Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany
“Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”
Throughout the Advent and Christmas season, we have largely been in the company of Luke and Matthew and John with respect to the Gospel readings. So, too, with the Epiphany. Christmas reaches a kind of climax with Matthew’s evocative account of the coming of the Magoi from Anatolia, the wise men/kings from the east who come to Bethlehem, at last, it seems, to complete the rich tableaux that belongs to all our Christmas imaginings. With the coming of the Magi, the Christmas mystery is complete.
Epiphany marks the making known to all of the Christmas mystery which is why for one half or more of the Christian world, Epiphany is the Christmas celebration. For the Churches of Eastern Orthodoxy – Russia, the Ukraine, Greece, Georgia, Egypt, Armenia, and so on, Epiphany is Christmas. Why? Because it marks the making known, the manifestation of Christ’s nativity to all the world. With Epiphany, Christmas is omni populo, for all people. What is proclaimed to the Shepherds in the fields surrounding Bethlehem by the Christmas Angel about “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people” comes to pass with the journey of the proverbial “Come-From-Aways” and “Johnny-Come-Latelies” to worship the child Christ. They come bearing gifts, “sacred gifts of mystic meaning,” gifts which teach us about the meaning of Christmas.
There is a certain logic to these differences of celebration between East and West as well as some common concerns. For the Churches of the Western world, both Catholic and Protestant, Epiphany recognizes and celebrates the universal aspect of Christ’s nativity but also focuses on a new theme. There is a shift of emphasis from the Word made Flesh, a focus on the humanity of Christ in the Incarnation, to the divinity of the One who becomes human. Epiphany is all about the making known of the essential divinity of Christ revealed in and through his humanity in its engagement with us. Thus, for East and West, Epiphany is really Theophany, a manifestation of God.
