Epiphany Thoughts

The Revd Deacon Polly M. Bowen

 The Epiphany season, where we find ourselves during January and part of February, is six weeks long this year. It can be as few as four weeks or as many as nine. But after the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, we generally ignore the season. The altar guild puts out green hangings and the clergy wear green stoles (although there is a liturgical option to continue white throughout the season) and things go on pretty much as usual.

“Epiphany” brings to mind the Magi, journeying to Bethlehem to find the newborn Jesus, and perhaps even the baptism of Jesus. And then what? A season for sweeping up Christmas greens, shoveling snow, and longing for spring? There is so much more!

Epiphany is the season of light. At St. Paul’s in Chatham, NJ, Mother Elizabeth Kaeton* opts for white in the church, and keeps the aisle candles up to emphasize that Jesus is the light of the world. And she points out that the gospel lessons during this season of light contain epiphanies of Jesus in all sorts of settings: the visit of the Magi, the baptism, the trip to Jerusalem when the boy Jesus was ‘lost’ in the temple, the first of his ‘signs’ at a wedding at Cana, the sermon on the mount, and numerous healing miracles.

At the time the Bible was written, “epiphany” was a political term: when the Roman Emperor visited a town or made an appearance anywhere, he did it with such pomp and grandeur that it was a demonstration of his great power and glory – an epiphany or showing forth – meant to induce fear and also veneration from his subjects. For the early Christians to co-opt this terminology for Jesus was remarkable enough, but the use (especially by Paul) of a number of other terms that referred only to the emperor was unprecedented. To say, “Jesus is Lord” was to deny the lordship of Caesar; to call Him “savior” denied that Caesar was the great benefactor of all his subjects. St. Paul grew increasingly bold about these terms, transferring them from Caesar to Jesus as the epiphanies about Jesus took shape in his head and his heart, thereby sealing his own fate – death for treason.

In our time, people are still dying for verbalizing their epiphanies. This is a tragedy of all eras. But the epiphanies keep coming, and they bring with them new life. God’s beauty is all around us, the world is alive with his miracles. Sometimes we miss them because they are not what we think they should be, or we aren’t prepared to act on them, or the light is so blinding that we keep our spiritual eyes closed to them. It takes courage and focus to even see, let alone acknowledge the epiphanies in our lives – those “aha moments” when we know that God’s Kingdom has broken in upon us and we echo the “yes” of our Lord’s Blessed Mother.

God won’t stop showing us his glory. Savor the season . . . and the miracle.

*Read Mother Elizabeth’s article on her blog at http://telling-secrets.blogspot.com/