The Epiphany is not just the celebration of some dudes bringing presents. It’s the revelation that God’s grace is suitable for all of us.
the aha in this holy day
The Epiphany | Matthew 2:1-12
You know how a famous person can transcend culture to the point in which they only need one name? Beyonce, Madonna, Cher. Of course, as a cultural statement, it isn’t entirely true—it’s more like some people have really unique and recognizable names AND are super famous.
But we all know what that superstar status is, right? That among all the famous people there are people so famous that everybody knows who they are and what they look like.
The Epiphany is supposed to be one of those superstar holy days. Immediately recognizable and universally famous. Unfortunately, it’s baby cousin, Christmas has stolen virtually every last bit of its fame.
And that is a huge loss for the church.
But, to be fair, the church totally botched this holiday 1500 years ago. So, it is not really our fault. Like a well-placed billboard isn’t going to suddenly replace a millennium and a half of second-fiddle status.
So what are we missing?
The earliest Christians started to settle around important themes in the gospel. And long before evangelicals came along to say it’s all about evangelism, the church was trying to focus on something really important.
They looked within the story of Jesus to find God’s purpose in being the Christ.
Rather than settle on a couple of verses in Matthew’s gospel or looking to justify a denomination upon an interpretive choice, our earliest ancestors thought that studying Jesus could reveal what God was up to in being Jesus.
And three moments became our earliest universal holy days. Easter, Epiphany, Pentecost.
In Easter and Pentecost, the stories tied directly to the theme. At Easter, we celebrate the resurrection of the dead. And in Pentecost, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit.
So what’s the deal with Epiphany?
Originally it wasn’t the Wise Men.
The first Epiphany story was the Baptism of Jesus. And let’s be honest. That one is way better for the Epiphany. Think about it.
- Jesus is baptized in the Jordan by John. It’s how Mark starts his gospel. It’s the true origin story.
- It solidifies how important the earthly ministry of Jesus is by starting with its birth rather than Jesus’s.
- For many with Eastern theology, Jesus becomes Christ at the Baptism. Which is why we don’t have any delightful stories of Jesus bringing flies back to life. Or having to navigate puberty.
- It triangulates well with Easter and Pentecost. Baptism -> Resurrection -> Holy Spirit. Cyclical, trinitarian, the divine dance!
- And it sets our attention on discipleship. Because the work matters!
Rome took on the feast, but it wanted to swap out the story. It likes the Baptism OK. They just wanted to cover different territory. So they made the baptism its own holy day: The Baptism of Our Lord. Which is what we celebrate on the first Sunday after the Epiphany.
I guess Rome just liked the dudes with presents.
It does round out Christmas, doesn’t it? And it becomes a welcome conclusion to the Nativity arc—if we forget about all that pesky stuff about Herod, the massacre, and the flight into Egypt that we covered on Sunday. But other than that—we’ve got presents!
And we do like the story, don’t we?
Three wise men walk all the way from “The East” to bring presents to the newborn king. Well…except that it doesn’t say they are wise men. They are Magi. Calling them wise men insinuates that they’re…you know…wise. Like, smart only better. But they’re not wise so much as astrologers who see signs in the sky.
They’re wise in precisely the way the prophets are wise: in training to see signs in the world and connect it to what God is up to. The thing is, we don’t actually like that wisdom. It’s too political. Prophets talk about justice and make us feel bad about liking money.
And since they aren’t Jewish, people didn’t think that much of their kind of wisdom. Imagine how your Baptist friends think about new age spirituality…or astrology for that matter! That’s the ballpark we’re playing in.
Oh, and it doesn’t actually say how many magi have arrived. We only know that there are three kinds of gifts for Jesus. All we know is that it’s more than one. Maybe two, three, ten, a hundred?
And then there’s that whole bit about going to Jerusalem because they assume the Christ would be born in the big city. And just so happen to tell Herod about it. Then instead of protecting Jesus, they run away. This story has a bit of a “not my problem!” vibe.
But, if we overlook all of the nuance, we can see a really significant theme: that the Incarnation communicated beyond the family ties. Christ came to the Gentiles, the poor, and the outcast.
A Third Story
Tradition offered a third story for the Epiphany. Because we all know that we like it when things come in threes.
And that third story comes from the beginning of John: the Wedding at Cana. We know this as Jesus’s first miracle. And it is a really fun story of Jesus’s getting mothered and outed by his Mom. They’re at this wedding and the host runs out of wine and its like Mary hits Jesus on the arm: go take care of it. And he’s like Mom! And she turns to the help, the slaves, and is like Just do whatever he says. The story is priceless.
And the thing the church likes about this is that once again, this is about Jesus being here with people to be God’s Christ in the world. So in the Magi, we have foreigners coming to Jesus. In the Baptism, we get the divine kickoff. And in the wedding, we get the fruit of a miracle.
And even better than that: it’s revealed to the servants and disciples only. The rest of the people are completely ignorant that God just went BOOM in their midst. They get to sip on divinely perfect wine and think the host was holding out on them! But the serfs, the peons, the laborers…they get to know the truth. They get the Epiphany!
A Wrinkle
Alexander Shaia added a wrinkle to this I had never noticed.
Right before the wedding, Jesus calls his first disciples. And in John’s account, they aren’t fishermen. They are disciples of John the Baptist. So they jump that ship and join Jesus’s. And that’s when he renames Simon. Not when he’s proven anything, but at the start. And he calls him Petros, Peter, which means stone.
We think of it as we get it from the Synoptics: like Peter himself is the cornerstone of the whole shebang. Roman Catholics set up a hierarchy around that whole deal.
But Jesus calls Peter stone: which in the ancient world, wasn’t just solid. It meant purity.
He names these new followers stone: purity. And then at the wedding, Jesus takes the water in those six stone jars used for the rites of purification and turns that water into wine.
Jesus all but says to his new disciples you are the vessels of God’s divine power.
So this is way more than foreign royal dudes with presents.
This is why the Epiphany is a superstar Holy Day. And just because the church has muddled the message on the regular for 1500 years doesn’t mean we can’t draw on the day’s ancient wisdom.
Or, even the wisdom of the popular culture, which uses the word epiphany like a divine aha! Embrace the popular idea of a spirit-led muse bringing new awareness! Isn’t that God?
This is supposed to be the aha holiday because this is the story of God with us; when God With Us stops being a promise for when and becomes descriptive of our now. When we can see it in the stars and in the world.
God is with us. God is turning our dirty water into wine. Making sure we understand that there is no souring these vessels, making them too impure for the glory of God. We are here to make God’s glory known, not to the world, as if God isn’t known already, or to the faithful. As if faith, allegiance, and affiliation are the whole of the story.
We are vessels for the glory of God because that is a glorious purpose.
And it means that there is no problem with our bodies. And there is no such thing as being of the wrong kind to reveal the grace of God. We all preach the gospel. With these bodies of ours. In every gender and level of melatonin. In every ability and every kind. We are enough! We are always enough for God!
And that wisdom comes in lightning strikes and in pinpricks and itches we just can’t scratch. It comes in all of these imperfect people who are yet stone: pure in the eyes of God.
And now that the celebration of the Incarnation has ended, we take on this incarnate ministry of following and proclaiming and healing and serving and being with us. In grace and purity and love.