The Meaning of Epiphany
Jan. 7, 2007
Jay Bartow, Pastor
First Presbyterian Church of Monterey
Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12
I like the word epiphany, how it sounds and what it connotes. It is made up of two Greek words: epi, a preposition that means to or upon, or in this case, forth, and phanein, which means to show. So it is literally a showing forth, a revealing or manifestation.
All of us have had aha! moments when something comes clear for us for the first time. You hope it happens often when you’re taking a physics or upper level math course. But the nature of epiphanies is that you can’t call them forth on demand. They come when and as they will. They are more likely to come if we have been pondering a subject for some time, but sometimes the fog never does lift.
One of the most well known descriptions of epiphany is in the lyrics of Amazing Grace: “I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” John Newton, the author of that hymn, had captained a slave ship and made a lot of money at it, and then he came to see that he was participating in a great evil and left that life and began to follow Jesus Christ. He was right in saying that seeing the error of his ways and the possibility of repentance, forgiveness, and a new life, was possible because of God’s amazing grace.
Every time we gather to listen for God’s word we pray for epiphany, for an opening of our hearts and minds to the transforming power of the good news. Prayer is one of the paths that often leads to epiphany. We just sang, “Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus,” and I pray that we shall as we look at a familiar story from Matthew’s Gospel.
The so called wise men, or magi, came to Jerusalem from Mesopotamia, or modern day Iraq. They were astrologers who night after night studied the heavens and the movement of the stars and planets. As far back as the time of Abraham, who came from that same region—isn’t it interesting that the father of the Jewish nation was from Iraq?—moon worship was firmly entrenched. Two thousand years later the study of the heavens was still very alive. They believed that what happened in the heavens had an influence on what happened here on earth. When they saw a star rising in the East they took it to mean that a king was about to be born to the Jews and so they set out on a long and arduous journey to the land of Israel and ended up at the capital, Jerusalem, and told King Herod why they had come. We know that around 7 B.C. Jupiter, the royal or kingly planet, was in conjunction three times with Saturn, which was sometimes thought to represent the Jews, We also know from Luke’s description of who was in power at the time of his birth that Jesus was actually born sometime between 6 and 4 B.C. The Julian calendar got the date wrong, so the Third Millennium began earlier than all those who thought it meant the end of the world thought it would.
Jews did not look to the stars for guidance. They believed in a God who had revealed his will in the Torah, and that is what they studied rather than the heavens. We Christians share that conviction. So Herod asked his Scripture scholars what the Scriptures said about where the Messiah was to be born. They remembered the words of Micah, “But you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is form of old, from ancient days.” (Micah 5:2)
Herod tells this bit of information to the Magi. Their star gazing got them close, but the Scriptures enabled them to zero in on their destination which was just about five miles south of Jerusalem. So they continued on their journey and the star reappeared and guided them to the house where Jesus was. Here is evidence that they came later than the shepherds because by this time Jesus and his parents have found lodging in a house. It might be some months or even up to two years later since Herod asked them when the star first appeared and then, if we read on in Matthew, ordered all male babies two and under around Bethlehem killed. We see the kind of world into which Jesus was born, a world in which some kneel to pay him homage while others set out to kill him. Kings brook no rivals, even in the form of a peasant baby born in a hillside cave that served as a manger.
