Preachers & liturgists will have a choice, this weekend: to present the Second Sunday of Christmas, or to skip a day to the Epiphany. Since the church at which I’m to preach is following the Epiphany scheme, and since the following week plunges directly into the Baptism of Jesus, I’ve decided to look at the Epiphany lections. This is the Season of Light, celebrating those AHA! moments when the lightbulb of recognition goes on, when holiness breaks into our drab post-holiday world. Secular Christmas promises so much; and realizes so little. Here’s an antidote.
We begin with a marvelous poem attributed to Third (post-exile) Isaiah, 60:1-6. “Arise, shine, FOR YOUR LIGHT HAS COME, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon YOU!” This isn’t a prescient prophecy of the Messiah, but rather a joyous proclamation to all of Zion that God is still ready to break in with renewed hopes and dreams. The Jewish Publication Society translates verse 5 as “As you behold, you will glow…” God’s dream, then, is to create a community of glow-ers? The whole People will burn with holy light: “Their radiance is essential to any bright future of God’s own imagining. If they hope to sit on the sidelines while someone else shines instead of them, then they have missed their central role in God’s vision.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, FEASTING on the WORD, A 1:199)
The opening verse of Ephesians 3:1-12 speaks about Paul’s defining moment, a moment we all need when we (at last) can say, “Oh! THAT’s why!” The mystery of Christ, to over-simplify, is the uniting of all humans in the Divine Light which shines over and within them. The Church Universal is the pipeline through which this light engages the movers ‘n’ shakers of our society: “Through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” And of course some places which aren’t so heavenly…
We can’t have Epiphany without providing for the entrance of the Wisemen. Whoever they were. However many there might have been. The Isaiah passage makes reference to camels bringing the Wealth of the Nations, maybe that was their mode of arrival. Our glamorized traditions have distorted the story a bit–it may be good to re-read Matthew 2:1-12. Tom Troeger points out that before they presented their gold/frankincense/ myrrh they gave the most important gift of all, themselves! Can it be that the people who recognize Jesus as Lord ARE the “Wealth of the Nations”?
Barbara Brown Taylor wraps it nicely for us: “There is no contradiction between proclaiming the epiphany of the Lord and the epiphany of the Lord’s People….He comes to set other people on fire, not to burn like a torch all on his own….People glow with God’s light because God is present with them, not because of anything they have done to secure that presence for themselves….Today Christ’s kin get to behold his glow until they glow themselves. They get to pass the gold and frankincense around as if it belonged to the whole family.” (op.cit.)
God Bless Us, Every One Horace Brown King
My ruminations over scripture readings assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com
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