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A Feast Worthy of
Devout Celebration
January 4th 2012
by Trevor Elliot
In two days time we will officially
celebrate the feast of Epiphany.
The
term “epiphany” means "to show" or "to make known" or even "to reveal."
Epiphany, January 6, marks the culmination of the Christmas season. It
also begins the season after Epiphany, which runs until Ash Wednesday.
Epiphany, and the season after it, is important. To understand why,
we need to turn to Epiphany’s roots. The feast of Epiphany was first
celebrated in the fourth century. It recalls three events in which Jesus
was made known:
1) the manifestation of Jesus’ birth to the Magi, representing the
Gentiles,
2) the announcement of Jesus’ identity at his baptism and
3) Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine at the Cana wedding feast.
Epiphany entered the life of the Church in an age of great preaching.
Important preachers of the time included John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Pope
Leo I, and Augustine.
In his
sermon on Epiphany in the year 412, Augustine wrote “The whole church of
the gentiles has adopted this day as a feast worthy of most devout
celebration,”
Sixteen hundred years later, Augustine’s sermon on the Magi reminds us of
three Epiphany truths.
First, Epiphany helps us recall that our world is not bereft of God’s
presence. God leaves hints and signs, a trail to be discovered by those
who seek to pursue the Holy in the midst of life. The hint or sign, said
Augustine, was a star: “For, on this day, the Magi are said to have adored
the Lord, warned by the appearance of a star and led by its guidance. In
fact, they saw the star in the East on the very day He was born and they
realized whose birth it portended…. To the Lord Himself, then, they came,
led by the star; they adored Him who had been thus pointed out to them.”
Our experience of God is not easy to discern. God has not chosen to lay
out a media campaign designed to splash a brand, logo, tag line, and
jingle across our world. For most, the call of God comes by nudge and
whisper, not by shove and shout.
Those
who hear or see the Holy One tend to do so because they are seeking. The
Magi saw the star because they scanned the night sky, questioning and
discussing together what they saw. And they were ready to take the journey
when they saw something of promise.
God showed up and keeps showing up in our world in Jesus. The more we
probe the life and work of Jesus, ponder his words and practice his deeds,
the more likely we are to experience the depth and breadth of God’s
character.
Second, Epiphany is a reminder that the gospel is for everyone, not
just a few. For Augustine, the central truth of Epiphany was that Jesus
was manifest to the Gentiles: “Therefore, the whole Church of the Gentiles
has adopted this day as a feast worthy of most devout celebration, for who
were the Magi but the first-fruits of the Gentiles? The shepherds were
Israelites; the Magi, Gentiles. The one group came from nearby; the other,
from afar. Both, however, were united in Christ the cornerstone.” Jesus is
Lord of all, not just a few. We can liken Epiphany to a stone dropped into
water that sets off a series of bigger and bigger ripples:
“We
begin to find ourselves with our fellow believers in all places and at all
times, drawn in relationship to those circles that emanate from the
Incarnation of Jesus Christ.”
Epiphany keeps before us the truth that Jesus is for Magi in the courts of
the mighty as well as shepherds in the fields, East as well as West,
global as well as local, universal as well as sectarian.
This was a particularly important message to Augustine, because the unity
reflected in the idea that God sent Jesus for Gentiles as well as Jews was
a source of controversy in his day. In his sermon Augustine counters the
Donatists, who he claims do not celebrate Epiphany because they do not
believe Jesus had been manifest to all the same way.
Third, Epiphany reinforces that meeting Jesus leaves us altered,
different persons. Augustine concluded his Epiphany day sermon by
reminding his listeners that the Magi did not return to their homes by the
same road they traveled to Palestine: “For this is why the Magi did not
return as they had come. The way was changed; their way of life was
changed.”
Augustine understood this, of course, better than most. Born in North
Africa, Augustine rejected the Christian life taught him by his pious
mother, Monica.
He took more than one mistress, fathered at least one child outside of
marriage, and dabbled in a variety of philosophical systems. Then in 386,
Augustine came under the influence of the preaching of Ambrose, Bishop of
Milan. The moment of his dramatic conversion came in a garden, and is
recounted in his Confessions, written ten years later:
Augustine writes; I snatched the Bible up, opened it, and in silence read
the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: ‘Not in rioting and
drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying,
but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to
fulfill the lusts thereof.’ I wanted to read no further, nor did I need
to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart
something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt
vanished away. At age thirty-three his life changed course.
During Epiphany we discover that paying homage to Jesus in the manger
leaves us different. We cannot return to the same place, to do the same
things in the same way. Augustine learned, as did Abraham, Jacob, Moses,
Peter, and Paul before him, and as you and I after him, that an encounter
with God leaves us altered.
Christmas is the season when we celebrate that God took the risk to enter
human history, with all its limitations, in the baby named Jesus.
Epiphany is its logical successor, the season in which week-by-week we
grow in our awareness that Jesus is revealed to the whole world (the story
of the Magi), that Jesus is uniquely related to God (the baptism of
Jesus), and that Jesus came to accomplish a remarkable work (the miracle
at Cana).
It is indeed, as
Augustine said long ago, a feast worthy of devout celebration. |
