Epiphany

I posted this three years ago as a reflection on Epiphany. It was helpful for me to re-read today.

Last year, for every season of the church calendar, Ellia and I constructed a short, preschool-aged prayer that we prayed every evening. Every night before bed, Ellia and I would say our Advent prayer, or our Christmas prayer, or our Epiphany prayer…It went decently well last year when Ellia was three, though she had a preference for the Advent prayer. We ended up praying for Jesus’ advent with a lot more regularity than the others.

This year, Ellia’s sensibilities about the church calendar are being refined (as are her parents’), and she has journeyed well as a four-year-old through Advent and then through Christmastide. Today is the feast of the Epiphany. In the West, this has traditionally been a celebration of the visit of the magi. Or better, it is the manifestation (meaning of Greek epiphaneia) of Jesus to the nations. In the Eastern tradition, the central event is the baptism by John, but again the focus is on the manifestation of Jesus as God’s beloved son.

Epiphany (and, for us, the season of ordinary time that follows it) is a time of reflection on the willingness of Jesus not only to come, but to be revealed to us. God did not send Jesus incognito as it were, just an anonymous blood donor sent to effect our justification. N. T. Wright is fond of pointing out that, for many Christians, it would have sufficed (following the creeds) for Jesus to have been born of a virgin…and then to have suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, and buried. But the Gospel writers spilled much ink to give us a picture of the life of Jesus between the cradle and the cross. This is what Epiphany (followed by Lent) reminds us: that God wants to be known not just believed in; that Jesus is not just an instrument of God but is true Life sent into the world; that the gospel is not just about the magnificence of the incarnation or the resurrection but is also about the manifestation of God in a humble baptism and a human life.

At Epiphany, we travel with the nations represented by the magi to wonder at this gift of God, we hear the voice of God declare at Jesus’ baptism that he is the beloved of God, we begin to take notice of the things that Jesus said and did. On this day of Epiphany, let us draw near to this person and know God.

Our Epiphany prayer, which we will begin praying tonight until Ash Wednesday, is

Jesus, thank you for showing yourself to us.

Now show yourself through us.