An Epiphany "So What?"

In the Christian calendar, today is Epiphany, a feast day celebrating the arrival of the Magi or Wise Men who come to see the new king who has been born. This calendar puts Epiphany twelve days after Christmas although, according to Matthew's gospel, the actual arrival of the Magi may have been as much as two years after Jesus' birth. (Speaking of biblical accuracy, Matthew makes no mention of how many Magi there are. The three comes from the gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh.)

The Christian calendar has two distinct feast days of Christmas and Epiphany, but for all practical purposes we have collapsed it all into Christmas. I once served in a church that had an evening Epiphany service on January 6. I'm not sure why we bothered. Some years the choir outnumbered those in the pews. How different from Christmas Eve when we had to drag out folding chairs for additional seating.

I have no desire for Epiphany to get the same star-treatment as Christmas. If anything, I'd like to see Christmas get toned down a bit. In the same way that Hanukkah grew into a bigger Jewish celebration than its religious significance would suggest because of the proximity to Christmas, so too the church's celebration of Christmas has intensified alongside the growth of the secular Christmas celebration. Christmas can sometimes become little more than an orgy of joy, nostalgia, and good feelings without much connection to the significance of Jesus' birth.

Epiphany at least begins to deal with the impact of that birth. As Jesus symbolically is revealed to the world via the visit of foreign, Gentile Magi, the loyalty problems created by Jesus quickly become apparent. King Herod and "all Jerusalem with him" are frightened at the news of a king's birth. As well they should be. If Jesus is king then Herod has a competitor for allegiance and loyalty. If God has come in Jesus to reign, then all those accommodations people in Jerusalem have made in order to live in a world often at odds with God's hopes and dreams suddenly become problematic.

The same can be said for us in today's world, which is a big reason we like to celebrate Jesus' birth and then ignore much that the adult Jesus says. But Epiphany reminds us that the birth of a king is a crisis moment, one where we must decide if we are loyal subjects to this king or not. Too often, our celebration of Christmas raises no such issues. It celebrates and basks in the warmth of the moment, oblivious to this king's call to follow him, to take up the cross, to love enemies, to deny self and be willing to lose our lives for the sake of his kingdom.

When we pull the Magi into our Christmas extravaganza, we simply add the star and camels to our manger scenes, and the Wise Men become little more than additional revelers at the party. We certainly don't include the part of their story where Herod kills all the children under two and Jesus and his family become refugees in Egypt.

But Epiphany begins to raise "So what?" questions regarding Jesus' birth, questions that we'd often like to avoid. And so we ignore Epiphany, folding a redacted version of it into Christmas. But the questions of Epiphany remain. Christ is born; so what? A new king has arrived and has begun to assemble his new dominion; so what? God has taken flesh in Jesus and called us to join him on his way; so what?

In my most recent sermon, I included this quote from C.S. Lewis. "Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed and is calling us to His great campaign of sabotage." Called to join the new king's sabotage campaign; now that strikes me as a fitting answer to Epiphany's "So what?"

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