Author: CCW

“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”.

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“When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son,
made of a woman, made under the law”

Some can’t wait for Christmas to be over; others want it to last forever. Yet however much Christmas has been co-opted, if not hijacked to every other agenda imaginable, it has an undeniable hold on our imaginations and our lives to one degree or another. It has a global reach and presence in very different cultures in our world and even among non-Christians. Why? Because of its catholicity, dare I say, meaning something universal and in its fullness. The word, fullness, is a repeated feature of the Christmas mystery.

There is a fullness of things in heaven and earth, a double fullness, we might say, but one which is captured in the central mystery. For in “the Word made flesh”, as John puts it “(we beheld the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth”; a fullness contained in a parenthesis. In the readings for The Sunday after Christmas we have “the fullness of the time” which is just as much “the time of fullness”. The twelve days of Christmas are unique, not just an octave such as at Easter, but an octave and a half, ultimately culminating in Epiphany on Tuesday of this week. With Epiphany, Christmas goes global. What is proclaimed as “good tidings of great joy for all people” reaches far, far beyond a tiny corner of the world. With the coming of the Magi-Kings to Bethlehem, Christmas is omni populo, literally for all people, itself a kind of fullness.

But what does all this fullness mean? Quite simply, fullness belongs to God and to our being gathered into the life of God. Fullness speaks to the highest truth and dignity of our humanity; it cannot be constrained to ethnic, cultural, political, social, economic, and linguistic communities and cultures. This sense of the fullness of things is theological, not merely sociological. In a radical sense, the Christmas mystery at Bethlehem never goes away but signals the whole purpose of God’s revelation in the gathering of all things into unity in God. Like the Magi-Kings, we may leave Bethlehem and return to our own places, but, perhaps, as T.S. Eliot suggests, “no longer at ease” because the Christmas mystery at Bethlehem always remains with us. The point is that we are changed by what we have been given to see.

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