KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 16 January
Did you not know?
Epiphany is the season of teaching. It speaks profoundly to the nature of education at King’s-Edgehill. Teaching and learning concern the whole person and the formation of character. Such is the recurring emphasis on gentleness and learning, respect and dignity. So too with Epiphany. The question implies that there are things that we should know or at least come to know.
In the Christian understanding, the teaching is about the essential divinity of Christ. In other words, something about the idea and nature of God is made known through Christ. The stories of the Epiphany season illustrate the wisdom, the power and the eternity of God manifest in the words and deeds of Christ. The further point is that through the teachings about the nature of God something is shown to us about ourselves; indeed, something about the vocation of our humanity.
The lesson from Isaiah 42 read on Monday and Tuesday is the first of the four so-called ‘suffering servant’ songs in Isaiah. Powerful poetry, the prophet presents God as saying, “behold, my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights; I will put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations.” The servant can be understood individually as a Messiah figure or collectively as the people of Israel. The vocation of Israel is as God’s servant, charged with “establishing justice in the earth,” as being “a covenant to the people”, “a light to the nations,” as “opening the eyes of the blind,” as “bringing the prisoners out of the dungeon”, “from the prison those who sit darkness.” The images speak to the redemption of our humanity and ground the vocation of our humanity in the life of God. For Christians the song is seen in relation to the Baptism of Christ understood as an Epiphany of Christ’s divinity, an Epiphany of the Trinity. Jesus “coming out of the waters of Jordan” “sees the heavens open and the spirit like a dove descending upon him.” He hears “a voice from heaven saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” It is the voice of the Father. The imagery draws explicitly upon Isaiah and continues the theme that the teaching of God’s Word and Will shapes human thought and action.