Epiphany - Year C

A new year. God needs less of me.
An epiphany.... and a resolution.
Do not be alarmed - I am not going to involve you all in my personal resolutions - although not providing cake when I visit will help - but rather invite us to reflect, at this holy time of the Epiphany of our Lord, on our life of resolution with Jesus Christ.

Epiphany - the light of Christ in the world for all, the manifestation of the full breadth of God for all people. We now often associate "an epiphany" with us as personal insights into that relationship. There is always the presumption (hopefully) of God's grace preceding human action, and indeed human awareness. In such understanding, our "epiphanies" are usually us mere humans catching up with God. They can be our "windows of grace" that enlightens who we are with God, and who God is with us.

The message of this holy day, and the challenge of continuing to incorporate the scriptures with contemporary experience, is that the Epiphany does indeed belong to all people. And thus, God's grace and insights into that grace, do not belong solely to the church. At a very simple level, we the Church, would not need the celebration of the Epiphany of our Lord if it was otherwise. Our enormous challenge is to keep having that insight... I guess keep praying for continual epiphanies... that if we are to be what Christ stands for and is, then we are to be a people carrying that very life. Which is a life of unconditional love, a life of openness to others, a life of seeing the world as all of God's creation, not just some parts.

As many of you know, the highlight of 2009 for me was the parish pilgrimage to Iona and holy sites in England. The epiphany for me of that journeying was to see so much of what we do as church as separate. And this was not a good thing, to separate ourselves away from and out of ordinary life experience. It's not just the world that does it, the church does it to itself.
I was trying to think of examples - the ‘club mentality' would have to be a major separation technique. In other words, conveying the message that we've got what you should have and it's superior to how you are living life now.
So, invitation on church terms only. Even that common-heard phrase that I have been trying to obliterate, about baptismal families. "Well, we never see them again after the baptism." My retort is always.. "well, do you go and see them?" In other words, do we think that belonging to an Anglican parish is the only expression of Christ living in this world? I don't think so.... and I know it is not so.

My other "band wagon" after the pilgrimage is to try and rid ourselves of the saying... "I am going to church". We are the church, and thus it is (physically) wherever we are already. We gather regularly to be that community tangibly, to worship God as that community with our common story and liturgy. But do you see what I am getting at? If we say we are going to church then we are going somewhere different to the rest of our lives. The expression of what we do together is unique, I agree - we don't sing hymns and say the Lord's prayer together in the supermarket. But it is surely a natural continuum of our life as church in the world. We gather to commemorate the living story of which we are part; we continue in that life refreshed and rejuvenated and hopefully again once more on track, having been restored into the story again.

This is actually what Epiphany is all about. It is about the same weaving of story that we are called to do as Christians in our lives, and the life of the world. It is about taking the ancient texts of story, from the scriptures, and letting them rest in a living way in contemporary experience.

Please don't look to the doorway to see if camels and astrologers have arrived at this point! What hopefully has arrived is your own sense of belonging to that story. That is what Matthew gives us - the Jesus story that is the fulfilment of God's promises to Israel through Abraham, David, and the prophets, together with what all human beings long for. What is that? what is the human yearning common to all? Surely for a life of wholeness - and that wholeness has to be about salvation. We are instilled with that hope, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, humanist... the human hope of salvation that individually and as humanity we can indeed be whole and fulfilled. All great literature and stories and drama have that journey at their heart as good and evil fight out the battle for supremacy. The human condition contains the hope that good will win over evil, right will triumph over wrong, love will always conquer hate.

The journey and arrival of the wise men, the astrologers, was of such hope. They were not Jews; they were not on a religious quest. They were obedient to an invitation of light, the star, and they followed that without any prejudice of religious right and wrong. I am not saying they were not on a spiritual journey though; I am sure they were. So can you see what happened as they arrived at the place where Jesus was. We have this extraordinary meeting of a story coming from thousands of years of Hebrew prophecy of a Messiah fulfilling God's relationship with people, meeting with men who had no notion of that story but came with their own stories, on their own quest. In that meeting of the baby Jesus with these astrologers from many miles away, the goals of both were met. The magi's quest was complete; the fulfilment of God's act of salvation for all people was entered into. The stories merged; the coupling happened. It became a story of epiphany for everyone; then and now and those to come.

Can you see how it is of that revelation for all who come to Christ? Can you look at your own journey of faith, relationship with Christ, and identify the moment when your stories merged? Can you dissect the ups and downs of your life to see that moment when you said... "yes, Christ and I are together in this. We have met, and my life has changed now for ever." It may not of been dramatic. Many of us have been part of the church all our lives and perhaps we find it hard to discern that moment. But it is a real moment, somewhere there. We each belong to the epiphany. We each have that epiphany...

I was reflecting on my own story, trying to find that moment. I have been part of the church all my life - my mother made it compulsory. However, at some point I chose to be part of the story myself. Many of us stay in the church not knowing fully what we seek, but hoping to find it... such is my case. My epiphany came as part of a small group process, the catechumenate process, in which I was ostensibly a facilitator, a leader. I realised at some point that I was really a candidate, a seeker, and in the same realisation, I guess epiphany, I knew then that is what it would always be like. I am one of many on a journey of searching for that wholeness, but for me, and I would have been in my early 30s, I realised there and then it could only be with Jesus Christ. There was no other travelling companion for me. It was a most wonderful, load-shedding moment. And, at the same time, taking up a different load, the responsibility - and the resolution - of trying to be an appropriate companion for Jesus himself.

So, for me, it was the coming together of a life seemingly lived as a Christian, part of a story in theory, with the growing insight that my own living experience as a human had to be fully part of that story, not separate. Nobody around me would have seen any difference in me at all, I don't think. But for me, and for each of you, that moment in which we declare Christ as our lifelong companion, becomes our life resolution and the whole world changes and everything is indeed different.

The icon, the image, of that resolution that comes to me is of praying in the body stance of the early church; that we stand with arms outflung in complete abandonment in our rightful relationship with our God. That is why you have each received one of the Christmas angels today, with their beauty and their outflung arms. It is to remind each one of us of our epiphany with our Lord, of that revelation of knowing our life belongs to Christ, and vice versa. Christ's life belongs to ours. He proved that beyond doubt on the cross with his outflung arms.

It is also to remind each one of us that our continuing relationship with God does rely on prayer, through Jesus Christ. So put your angel somewhere to remind you to pray, to talk regularly with your Father of Epiphany. And perhaps to remind you also that you need to be alert, head up, eyes open, to see that star that bridges and binds together, not separates, the great promise of God with the promise of your own life. Amen.