spiritual life spreads like a clothesline between epiphanies, the moments we feel close to the reality we call God, these epiphanies hold up the rest of the laundry of faith.

Epiphany is a season

So Epiphany is more than the story we tell in the first days of January about magi and mangers. The church even manages to mark this reality. Epiphany isn’t just a day but a season. Over the next weeks, we continue to hear from people who had a breakthrough encounter with God. We tell stories like the Baptism of Jesus, when the crowd sees a dove descend and hears God say, “this is my beloved One.” We hear the story of the guests at a wedding surprised when Jesus turns water into wine, good wine, the first miracle. This is a season when we celebrate the moments when the holy draws close, not just in a manger millennia ago, but still today.

I want to give you permission, if you need it this season, to continue to watch for the divine breaking through. In this time when the light lasts a longer each day, look for signs, pause and pay attention. Slow down. Give yourself permission to wait and to watch, to pray and to hold silence. Take a walk in the early morning or late afternoon and let the colors of the sky do work on your soul.

Resolution

My own soul is doing some work right now, and I have to confess I’m finding it a bit surprising. I remember pretty clearly eight years of palpable anger in the community around me. I remember the pink hats marching through the streets in 2017. And I remember anger being not contained to those who were disappointed by the election results. Anger was present with those who were celebrating back then as well. There was a sustained anger from many of president Trump’s supporters, a feeling of grievance. That anger persisted and mutated through president Biden’s term. What’s surprising to me is that I’m not feeling anger in the same way this year. It’s like a breath has gone out.

I’m not alone in my surprise at the lack of anger. I’ve heard several news stories wondering what is wrong, as if a lack of anger is a problem. I’ve heard this moment described as a “resignation.” Are folks just resigned to what is next? The lack of planned protests is talked about in the media as a sign of exhaustion. I’m not quite buying that argument. Yes, I think the whole country is tired, tired of divisive politics. We’re tired of being told to be suspicious of our neighbors and how they vote.

But what I’m feeling, and I don’t just mean within me but what I’m sensing in the wider community isn’t resignation. The word that comes to mind, and it’s a silly word to use in the first days of January, but I can’t find a better one, the word that comes to mind is “resolution.”

I’m sensing a resolve, not a sort of diffuse anger about election results, no the feeling is more specific. I’m sensing resolution.

Before the election, I said in this pulpit, no matter what happens, St. Michael’s will remain the same. No matter what happens, here at St. Michael’s we will seek to know and to make known what is always true: God’s love is always always more powerful than hate.

Now in these early days of January, I’m sensing resolution. We know we have a calling more important than a single election or administration. I’m getting a sense that our work to embrace our neighbor, our hungry neighbors through our food ministry, our immigrant neighbor through our work of hospitality, our LGBTQ+ neighbors through the work that has been going on at St. Michael’s for decades, to advocate with and include people who have faced exclusion because of sexuality and gender, that work will not stop. We won’t stand our work down. We won’t let the political winds change our commitments. We will stand with the people God has called us to love.

We’re not hear to make some politically correct statement. We stand with immigrants, with LGBTQ+ people, with folks who are hungry, with folks who are in need, because we believe this is holy work. Our work with those on the margins is fundamental to our faith, and if anyone tries to stop us, we could argue in court that our religious freedom is at stake.

Now I confess, I don’t always go to the Bible for strategy, but there’s one particular moment at the end of today’s story I find instructive for our moment. The last sentence of our Gospel, “After having been warned not to return to Herod, [the wise ones] left for their own country by another road.” The magi couldn’t entirely ignore Herod, but faced with a petty tyrant they refused to give him more power than he was due. They remained free to choose their own path. The wise ones aren’t driven by anger, or party affiliation. The wise ones choose their road based on their encounter with God.

Wisdom can be Passed Down

Wisdom like that can be passed down. Today we baptize two new members of St. Michael’s. Lana Ray and Leora Rose are the third generation of their family to have been baptized here. The Jones-Wilson family came to us in the 1980s, and in the intervening years they have seen the ups and downs. They lived through the conflicts with our wider church family, when St. Michael’s stood up at great cost for the rights of all people. This Jones-Wilson family has also been with us for silent contemplation, and chanting in Sanskrit. They know this is a church community which isn’t content to look for God only in places our culture or religious tradition say we ought to look. So this family knows what they’re getting into asking this particular church to support the youngest members’ journey of faith.

At St. Michael’s we are a people who feel a particular call, to stand up and act when our neighbors are in need. We are a congregation which seeks to ground our work in spiritual practice. And we are always endeavoring to widen our welcome to those who have not been welcome in church. Our values don’t change with the change of a year or the change of an administration. Our resolution doesn’t fade away like so many New Years resolutions. We come to this new year resolved to live the call God always has for us, come what may.

Because two thousand years ago, a child was born, a star appeared, the story tells us. On the edge of an empire, to a family who had no roof for the night, a family that would become refugees in Egypt when old Herod used the power of the state to pursue them, God appeared among us in real vulnerability. Our Epiphany helps us to know to look for God among the vulnerable in our own day. Our Epiphany also asks to be seekers with those who might not look like us, speak like us, even pray like us. Epiphany invites us to go beyond our usual boundaries to find God appearing still.

Epiphanies don’t leave us alone. An epiphany has always been an invitation to growing a deeper capacity for spiritual sight. The poet Christian Wiman put it this way:

There is a kind of existence in which meditation and communication, epiphanies and busyness, death and life, God and not—all these apparent antinomies are merged and made into one awareness. I am a long way from realizing such perception myself, but I have lifted the lens to my eyes. –Christian Wiman

I am grateful that Wiman is honest that he is a long way from this perception. I too feel the distance between epiphanies and busyness. But this Epiphany season, take permission to lessen the busyness. If you’re holding on to anger or bitterness, let that relax as well. Loosen the knots between your shoulders. Know you can do so and strengthen your resolve at the same time.

Trust God is out there, working beyond our boundaries, beyond our grudges, beyond our sense of rightness or wrongness. God is out there, beyond our political orthodoxies and our faith traditions. God is waiting to be manifest to us, and for us to show up resolved to make a difference for the sake of love.