Epiphany
/O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face.
- the collect for Epiphany
Have you ever had an epiphany? I remember when, well into my twenties, I realized that the popular song from the 70’s by Deep Purple that I had heard on the radio hundreds of times was, in fact, “Smoke on the Water.” Wow! I had always thought it was “slow running water!”
OK, so that’s not much of an epiphany, but it illustrates what an epiphany is. It’s a moment when you can perceive with sudden clarity what you were somehow unable to perceive before. It shows how we just keep hearing what we expect to hear until we’re somehow given new ears to hear what’s really there.
On the feast of Epiphany, Jan 6, we celebrate the wise magi finally recognizing Christ in the flesh. They’d been seeking and traveling for such a long time, unable to put the confounding pieces together. But when the star finally stops over the stable and there they see Mary with the Christ child, everything suddenly crystalizes into a whole new idea - God made flesh - in the form of a specific, human being. It was certainly not what they expected, but suddenly they could see outside their box and perceive the concept of “king” in a whole new and liberating way.
I love the epiphanies that come through reading Scripture - when I suddenly see a passage I’ve read many times before in a whole new way. This happened to me just this week with the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarapheth during my daily readings. All of a sudden, it’s a whole different story for me and another one of the infinite layers, or facets, of God was brought into the light.
May this Epiphany season bring you many faithful epiphanies and remind you that no matter how familiar or routine something or someone may be to you, there is always more than meets the eye waiting to be discovered. For those who listen deeply with open hearts and minds, there are always new discoveries to be made about the power and love of God, even in the most ordinary or unexpected places.
