“Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east,
and are come to worship him”
Epiphany means manifestation; in this case, the making known to us of the high things of God. It is more than just the ending, a kind of afterglow, of Christmas. It inaugurates a new emphasis and highlights the beginnings of a new journey, the journey of the understanding. It begins with a question: “where is he that is born King of the Jews?”
Epiphany reveals the deeper understanding of God made man in Christ Jesus. It catapults us into a kind of theological reasoning, namely, our thinking upon the nature of God made manifest “in substance of our mortal flesh”, as the Proper Preface for Epiphany states about God who is Eternal Light and Truth. This echoes the Proper Preface of Christmas that Christ “was made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin.” God is made known in the very substance of our humanity.
Epiphany is, above all else, teaching. The teaching is about the essential divinity of Jesus Christ, the sine qua non of Christian understanding. John Cosin, the 17th century Bishop of Durham, captures best the intellectual sensibility of Epiphany. Our thinking, he says, now turns from “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.” Epiphany marks this shift of perspective in terms of the nature of divinity unfolded before us through what we are taught about God by God.
In Matthew’s account (and it is only from Matthew that we have the journey of the Μαγοι from Anatolia), they come seeking, following a star from the east. They come from outside of Israel, as Gentiles, meaning non-Israelites, yet seeking, as they say, “he that is born King of the Jews”, whose star they have seen. Once again, this signals the theme of universality. With Epiphany, Christmas is omni populo, for all people. As such there are really two journeys that belong to the mystery of the Epiphany: their journey to Bethlehem and, then, their journey from Bethlehem, “departing into their own country another way”, as Matthew puts it.
Epiphany marks the break-out from Bethlehem in the continuing journey of the understanding that belongs to the fullness of the truth and dignity of our humanity. What that journey to and from Bethlehem means is signalled by them. They come, they say, “to worship him”.
We know next to nothing about “the Magoi from Anatolia”; not how many, not their names, not their stories, nothing other than what Matthew tells us. Nonetheless they are an integral feature of the Christmas mystery and have exercised an enormous hold on the Christian imaginary about Christmas. They have influenced artists, writers, and musicians down through the ages. We think of three wise ones only because of the three gifts: gold, frankincense, myrrh. Holy imagination will give them names and background identities, again signalling something universal – and not at all the same thing as our contemporary fixations about ‘diversities of identity’. The focus instead is on the defining impulse of our common humanity to seek God and to worship what alone is worthy of our attention and adoration. One of the common terms for the many and varied representations of the Epiphany, at once exotic and humble, captures exactly the point of Matthew’s text: they are all known as ‘The Adoration of the Magi’.
The Adoration of the Magi belongs to the universality of Bethlehem as paradise restored, signalling the harmony of God and his creation, of angels and men, of man and woman, of shepherds and now Kings, yet pointing to its radical meaning. All are engaged in one fundamental activity: worship, the worship of God in the infant child Jesus.
The Magi-Kings at Epiphany make this worship true worship which otherwise would be an idolatry of ourselves and our human world; in short, false worship; mistaking the Creator for the things of Creation. There is, as Lancelot Andrewes suggests, a star for each of us in our distinctive and individual being to bring us to Christ. “Christ applieth Himself to all, disposes all things; what every one is given to, even by that Christ calleth them. St. Peter, Andrew, James and John. fisherman, [were led} by draught of fish. These [the Magi-Kings] that were studious in the stars, by a star for the purpose”.
Epiphany in a radical sense is the redemption of all human seeking, the passionate desire [eros] to know and to understand, to put it in Plato’s terms. Andrewes wisely notes that “there is not star or beam of it; there is no truth at all in human learning or philosophy that thwarteth any truth in Divinity, but sorteth well with it and serveth it, and all to honour Him Who saith of Himself Ego sum Veritas, ‘I am the Truth.’ None that will hinder the venerunt, keep back any wise man, or make him less for coming to Christ” (Xmas 1620).
The journey to Bethlehem of the Magi-Kings marks the beginning, too, of the tradition of gift-giving at Christmas. The gifts themselves are significant. They teach. They teach us about the meaning of the holy child. They honour the greatest gift of all, the gift of God’s love for us in the Child Christ. They teach us that the gifts we give to each other are meant to honour one another. Their gifts reveal who he is both in himself and for us. They are “sacred gifts of mystic meaning” that reveal Christ as King, as God, and as Sacrifice. Such is the symbolic meaning of gold, of frankincense, and of myrrh, the last being a burial spice signifying Christ’s sacrifice and death.
Epiphany as event gives rise to the season of Epiphany as the season of teaching about the nature of God, of divinity. The wonder of the Epiphany is the elevation of our thinking and being that is only possible because of the wondrous humility of God in the child Christ. Like the Magi-Kings, we return to our own places but are changed because of what we have been given to behold; in short, enlightened and illumined by the Light of Christ. Epiphany is all light, the light of the understanding.
“Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east,
and are come to worship him”
Fr. David Curry
Epiphany 2026