In Spain, January 6th, the Epiphany, is a fiesta – the festival of the three kings they call it and a splendid festival it is, with fireworks and processions and everything that makes up a Spanish fiesta. But it is the children who look forward to it most of all, because it is then they receive their Christmas presents. On the Mediterranean coast, where it is warm in January, every one is out early and all the children are riding their new bikes and showing off their new toys. I think it is a lovely tradition because it celebrates what the festival commemorates, the gifts of the wise men to the infant Jesus. But I guess that those gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh would not actually be terribly appealing to modern children – not quite like a book of adventure stories or a Playstation, are they? But the gifts are symbolic, and Epiphany has a meaning which it is important to understand.
Now I am sure you know the symbolism of the gifts, but I would like to focus on the event as a whole, because that is trying to tell us that something important is happening. The importance of events is often not recognised at the time they occur. The significance of quite trivial decisions we make can alter the whole course of our lives. Nobody rings a bell to say that this is a turning point in our lives when we apply for one job rather than another, but it can be so. On the other hand, those occasions when we do make a big fuss about some event, like the state opening of Parliament or the Olympic Games, people have forgotten all about it a year later.
Now this visit of the wise men is not a state occasion but it is trying to say that here is an event which is significant: it has a meaning and an importance quite beyond the every day fact that a young woman has given birth to a son. Of course, that importance must depend on the meaning, and as far as the wise men were concerned, if it was the birth of a baby boy, then it must be important because the boy was born to be a king. And in a sense, they were right. We all know that phrase applied to Jesus, the man born to be king, but it means something different now from what it did then. And neither of those meanings describes the Kingdom of God, which is not an absolute monarchy like the Stuarts tried to impose, or a constitutional monarchy like our current one. Jesus is a king all right, but the kingdom is not like anything we have seen before.
To the church, the importance of Epiphany is that the birth of Jesus was witnessed by people who were not Jews. It is a manifestation of Christ to the gentiles a theme which Paul took up in all his missionary work. And if you think about it, this was very surprising. Jesus ministry was short and localised. As far as we know it was confined to Galilee and Jerusalem. How did it happen that Paul began to see that Jesus was not a Messiah for the Jews, but the saviour of the world?
Now we use the word epiphany of any sudden realisation. It’s when the penny drops, when something which we understood superficially suddenly makes sense at a deeper level. And I think this happened to Paul on the road to Damascus. Until then, Paul had been pursuing his own ideas, so nicely codified in the Law which he had been taught from a child, and giving him a clear cut mission to persecute these Christians with their new-fangled ideas and odd way of interpreting the scriptures. Paul’s vision at Damascus knocked these ideas on their head and made him begin to realise that Jesus of Nazareth was pointing towards a God who was beyond his thinking and universal, for all people.
These epiphanies happen all the time. You know those phrases, they shall look and look, but not see; they shall listen, but not hear. We so often fail to understand the gospel: sometimes because we don’t spend enough time thinking about it, but often we are afraid to do so. We know perfectly well that if we were really to take the gospel to heart, it would transform our lives and we are not quite ready for it. We need an epiphany to really take on board what Jesus means.
But having said that, I must admit it really is difficult to understand exactly what the incarnation, that is, Jesus living as a man among us, really can mean. It is important all right, but what exactly does it mean, particularly in the light of the crucifixion. John’s gospel shows another man, John, coming to terms with a similar epiphany, that Jesus, this man who walked the earth and lived among us, was somehow of the same nature as God. It is baffling to us now, but imagine what a great leap of faith it was for John, like Paul, a Jew brought up in the law.
But it is an epiphany we all have to go through. All of us, who call ourselves Christians, have to make up our mind about what it means to say that Jesus is the Son of God. But if you have made up your mind, and can put it into simple words, then you can be sure you have got it wrong. Because if Jesus is anything like John says, then there is something at the very heart of what we believe which is beyond our understanding. Nevertheless, we can get some insight and it is these little epiphanies when the penny drops about some aspect of the gospel which help us to make progress. So we ought to think about Jesus and try and go beyond a superficial understanding and get some intuition on what we actually mean when we recite the creeds.
To give you some help, here are some thoughts to start you off. You can think of some of the things that Jesus is not. It is always easier to eliminate some things than to express ideas positively. And one thing I would start with is to say that Jesus is not a guardian angel. It is very easy to stay with what we learnt as children, but you have to grow in faith just as you have to grow mentally and physically. Christianity is not easy: it will help you through life, but not by removing obstacles in your path.
And if you are thinking of Jesus as judge of all the world, then you have probably got that wrong too. People talking along those lines are thinking of Jesus judging other people, not themselves. If Jesus is the Son of God, that must mean that in thinking of Him we are looking to the source of truth, of goodness, of beauty, of all the things we think of flowing from God. Of course that means that that source of goodness by its very nature acts as a judgement, but the judgement is for ourselves. That is what follows from a personal relationship with God. That is what flows from the incarnation, the idea that these transcendent qualities can yet be expressed in human life.
So thinking positively about the incarnation, Jesus is a light, a guide. It is so important to read the gospels and understand them. The words have things to say to us today as surely as they did to those who first heard them. And it’s not just a guide: the incarnation is a source of power too. Not like an earthly king, or a tribal god, but the way of the Cross is not weakness but a source of power. It is in fact the only hope for the world. Earthly power inevitably leads to conflict. It is the weakness and foolishness of the Cross which is the only hope of healing those conflicts.
A couple of years ago, we had a thought for epiphany on the church web site. It showed the three kings on camels following the star, but having their way blocked by the concrete wall separating Israel from Palestine. Throughout the world, from Kenya to Pakistan to Israel and in many, many other places not in the news, we have conflicts arising from people’s inability to share the earth’s bounty. Epiphany is not about a nice tradition which we like to keep, it is about a message of healing for the world’s sorrows. It is in fact the only way. Money or force of arms will not heal our divisions, but the gospel will. The post communion prayer for today says exactly what I have been trying to say, so let’s end with that: Lord God, the bright splendour whom the nations seek: may we who with the wise men have been drawn by your light discern the glory of your presence in your Son, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord.