Well...we're officially past Christmas now, almost. The way the Church counts it, Christmas is a Season, not just a day. We know this from the familiar Christmas Carol, "The Twelve Days of Christmas", but we may not have stopped to consider it. Counting Christmas Day as "Day #1", we end up at January 5th as "Day #12", with Epiphany, January 6th, starting yet another season. You guessed it: "Epiphany". The story of the Magi journeying to Bethlehem in search of "the newborn king of the Jews" in Matthew's Gospel is the typical narrative basis for worship on the Sunday closest to Epiphany.
"Epiphany" comes from a Greek root meaning "to reveal". I have always thought of that in relation to God's revealing the "royal" nature of Jesus to the world through the persons of the Magi; at least, that's the way the interpretations have always gone in the commentaries on the subject. But that's not the only revealing that can be going on.
Continuing with the approach of looking for the
meaning (or meanings) behind the narrative, which is the tack we took in our observance of Advent and celebration of Christmas, we will be considering in worship what looking at the Christ Child reveals
in us. Sometimes that's really laudable stuff; other times...not so much.
This is a little like the Mirror of Erised in
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
According to Albus Dumbledore, the mirror "shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts." That can be both encouraging and troubling. I think an encounter with the living God in the face of the Christ Child of Bethlehem can be quite the same - with one essential difference: The Mirror is a passive device while God's grace manifested and embodied in Christ has the power to transform that which is troubling to us deep within.
But we, like the Magi, must entrust ourselves to it.
We'll be exploring this more in worship this Sunday. I hope you'll join us!
A very Happy and Blessed New Year to you all,
Steve
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