by CCW | 11 January 2026 10:00
Epiphany marks the transition from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. They are the two centers, as in an ellipse, to use a mathematical and astronomical image, around which the Christian understanding constantly revolves. The mystery of Christmas is thus not simply eclipsed, past and gone with the event of Epiphany. Kepler’s use of the ellipse to explain planetary motion was probably the greater revolution so-called in terms of early modern natural philosophy, far more significant than Copernicus and Galileo. For it broke the dominance of the distinction between terrestrial or rectilinear motion and circular motion, and especially the hold that circular motion had for more than a thousand years. Yet it didn’t mean that the beauty of the idea of circular motion was lost from thought, particularly theological thinking about God and about the journey of our minds to God and with God.
Likewise Bethlehem remains constantly with us in the journey to Jerusalem just as Jerusalem is a constant presence in the Christmas story. The wise men, the Magoi from Anatolia, come to Bethlehem, after all, by way of Jerusalem. With their coming to Bethlehem, Christmas is omni populo, for all people; thus there is the continuation of Christmas, of Bethlehem, with us. The gifts they bring inaugurate the idea of gift-giving at Christmas and inform the essential meaning of Epiphany not just as event but as teaching. The gifts teach and thus belong to the manifestation, the making known of the essential divinity of Jesus Christ; the main theme of the Epiphany season.
The readings on The First Sunday after Epiphany within The Octave of the Epiphany signal this new and different focus that belongs to Epiphany. There is a turn, as Bishop John Cosin (17th c. Durham) puts it, from “His coming in the flesh that was God” to “His being God that was come in the flesh”; a shift in focus and emphasis in our thinking, namely, “to turn ourselves from his humanity below to his divinity above.”
This is the necessary corrective for us and for every age without which idolatry, our fascination and preoccupation with ourselves and the things of our making, becomes our default condition. The corrective is here in Paul’s words and in Luke’s Gospel. “Be not conformed to the world”, Paul says. The world and its agendas and ideologies do not define us. The world belongs to God and to God’s making known himself and his will for his creation and, especially, for our humanity. Therefore “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind”. That is our constant struggle and challenge. Epiphany sets us upon the journey of the understanding. It is all about education, our learning from what is being taught to us by God with us. This transcends the agendas of the day and transforms us by the renewing of our minds. It is the point, too, of the Gospel reading.
“They went up to Jerusalem”, meaning Mary, Joseph, and the boy Jesus. Later, on Quinquagesima Sunday, again from Luke, we will hear Jesus’ words to the disciples, “behold, we go up to Jerusalem”. Not ‘they’ but ‘we’ go up to Jerusalem. As Luke indicates, going up to Jerusalem was an annual event in the Jewish custom: going up to Jerusalem “every year at the feast of the passover”. The interplay and connection between Jerusalem and Bethlehem are inescapable. But in this going up, Luke tells us, “the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem,” unbeknownst to “Joseph and his mother”. This is the setting of a new programme and journey.
It is not his first journey to Jerusalem. That, too, we will discover this year at the very end of the Epiphany season and the beginning of the Gesima Sundays of Pre-Lent, in The Feast of Candlemas, a double-barrelled festival of Mary’s Purification and Christ’s Presentation in the Temple, forty days after Christmas. All these journeys to Jerusalem contribute to the meaning of the Epiphany as manifestation, teaching us about who Jesus is in his essential divinity and what that means for the understanding of our humanity.
Nowhere, perhaps, more wonderfully than in this unique story, the only story of Jesus as a boy in the New Testament, twelve years old, as Luke emphasizes. It marks the transition from childhood to adulthood; it has to do with teaching and learning, about entering into maturity and responsibility for what we have learned and come to know. “They found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors,” meaning the doctors of the Law, “both hearing them, and asking them questions,” awakening in them great amazement. What is the point of this scene? What are we being told or taught?
Mary’s question prompts the answer. She and Joseph have “sought him sorrowing”, worried and anxious, in other words. They find him in the temple both as human student and divine teacher, we might say. To her question, Jesus responds with two rhetorical questions: “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” This is what he wants us to know.
The Father here is God the Father. The whole scene is an epiphany, a making known of Christ’s essential being as the Son of God sent to do the will of the Father. That holy business is the work of human redemption accomplished in the full meaning and purpose of Christ’s coming. It complements The Baptism of Christ appointed for Epiphanytide and which equally manifests God as Trinity. All of these things have to be taught to us in order to be learned or grasped by us. In Luke’s Gospel, this scene marks a turning point, the beginning of the ministry of Christ ultimately encapsulated in the phrase “behold, we go up to Jerusalem”.
God makes himself known through the conditions of our humanity. God teaches what he wants and seeks for us. We are opened out to the mystery of God with us. The coming of the wise men from outside the boundaries of Israel, signals the universal desire to know and understand. Following a star, “Viderunt, Venerunt, Adorarunt”- they saw, they came, they worshiped (Andrewes). In short, they acted upon what they saw.
They entered into the understanding of what they saw and sought to comprehend and honour. And so must we. The light which brought them is the light of God in Christ. The light which has come into the world is the light which speaks to our desire to know and to understand in the face of the awareness of our unknowing and uncertainty; in short, our darkness. “In thy light shall we see light”, as the Psalmist puts it. We learn from God and from God being with us in Jesus Christ.
Epiphany signals the illumination of our minds and the restoration of our being, the healing of soul, mind, and body. They all belong to human redemption: the redemption of desire, the redemption of our knowing and the redemption of our being; in short, our learning about what God seeks for us. Education is our being opened out to the radical truth of what it means to be human. It is found in God in our being with him and thus our being where his Word is taught and proclaimed. Epiphany launches us into the learning of who we are individually and collectively as the sons and children of God.
Education is not primarily utilitarian or instrumental. It is not about how to do this or that. It is about meaning and understanding that ultimately belong to the truth and dignity of our humanity, a corrective to the pursuit of the dominance of nature and one another. As Jane Jacobs observed in Dark Ages Ahead, “credentialing is the death of education.” It may be true, as some have wittingly and amusingly said, that had the wise men been women they would have brought more practical gifts, boxes of pampers and fleece blankets, perhaps, but that misses the deeper significance of the gifts. They teach us about who Jesus is: gold, symbolic of his being King, frankincense, symbolic of his being God, and myrrh, a burying spice, symbolic of the sacrifice of his humanity.
None of these gifts are exactly useful. They belong to worship. What they teach is theological; it has altogether to do with God making himself known to us that transforms the understanding of ourselves. How? “By the renewing our minds,” Paul says. “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” Jesus says. “They found him in the temple” actively engaged with the Law, the Word Incarnate with the words of God written, just as we do in our liturgy, in our worship of what is worthy of our complete attention.
Here is the corrective to our post-literate and theologically barren world. It is found in the journey of the understanding. Education is our learning from the one who is God with us. “They went up to Jerusalem”, learning who and what Jesus is, and so may we. Thus Epiphany season will reveal to us the things that belong to God’s will and purpose for our humanity. It is very much about our going up to Jerusalem.
Fr. David Curry,
Epiphany I (in the Octave), 2026
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2026/01/11/sermon-for-the-first-sunday-after-the-epiphany-17/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.