Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany
“Wist ye not that I must be about my father’s business?”
Jerusalem and Bethlehem. They are the twin poles of Christian contemplation, the twofold centre around which, as in an ellipse, we move in thought and prayer, in love and devotion, in service and sacrifice. Each is bound up with the other – distinct and yet inseparable. Christmas focuses, of course, on Bethlehem as the place of Christ’s birth. Yet his birth is itself a kind of epiphany, a making known in the flesh of our humanity of the things of God. Christmas at once concludes and continues with the Epiphany. And with the Epiphany there is, we might say, the break-out from Bethlehem and suddenly Jerusalem begins to come more and more into the picture.
Epiphany means manifestation. It signals the idea of something that is made known to us as opposed to something that is invented by us. Like Advent, it is a season of revelation, a season of teaching. That is what is so wonderfully and clearly set before us on this day, The First Sunday after Epiphany which often falls within The Octave of the Epiphany. What is the Epiphany? It is the celebration of the coming of the Magi-Kings to Bethlehem and so it connects to Christmas and belongs to the Christmas imaginary. But it is also about going from Bethlehem, “depart[ing] into their own country another way”, as Matthew puts it, after having fallen down in worship before the child, “present[ing] unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh”.
The gifts are symbolic and meaningful. They are gifts which teach; “sacred gifts of mystic meaning” as one of the Epiphany hymns puts it. And that in a way is the point of Epiphany. It is about the making known of the things of God in the world of our humanity. The light of God shines out from within the world to teach us about our life with God and with one another. The emphasis is upon the divinity of Christ made visible through his humanity. Christ is King and God and Sacrifice.
It is not by accident that the Gospel for The First Sunday after The Epiphany focuses on Christ as teacher. Jesus is found in the Temple in Jerusalem at the age of twelve. We go from Bethlehem to Jerusalem in the mystery of the Epiphany. It is, we might say, his bar mitzvah, his coming of age and entry into adulthood. He is found “in the midst of the doctors” of the law, the wise ones of Israel, as it were, “both hearing them, and asking them questions”, Luke tells us for just as the story of the Magi-Kings is told only by Matthew, so this story of the boyhood of Jesus is told to us only by Luke. “And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers”. There is a sense of wonder. Epiphany is the season of wonders and the wonders begin with teaching and learning.
