Month: January 2015

“He who devotes himself to the study of the law of the Most High
will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients.”

Epiphany, the great 17^th century Bishop of Durham, John Cosin, notes, turns our thoughts from considering “His coming in the flesh that was God” to “His being God that was come in the flesh”; in short, “to turn ourselves from his humanity below to his divinity above.” The entire season of Epiphany, whether short or long, is about teaching and learning. The gifts of the Magi-Kings are “sacred gifts of mystic meaning” that teach us about the one to whom they are given.

The First Sunday after the Epiphany presents us with the utterly unique story from Luke’s Gospel of the boy Jesus being “found in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.” “Did ye not know,” Jesus says to Mary and Joseph, “that I must be about my Father’s business?” Something divine is revealed in and through his humanity. The Epistle reading that accompanies that Gospel provided one of Fr. Crouse’s favourite and frequent scriptural texts, “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds”. Epiphany is emphatically about such transformative teaching.

Epiphany, too, is the season of miracles but they also teach us about the divine will and purpose for our humanity. Not just miracles of healing and wholeness but the real reason for the restoration and redemption of our humanity is signaled in the Gospel story for The Second Sunday after the Epiphany in the story of the water turned into wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. We lack the wine of divinity in ourselves but Christ seeks our social joys not just providing for us but seeking the very best for us which is ultimately accomplished in the hour of his passion and death. Our humanity finds its real truth and dignity in communion with God in Christ without whom we have no wine. We are empty and lost. Epiphany in every way teaches us about God’s will for our humanity. Our thoughts are turned to Christ’s divinity above without which we are bereft below, empty and in despair, having lost our humanity.

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“And the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee”

Epiphany means manifestation. It is about things that are being made known to us. It is about teaching. Teaching is transformative. “Be ye transformed,” Paul tells us, “by the renewing of your minds.” This story is utterly unique in the New Testament. Only John tells us that this was the “beginning of signs” in which Jesus “manifested forth his glory.” It speaks to the mystery of human redemption. It is really a story of transformation not just of water into wine but our humanity into community with God.

The real wonder of the Epiphany is about what God wants for our humanity. The real wonder of the Epiphany is that our humanity finds its greatest truth and greatest happiness in communion with God. The mystery of the Epiphany is a kind of marriage, the communion of God and man which is the basis for our communion with one another. It is not by accident that “this beginning of signs” happens at a wedding.

Yet this Gospel story is not simply about marriage as a state of life. It speaks profoundly to the whole reality of the human situation. It challenges us to pay attention to God’s engagement with our humanity.

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“For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard”

The Conversion of Paul is an epiphany and for that reason, in the Prayer Book, it is to be observed when it falls on a Sunday in the Epiphany Season. Paul’s story is quite a story, full of drama and intensity, controversy and struggle. The importance of his story for the life of the Church is wonderfully captured in this feast. Paul’s conversion is the only conversion celebrated among the principal holy days in the life of the Church.

And rightly so. With Paul, the Christian Faith goes global. With Paul, the Christian Scriptures come to birth – his writings comprise the largest part of the New Testament after all. He is, as some have put it, the second founder of Christianity. In a sense without Paul, there would be no Christianity. His conversion, then, is a matter of great significance.

We are told about his conversion in The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, a book which John Donne remarks, following Chrysostom, could just as easily be called “the Book of the Acts of Paul, so conversant it is with the life of Paul.” Paul’s conversion is told to us three times in Acts albeit in various ways. In our lesson this morning, we hear Paul himself tell his story. What is his story? Saul the Persecutor becomes Paul the Apostle.

There is a change from being the Persecutor of The Way, as the followers of Jesus were first called, to becoming the great preacher of the Gospel of Christ, the Apostle to the Gentiles, the one who takes the Gospel to Rome and by extension to the world. What his story reveals is conversion as transformation. It is an epiphany of the truth and power of Christ that transforms human lives. What is that transformation? It is really about becoming more truly and fully human. The truth of our humanity is found in communion with God. Nowhere is that more fully expressed than in the God/Man Jesus Christ and in our life with Christ. Paul’s conversion is his encounter with the Risen Christ, the one whom he is persecuting in persecuting the followers of Jesus Christ. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds,” Paul will tell us, echoing exactly his conversion. His conversion occurs through a vision on the Road to Damascus.

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