The Epiphany St Andrew’s Milngavie 2024
Today we celebrated the Epiphany accompanied by Alison.
This Week
Tuesday 10am – Prayer Group in the Garden Room.
Thursday 10am – Said Holy Communion followed by coffee in Friendship House
Readings for next Sunday – 2nd Sunday of Epiphany – 1 Samual 3:1-10 Revelation 5:1-10 John 1:43-end
Today’s readings – Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matt 2:1-12
Today we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany – the revelation of the Son of God by the wise men to the Gentile world.
These wise men from the East were called to enlighten the world with their divine discovery, a world that would never be the same again, a world that would be inspired to see things differently through the life and love of Christ. As we begin a new year we pray for a sense of this inspiration.
Epiphany means revelation, people often talk about having an epiphany, about being astonished – an unexpected moment or experience that makes us see and understand things in a completely new way, guiding and shaping our lives. When we have moments of revelation, we focus with rapt attention, we are amazed and we cannot help but do things differently.
When those revelations are about an encounter with the divine, we are connected to the deepest mystery of God.
Epiphany is a Greek word meaning ‘shining forth’. In the ancient world, the word was used to refer to the sudden, luminous appearance of a divine being. In the Churches of the East, the feast of Epiphany celebrates the day when God shone forth in Christ as the Light of the World. In other words, the feast celebrates what we in the West have already celebrated on Christmas Day.
In the Western Church, the feast of Epiphany is, of course, distinct from Christmas. Its purpose is to celebrate not so much the birth of Christ itself, as the revelation of Christ to the whole world.
We read the story of the three Kings in Matthew’s gospel, they were not actually kings but magi – wise men, probably astrologers ‒ people who knew the secrets of the stars. We don’t have much historical information about these wise men and their journey. St. Matthew says they came from the East. Some have speculated they were from Persia. We like to think that there were three of them, but St. Matthew doesn’t say that, and the number has varied throughout the church’s history.
This lack of historical information is a reminder that this story, this Epiphany journey, is not just the wise men’s journey; it is everyone’s journey because the truth of sacred scripture is never limited to or contained only in the past. It speaks to us today.
We don’t know what was in the sky, what they saw, that first night. We don’t know what was in their minds; what they thought, asked, or talked about. we don’t know what was in their hearts; what they felt, dreamed, or longed for. But we do know that there have been times when possibly we each have experienced Epiphany… not perhaps very often, I admit, but times when our night sky has been lit brightly, times when our minds have been illuminated, times when our hearts have been enlightened. Those times have revealed to us a life and world larger than before.
They have been moments that gave us the courage to travel beyond the borders and boundaries that usually circumscribe our lives.
Epiphanies are those times when something calls us, moves us to a new place and we see the face of God in a new way, so human that it almost seems ordinary, maybe too ordinary to believe.
That’s what happened to the wise men. Something must have stirred within them as they began to wonder, to imagine, that their lives were part of a much larger story. Could it be that the one who created life, who hung the stars in the sky, noticed them, knew them, lived within them, and was calling them? Could it be that the light they saw in the sky reflected the divine light that burned within them? that burns within each one of us?
To consider seriously these questions is to begin the journey. That journey took the wise men to the house where they found the answer to their questions in the arms of his mother, Mary.
We may travel a different route than the wise men did but the answer is the same. Yes, God notices us, knows us, lives within us, and calls us. God is continually revealing himself in and through humanity in those pivotal moments of love, sorrow, hurt, joy and hope.
These are the stories of our lives, epiphanies that forever change who we are, how we live, and the road we travel. They are moments of ordinary everyday life in which divinity is revealed in humanity and we see a glimpse of God’s glory face to face shining through the earthliness of our being.
Amen