The question comes to us: how will we respond to him? Will we see him for who he is, Lord of all things, and welcome his leadership? Or do we fear that his reign will unsettle things as we have arranged them? Herod was right to assume that the kingship of Jesus represented a threat to him and his violent and vengeful ways. N.T. Wright makes an interesting observation in an interview in the January 2007 issue of Christianity Today that if early followers of Jesus had seen him only as a spiritual leader who helps us to escape from this evil world, the Empire would have had no trouble with them. He says that a Gnostic understanding of Jesus which focuses on inner knowledge as the way of salvation and gives up on the world posed no threat to the Empire. But Wright says, “The longer that I’ve gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were actually talking about, the more its been borne in on me that …….the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the Gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospels that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with working for God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, and how we’ve managed for years to say the Lord’s Prayer without realizing that Jesus really meant it is very curious.” (Christianity Today, Jan. 2007 p. 41)
Just three weeks ago we looked at Mary’s song in response to her cousin Elizabeth’s joy that Mary would be the mother of her Lord. Mary’s words are very concrete and down to earth. The proud are scattered, the powerful brought down from their thrones, and the lowly are lifted up and filled with good things while the rich are sent away empty. Those are events rooted in this world. There is also an inner dimension of joy in God’s mercy and favor which Mary celebrates, but it is not an either or thing but a both and. Christians prayed, sang and celebrated God’s presence and then put their faith to work as they opposed slavery, fought disease, championed learning, and compassion for the poor. Their experience of grace translated itself into action in the world. And when they refused to worship the Emperor and call him Lord, the Emperor hammered them because he saw a power at work in them that threatened him and his authority. The same holds true in our time in places like Germany under Hitler, or the Soviet Union or China. The powers that be are all right with us if we limit our faith to an inner world or next world focus, but when we dare to affirm the words and way of Christ as pertinent this world and to matters of war and peace, county, state and national budgets, health care and justice for the poor, good stewardship of the environment, honesty in government and business, then we raise their ire.
N. T. Wright says that in the last twenty-five years he has come to see that these kinds of concerns are as central to the Gospel as the world of prayer, worship and spiritual practice. It has been an unfolding epiphany or manifestation of the meaning of Christ.
I’ve been working my way through two books that cover some of the same sobering terrain. The first is titled Collapse, and is by Jared Diamond who won the Pullitzer Prize for his book Guns, Germs and Steel. He looks back at several different civilizations that collapsed with an eye to determining why the imploded. His thesis is that we can learn from the mistakes of the past so as not to repeat them. The other book is called The Meaning of the Twenty-first Century, by James Martin of Oxford. His focus is on the present and likely future, and he says that the decisions we make will determine whether our near future is bright or distressingly dim. The changes that he describes are nothing short of mind boggling. We will have the capacity to genetically modify humans, to automate and accelerate evolution, to create machines that are the size of a single cell, and processors immensely more powerful than the human brain because their circuits are millions of times faster than the neurons and axons of the brain. Artificial intelligence techniques will create new types of intelligence that can automatically learn, evolve and improve themselves indefinitely. The question is: to what ends will this technological power be directed? If we believe that Jesus Christ is Lord of all life, then we will look to his words and way and insights into the meaning of life to answer the question of what constitutes a good life.
Martin points out that in a time of rapid technological advance in America divorce rates, drug addition, depression, stress, boredom violence and a sense of helplessness increased markedly. He says, “The horror of the poorest people fighting of starvation coexists with the wealthy fighting off boredom. The lifestyle of the West is becoming increasingly expensive but measurably slipping in contentment with life. If just 1% of the junk-consumerism wealth were transferred from the First World to the Fourth World and managed as Jeffrey Sachs wants to manage it, the destitute nations could be put on a staircase to a decent standard of living. Furthermore, volunteers traveling to different lands to help in education or health care would often find their life more interesting, exciting and worthwhile. A top level question is ‘How do we use our scientific and technological advances and increased wealth to make people feel that their lives are worthwhile?’” (TheMeaning of the Twenty-first Century pp. 322-323).
When Martin asked people what makes for a decent life they talked about things like excellence in education; education for everyone, great TV, films and theater, good sports events, great music, attention to spiritual values, plenty of leisure time, excellent preventive medical care, get-togethers with great conversation, beautiful parks and gardens, flowers and trees in the city, good hiking, or time with nature, and a society with more fun. All of those can be achieved without harming the planet. They are not outrageously expensive. They involve lots of non automated work, thus keeping us occupied and not replaced by machines, and none of them is correlated to what he calls “Technologies of Sorcery” described earlier in his book. (ibid. p. 324)
Can you see what he is saying? The good life has more to do with spirituality than technology. We can gain the whole world, but to what end if we lose our soul in the process? That is what that child in Bethlehem grew up to say and show, and the light of his star and message is meant for the whole world that God so loves.