“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.
Within The Octave of the Epiphany, there are two special celebrations with propers appointed which are found in The Book of Common Prayer. They relate to some important features of the Epiphany. They are The Baptism of Christ and a service provided for use on weekdays throughout the Epiphany season for “The Missionary Work of the Church Overseas”. Both signal something important about the mystery of the Epiphany; the one theological, the other pastoral and missionary. The Christian religion, like Judaism and Islam and the other major world religions, is necessarily missionary. Something is and must be proclaimed. There is a necessary engagement with all and others which brings into the picture the sometimes difficult aspect of conversion, on the one hand, and the idea of revelation, on the other hand, especially for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Something is made known that requires our consideration. And, it may be that, like the Wise Men, we “depart[] into [our] own country another way,” changed in some fashion by what we have seen and heard.
That change in us whether it is radical or gradual has to do with the deepening of our understanding about the nature of God and his engagement with our humanity. That in some sense is for all of us, for all people. It turns upon the great Epiphany theme of teaching which is what today’s Gospel emphasizes in the scene of the boy Jesus being found in the temple in Jerusalem teaching and learning from the Doctors of the Law. It is altogether about teaching, about the divine teaching, about the essential divinity of Christ.
I mentioned that we have been largely in the company of Matthew and Luke and John. What about Mark, then? Well in The Octave of the Epiphany we have the celebration of the Baptism of Christ as told by Mark. It is a most extraordinary scene. Located within the Church’s Epiphany celebrations historically and liturgically, it is to be understood as belonging to the Epiphany, to the idea of something being made known, something made manifest. It, too, is an epiphany.
In the history of the development of Christian doctrine, it is about the making known of Christ’s divinity. Mark’s gospel does not provide us with any of the accounts of the infancy or childhood of Christ. He begins his Gospel with the mission of Christ which he sees as inaugurated at the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist in the river Jordan. The story recalls us to the significance of John the Baptist as the precursor of Christ but even more, it reflects on the radical significance of Christ as the Divine Son. In a way, Mark’s Gospel here complements the great Christmas Eve Gospel from John’s Prologue about Christ as the Word and Son of the Father made flesh.
There are, however, questions and, as a result, theological controversies that play out in the early life of the Christian Church. What does Christ’s baptism mean? It can’t be a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” which is the point of emphasis of the ministry of John the Baptist, because then how can Christ be the redeemer of mankind if he, too, is a sinner? That is one important question that turns on the meaning of our humanity and on the idea that the truth of our humanity is not found in our disobedience and sinfulness but in our creation and redemption. In Christ as born of Mary, indeed, the Virgin Mary, we are recalled to the truth of our humanity that enjoys fellowship with God and is made adequate to the divine life by being freed from sin. Paul will eloquently argue following Isaiah that Christ is “made sin for us” which is not to say that he is like us as a sinner but that he enters into the consequences of our sinfulness, “wounded for our transgressions,” and “bruised for our iniquities.” Only so can there be the triumph of grace over sin, of life over death. It turns on the sacred humanity of Christ as the Divine Son.
But there is another question. Does Christ’s baptism by John mean that only at this point is Jesus the Messiah, the Christ? Is the baptism really about his becoming the Son only at this moment? An adopted Son rather than the eternal Son of God? In the traditions of classical orthodoxy, east and west, the firm and necessary teaching is ‘no.’ Christ is the eternal Son of God whose mission is made manifest and whose divinity is made known in his baptism. His baptism belongs to the logic of God’s engagement with our broken and wounded humanity by subjecting himself to our condition in order to effect our salvation. As with his circumcision, it is about being subject to the particular aspects of the Jewish Law in order to effect the universal salvation of all. Paul in Galatians notes that his birth is at “the fullness of the time” in which “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” We are the adopted sons of God through our baptisms which is about nothing less that our being incorporated into the life of God through Christ, through his death and resurrection. As the Collect for The Baptism of Christ puts it, “Jesus Christ did take our nature upon him, and was baptized for our sakes in the river Jordan.” He is baptised for us and not for himself.
Here we see the significance of Mark’s account of Christ’s baptism. For “straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him; and there was a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The voice of the Father, the Holy Spirit like a dove, and Christ the Son. It is a manifestation of the Trinity through the Incarnation. That is the point of theological emphasis. The baptism of Christ is an Epiphany that teaches us who he is in himself and who he is for us.
Luke alone gives us the only story from the boyhood of Christ. It, too, marks a transition, the beginning of his mission that complements Mark’s account of the Baptism as the beginning of the formal mission of Christ for the redemption of our humanity. Both are about teaching. Epiphany is all about the making known of the things of God for us. The emphasis and focus is on what God wants us to know and which is revealed through Christ. We learn to delight in the One in whom the Father delights but only if we attend to his teaching.
“Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”
Fr. David Curry
The First Sunday After the Epiphany, 2018