Epiphany! - “Sudden, surprising
happening that changes everything completely!”1
I love the definition of Epiphany that
I found above from the GBOD worship planning web site this past week.
Usually the only reference many of us have to Epiphany is the
Scare-a-crow in the Wizard of Oz declaring he has an Epiphany, or if
we have been in church for a while perhaps the idea that it has
something to do with wise men. We use the word Epiphany to describe
the 12th day after Christmas. Often times the idea that
Epiphany changes everything completely gets drowned out by the three
wise men and the gold, frankinsense and myrrh. We think of the
traditions and forget that this Sunday marks the beginning for us in
the church to start to grapple with what Jesus' birth really means
for us. It is time to seek our own Epiphanies – our own
realizations about Christ that are surprising and changes everything
completely! It is time to begin anew, to seek, to listen to God and
to pray.
It is also a time of healing. Isaiah
60:1-2 especially reminds us that it is time to “soak up” some
God no matter where we are in life. For the people of Israel this
was the time period when they were returning to home. The people
felt lost, broken, isolated. They had been forced into exile and
were finally allowed to return home. When they did they found it
destroyed, and what was standing had either gentiles living in it, or
those Jews who were too poor for the government to bother to move
them to exile. There were power struggles between those who stayed
and those who left and everyone else. Not to mention just pure
misery. (Isaiah 59:8-10). Yet God breaks in. God gives them hope
about what is to come and God heals.
God does not break into the scene
because anyone deserved it. God does not bring light into the
darkness of this situation because anyone repented. God does not
come because of anything they did or anything we do. God comes
because God comes. God comes because we are his people and he pulls
us to him. He calls us and beckons us and we get to bask in the
light. God is the one that heals, that gives them the strength to
rebuild and figure out how to be a nation once more. God comes and
then they repent, and then they change, and then they become a
collective people again.
This is an important lesson in this
season of Epiphany. It is time for us as a hurting people, as a
hurting church to just allow God to come. To stop struggling for
power, for authority for control and allow ourselves to see the
light, to turn our faces towards the light and away from the darkness
that surrounds us. It is time for us to “Lift up your eyes and
look about you.” As we begin this new time, as we experience the
life changing good news of God let us pray for the light. Let us
pray for each other and for our own Epiphanies. Let us bask in the
light and glory of the Lord before we do anything else. Maybe, just
maybe then we truly will be able to share the Good news of Christ.
If we do not take the time to truly see what a difference following
Christ makes in our lives, how are we to be a light for anyone else?
If it does not make our communities any different than the rest of
the darkness how is anyone else going to believe us?
So let us stop our hectic races to see
who can be the first to fill up their calendar. Let us not even
begin to think about what the church needs to do. Let us just
listen. Let us just soak up some light and listen to what God is
whispering for us to do next. Then we can repent – change the
direction of what we are doing and be the light that calls out to the
rest of the world.
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