Matthew 3:13-17
Today is the first Sunday after The Epiphany. We celebrated the feast day of the
Epiphany on Friday, January 6. It
always falls on the 6th, twelve days after Christmas.
Now we are in this season after the Epiphany. I’ve usually
thought about this season as a time to focus on us being open to receiving
epiphanies. But this year I’m
thinking maybe the focus should be more on God doing theophanies.
First a little bit about the two words…. Not that you’re likely to use either
one in everyday conversation. But
making a distinction is important to my point.
Both are derived from the Greek: And both include the Greek root phanein, which means “to appear.”
Epiphany is defined as “an intuitive grasp of reality
through something (as an event) usually simple and striking; an illuminating
discovery, realization, or disclosure.”
Someone who has just experienced an epiphany might say: “I have seen the light!” An epiphany is something that happens
to us, a new recognition, a new awareness. In religious terms, an epiphany is a new revelation of God’s
presence. Which we certainly
should seek to be open to.
But a theophany, on the other hand, is something that God
does. God appears. God makes himself known. The focus in one God and on what God is
doing.
We couldn’t have any personal epiphanies without God
revealing himself, without God making himself known, without theophanies. This Epiphany season I want to focus on
these traditional Epiphany stories as theophanies, and to reflect in particular
on what they tell us about God.
Let’s look at three of the big Epiphany stories.
First, the story of the
Epiphany. God revealing himself to
the wise men. God enabling the
magi from the East to recognize the divine presence in the baby Jesus. As I said at the Epiphany service, we
don’t really know much at all about the wise men. The one thing we definitely know is that they were very
different from anyone else gathered around that baby. They were foreigners, from a different culture and
background, speaking a different language. They weren’t even Jews! God’s first big theophany in Jesus is to major
outsiders. God’s self-revelation
is unimaginably expansive and welcoming to all.
The second Epiphany story is the one we heard today. On the First Sunday after the Epiphany
we always hear one of the accounts of Jesus’ baptism. God’s booming voice reveals Jesus as God’s own beloved
Son. A reminder to us of how
important baptism is. Baptism is the
occasion for theophanies. When we
do baptism, God speaks. Today
God’s voice says, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own
forever.” God’s self-revelation is
intimate, personal, spoken to each of us by name.
The wedding at Cana in Galilee is another story traditionally
associated Epiphany season. When
Jesus changes the water into wine.
In the old one-year lectionary, we would always hear that story next
week, on the Second Sunday after the Epiphany. Now with the three-year lectionary, we only hear it in Year
C. It’s a party, a time of
community celebration and fellowship.
God’s self-revelation happens when God’s people are gathered in
community celebration and fellowship.
Ultimately, all of the stories show us that God wants to be
known. That God wants us to know
that he is present with us. Epiphany
season follows Christmas. These
stories are God’s response to the promise of Emmanuel, God-with-us. I promised to be with you. Here I am. In these theophanies, God acts to reveal his presence with
us to us.
And in these three stories we see that God wants to be with
and to be known to an expansive diversity of people; to each of us individually
and personally; and within the gatherings of our faith communities.
God wants to be known.
With all of these theophanies, he should be hard to miss.
