This is the season of Epiphany and it comes none too soon. When I first sprang the word on my tiny congregation on Alternate 54 in Western Kentucky they looked puzzled. E-pfif-fun-ie? And so this young green reverend still wet behind the ears—tried patiently as patient as a young 25-year-old Pastor could be— to give them a lesson about the lectionary (the what?) and the coming of the Wise Men who really didn’t show up in the real Christmas drama but came later.
Still wondering the church took it all in stride. More patient, God bless ‘em than any young green preacher could ever be. And so they began to listen and I secretly wondered if I really knew as much about Epiphany as I let on.
But through the years that young green pastor is no more. Life happened. Sometimes a whole lot of life. But my understanding of Epiphany has grown. The Greek church taught us that the three Wise men saw a star in the East and set out to find out what it meant. Funny, they were outsiders, Gentiles of all people. And there at the beginning of the story most for us overlooked, those that stood on the outside of the plate glass window were even then included in the greatest story ever told. No us’s and them’s. No they’s. Just folks. And it really did not matter if they were poor or homeless or refugees or on the other side of whatever political persuasion there might be. It wasn’t important that they could not speak our language or were gay—even those wild ones in those scary parades. Reckon the outsiders meant that Buddhists and Mormons or atheists or those locked behind prison walls were also part of the real story.
So the church set aside January 6th as that time when the Wise Men followed that blinking star until they found at the end of their journey someone who one day would open his arms so wide that he would take everyone in. And John wrote: “This God loved the world…” No qualifications.
An old play by Maxwell Anderson has one of the characters saying, “I came here seeking light in darkness and stumbled on a morning.” And maybe that is what Epiphany is all about. Seeking light in darkness.
Put Epiphany down beside this January 6th and all the days that follow. My God, what a dark time this is. The virus rages and seems to be coming back with a vengeance. Hospitals filled and running over. Nurses running from one room to the other trying to help the sick and the dying. Morgues with no place to put all the bodies. And the tears and grief piled on top of grief by those who have lost the dearest ones they have loved. All of life turned topsy-turvy not only here but all over.
We seem hopelessly divided as a people suspicious and mistrustful even in those vaccinations that change this picture. And mistrustful of just about everything. And we could talk of the evictions and the dispossession of cars and millions without jobs and running out of hope. And we clergy-people wondering deep down if there is really any word from the Lord.
And it seems that this January Epiphany has come at just the right time. Remember, the story goes of the Wise Men that came from afar. And after their long and tedious journey they stood by that straw-filled manger open-mouthed and transfixed. They looked up and the star they had followed for so long was still there and still blinking.
Later John remembered this incident and would write: “The light has come into the world and the darkness cannot out it out.” And so friends, like John we must hang on to that kindly light as it leads us through this flickering gloom.”
We will somehow make it not just by feeling our way through this dark—but by seeing a light that was lead us all even as we stumble along.”
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