No matter how you calculate the length of the Christmas season, Epiphany has inarguably come and gone. But this year, it struck me for the first time that the feast we celebrate is actually composed of several epiphanies—and that comes as something of a relief.
The central epiphany we celebrate is, of course, the epiphany, the showing forth, the manifestation of the savior of the world to the wise men, who were apparently the first gentiles to recognize him for who he was; that was the beginning of the revelation that this was to be a savior for everybody.
But that was not the only thing made manifest to them. The rest of it happened before that day, and after.
First, it became evident to them—through prophecy or Scripture or tradition or maybe through revelation—that a king was going to be born in a certain time and place. So they set out to find him.
As our pastor pointed out in his Epiphany sermon, it probably was not a straightforward journey. In fact, it seems likely they probably got lost at some point because when they beheld the star, they were “overjoyed”—implying that, sometime after they began their journey, they lost track of their goal and then found it again.
That might be a second epiphany: finding their way again. They started out on the right track with the best intentions, then lost their way and then were able to get back on track and locate their guide.
Then came the event we think of as actual Epiphany: They beheld the child himself, with his mother. Matthew’s Gospel does not say that they were surprised to see that the new king was just a wrinkly, little Jewish baby born to a poor family; it just says that they knelt down, did him homage and gave him royal gifts. One way or another, they saw who he was and did what they came to do.
Finally, when they left him, they had what you might consider a fourth epiphany: They realized, with the help of a dream, that Herod had bad intentions and should not be trusted with the information about Jesus’ whereabouts; so they changed their plans and made their way home by a different route.
All of these things are what we call Epiphany. But there’s more.
I can easily imagine that they continued to have small epiphanies on their way home; and continued to do so after they got home.
Maybe they discussed different things that had struck them about the Holy Family and had to work on reconciling what they expected with what they found. Maybe they had some epiphanies about what God is really like.
Maybe, once they saw the child, they continued to walk in the light that had been revealed to them in that house, and everywhere they went from that day on, they saw people who reminded them of Jesus. Maybe they found out the whole world, past, present and future, is full of Jesus.
Maybe they told everyone they knew about the messiah they had met and were astonished to find that not everyone believed them or cared. The way the story is told, the wise men always strike me as a tiny bit naïve, assuming Herod will want to worship the new king. When they discovered he didn’t, maybe that was just the first in a long string of disillusionments about how open other people are to goodness and truth.
Or maybe they told people who did believe them, and the epiphany rippled outward. Maybe they began somewhat cynical, and their world continued from that day to open up and become more joyful and radiant, and they shared the good and great news they had received.
Maybe they realized they needed to change their lives forever and found it extremely hard and discouraging. Or maybe they realized they needed to change their lives forever and were astonished to discover how much meaning and peace there can be in life when Jesus is at the center.
Or maybe they just went back to doing the same old thing. Maybe, once that brilliant night had passed, they discovered that they were the kind of person who sees God and doesn’t change at all.
You have heard the old cliche, “Wise men still seek him.” Like many cliches, it is true and more profound than it seems. Every life ought to be composed of countless epiphanies. The epiphany that we need a savior; the epiphany that he can be found. The epiphany of where to find him. The epiphany of what he is really like. The epiphany of what we are really like. The epiphany that we are on the wrong path and need to make a course correction; and the epiphany that, just because we need to make a change, that doesn’t mean everything that led up to this point was a wasted effort. The epiphany that, when we try to see each other in the light of Jesus, we find Jesus everywhere.
I said at the beginning of this essay that it was a relief to realize that epiphanies come in multiples. Didn’t it hurt a little bit to move straight from the light of Christmas to the darkness of this political season we are in? It is pretty easy to feel hopeless right now, looking around, looking forward and looking back. The news is pretty grim, and it might feel like we are at the end of the road, with nothing but further disillusionment and danger ahead of us. It feels dark.
But this is not all there is. This is never all there is. The world is full of Jesus, which means the world is full of light, full of right paths, full of people of good will, full of chances to start over and find something good. Think of the wise men who saw Jesus face to face, and then had to go on with the rest of their lives, deciding what to do with what they now knew.
That is where we are now. We can still always find light, if we are open to epiphanies.
