January 12, 2020

Susan Adams

Epiphany 1

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Welcome to the second Sunday in Epiphany.

This is the Sunday when we take up, once again, the Advent story that we began to tell back in the beginning of December. Now we reach the part where the main character, the one we have been preparing to meet, the one we have been waiting for, is revealed.

Over recent weeks we have taken a bit of a side-trip from the main story-line and been focused instead on the story of the birth of Jesus with all the attendant glorious music and rituals that have grown up (in the Western Christian church) around that birth story. Today we take up once again the main thread of the story of the one who was to come and lead a fragmented community, an oppressed and persecuted people, back together, the one who was to offer reassurance that they were still ‘the people of God’ (or could be if they chose to be).

Once upon a time Epiphany was a major festival, a sort of culmination of the Advent waiting and preparation. It was much more important than the Christmas festival with its association with the Roman festival of Saturnalia, and the feasting and merrymaking that were the hallmarks. The earliest gospel to be written, Mark, doesn't even have the nativity story in it. But when the Roman emperor Constantine got involved in institutionalising the Christian movement early in the 4th C the date of both Epiphany and Christmas were agreed, and set at either end of the 12 days that marked the period of the new year and the turn from winter dark to the lengthening again of the hours of light. These days, Epiphany, as a significant festival and liturgical season, has almost lost its significance (in the Western Church) and is overshadowed by Christmas and the baby Jesus story that precedes it, and Lent and the crucifixion that follows; it is sort of sandwiched between birth and death stories.

For the early eastern Christian church the feast of Epiphany was focused on Jesus' baptism, and the manifestation of who Jesus was as a ‘son of God’. In Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus' birth, it is the magi from faraway places and their gifts – echoing the prophet Isaiah – and the baptism of Jesus that are important. This story identifies the baby with 'the one who is to come' and lead the way into the promise of God. Matthew’s telling highlights the meeting between Jesus and his cousin John at the Jordon River where, John baptises Jesus and we hear that God says” behold, my son, in whom I am well pleased”. (Note, this Jesus was an adult, not a baby.)

It seems to me, Epiphany is in continuity with Advent, with John the Baptist’s call to prepare the way for the one who is to come. Now, in Epiphany, we hear the story of how John baptises the one whom they have been waiting for, Jesus; and following his baptism, Jesus' ministry proper gets underway, with God’s blessing.

Christmas is bit of a distraction, an interspersed winter festival, bit of a nod if you like to Roman religious sensitivities. It is no wonder that it was not significantly observed in much of the Protestant church – it was even banned in some places as unbiblical and was only celebrated as in Britain as a major Christian feast by Roman Catholics until Victorian times.

Matthew however realigns our emphasis. He shifts us from Christmas, with all the Victorian rituals and glorious music that have come to shape it, back to the main story of establishing who Jesus is, and a different way of being a people together. He backs up his assertions with blatant connections echoing Isaiah to 'prove' that Jesus – and the stories that had grown up around him by the end of the first century when he, Matthew, was writing – were 'truly' in continuity with the Torah and Jewish history. He wanted the Jewish people to know who Jesus was.

Matthew’s context, like Isaiah’s, was troubled: the temple had fallen and the people of Israel were looking for hope and reassurance that God had not forgotten them. Matthew (in the story that was read last week) sets a star over Jesus at his birth and in its light the men from the east come bringing gifts of great value. But rather than succumbing to the power of king Herod, and his threat to kill the boy-baby, they defy him in an act of civil disobedience and leave by another route – thus thwarting his plan. The Jewish people could not help but hear in this story those echoes of Isaiah Matthew was offering as validation: the light on the mountain, the nations from afar streaming toward it bringing their wealth, the promise of God’s favour, and of course the story of Moses raised in exile to avoid Pharaoh’s slaughter of the male babies. The one they were waiting for had come, Matthew was convinced of this!

Matthew narrates how Jesus' ‘true’ identity was revealed at his baptism – Jesus, son of God, servant of justice in whom God is well pleased – whose ministry, following his baptism, begins in earnest with his purpose and intention set out clearly in 'the sermon on the mount', which we will hear in a few weeks. In this sermon we learn what it means to be part of God's people. In Isaiah, scholars tell us, the 'servant' is Israel, the whole nation, not any singular individual. The nation must be actively justice-focused, the whole people. So too for us: together we are a servant people charged with bringing light and justice.

The prophet Isaiah before him, prefigures the agenda Jesus sets out according to Matthew in that famous sermon. Isaiah tells how God will gather together all who have been lost and dispersed and promises justice with peace and righteousness in their relationships; there will be no more violence, salvation (healing) will be their purpose. Jesus’ own ministry agenda and purpose follows this pattern.

Jesus' identity and purpose is made manifest for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

In both stories. Isaiah and Matthew, the impact is great on the community who hears and takes the story to heart.

As a community of faith, that is us. We too are baptised to become the 'servant' of God's justice.

Both the reassurance of light in the darkness and the promise of justice and salvation are offered to us. These promises define us as a community because they bring with them the expectation – no, the demand – that we witness by the way we live our lives and shape our relationships that we are part of the community committed to bringing God’s vision into being; part of the community that serves God's justice agenda.

Today we are on the brink of disaster: a climate crisis burning up lands, droughts, famines, mass migration, disease, and perhaps a pending war. It seems God's vision for the earth, as set out in the stories of the Bible, is very far away. But the promise of life comes into being as we invite everyone into the way of peace with non-violence, love, right-relations, and wholistic-wellbeing: as we get involved in doing things differently. We are not specially privileged as we go about this work, but we can be extraordinary because we witness to the unexpected, to the turning inside out and upside down of what has become entrenched in our way of life, and in so doing has lost its god-life. We need to look for these all these aspects of our world and seek another way instead of simply retracing the path we have already taken and ending, eventually, in the same place – further entrenching the greed and power that has brought us here.

I venture to say you know, as do I, that there is much in our world that needs to be different –

greed and grasping for power seem to me to be at the heart of most of those things from the climate crisis to workplace poverty, from violence toward women and children to the abuse of old people, from housing obesity to the increasing wealth gap – to name some off the top of my head.

As I have noted many times before, it takes courage to do things differently, it takes courage to risk change. Stepping outside what has become entrenched as 'common sense' is to risk ridicule and censure. Justice and righteousness for all will come by a different route… 'the prophets write on subway walls' (Simon and Garfunkel) we can see the different way if we will but look; those who show the way are amongst us! We just have to find the courage to recognise the way, and the bravery to step into it telling a different story from the one centered on greed and power.

These weeks, between what was and what will be, these weeks of the Epiphany season, are weeks in which we can wonder what the year will bring once it gets underway, and wonder what we will do and say to ensure it is a year that brings life to planet earth and to people and to all who inhabit it.