A Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord
Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6 Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6 Matthew 2:1-12
The eminent philosophical journal Mindpublished his paper in 1950. Alan Turing opened with, “I propose to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’” The polymath founder of theoretical computer science then reset the question by way of “The Imitation Game.” If one person is texting with two others, would the first person be able to determine if one of the other two was a machine?
Originally it was not that difficult. It grew steadily—really exponentially—more so. Now, computer programs ask us to prove that we are human. And how does one do that? It is certainly not as easy as identifying the number of school buses one sees in a set of pictures. What makes intelligence living rather than artificial?
Unlike artificial intelligence, human thinking occurs against the horizon of an entire world, one made up of care and concern. So human thought is always bound up with our wills. We willfully think our way into surviving and thriving, a struggle that begins by understanding what lies around us. Our fulfillment is out there in our surrounding world.
However more powerful or faster artificial intelligence is, it runs on predetermined—although increasingly sophisticated—tracks. It does not inhabit a world. It has no will for the world. Only human thinkers can, and must, say, “The world is my oyster.” How true that is!
We celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany, the “shining forth” of Christ. Notice that the Greek word “epiphany,” ἐπιφάνεια, is an action. It therefore implies an actor. Christ is not passively seen by us. No, he manifests himself. He shows himself to us.
The Gospel stories that compose what we call the infancy narratives make this clear. God manifests himself to us. The Archangel Gabriel is sent to the priest Zechariah and then to the Virgin Mary. Shepherds are summoned to Bethlehem by an angelic host. The Magi do not wander into town. They follow a star.
It is ever so with faith. Some would define faith as belief, without evidence, in the unseen, but that is a small subset of a much deeper phenomenon: the manifestation of another. Faith is an epiphany.
By way of explanation, have you ever looked at a bank of strange faces, say at a party or in a bar, and realized that one of them was looking back at you? This face was as interested in you as you were in it. That is the experience of encountering a person, someone in front of you, who wants to engage with you.
Faith is just such an encounter. It is an epiphany. We speak of seeing a face or recognizing a voice, but ultimately we perceive an intelligence behind a string of occurrences, which, even we admit, would appear quite random to anyone save ourselves.
This is much more than prayers being answered. Paradoxically, we are sometimes most aware of this mysterious presence when our prayers are not answered. Memes with little meaning take on great significance because they seem to be addressed to us. What is random to all others we receive as calculated and complete, quite undeniable to the very intelligence being addressed, our own. A song plays; we read something; we notice something in nature and then, in the words of Isaiah:
Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you (60:1). Then you shall be radiant at what you see, your heart shall throb and overflow (60:5).
Faith is an epiphany! We experience a living intelligence that is exponentially greater than our own. It expresses itself in circumstances too creative to be ignored. We have no choice but to respond because we know that this intelligence is not artificial, not something we have produced. Our only possible response is prayer: giving attention to, even addressing in return, this mysterious presence.
On that basis we begin to welcome what we cannot see or even completely understand. This is where the acceptance of Scripture and other church teachings enters. They derive from, and rely upon, the confidence of an encounter, an epiphany. Sometimes fundamentalists speak as though they immediately recognized the authority of Scripture, but something—really someone—must compel this recognition. The Scriptures cannot speak for themselves; they cannot say, “I am the word of God.”
The epiphany that is faith underlies religion, though it can exist without it. It can be an unquestioned inheritance or the inertia of negligence, but this is a dutiful and dour religion.
Sp epiphany is the name of a feast and the basic reality underlying religion. It is the experience we call faith. We are not alone. Someone has manifested himself to us. Belief in propositions is quite secondary. First, we must respond. We pray. We begin to dialogue with this mysterious other.
