Epiphany

January 6, 2018

A lifetime ago when I was in high school, I took advanced math for a couple years. I know...anyone who is familiar with my math skills today would say without hesitation, “He’s lying!” It’s good that Linda handles the budget in our house; otherwise, we’d be in the poorhouse. I can barely add and subtract, let alone do algebra, geometry, and whatever else there is to know. Long division...forget it! But back then, I remember working on this or that problem, slaving away trying to figure it out. All would be obtuse to me, then suddenly, the light would break through and I GOT IT! Those were wonderful, if rare, occurrences.

It’s not just me. Others experience this, too. We’ll be working on a particularly knotty problem that refuses to yield its secrets to us, and suddenly have an insight that pops into our heads, unlocking the mystery and moving us forward to the solution. We call those moments epiphanies, from the Greek word “to reveal.” They are glorious, if only occasional, experiences. 

Epiphanies happen in all areas of life; research, literature, music. But it is in religion that they really come into their own. Epiphany is the stock in trade for religion. For Christians, today is Epiphany, January 6. For Christians, Epiphany is not a private revelation or insight to some deeper mystical connection with the Divine. It is the celebration of the visit of the Wise Men to Bethlehem to worship the Baby Jesus. It’s not something hidden from the masses and revealed to only a select few; it is the offering of Christ to the whole world, represented by these foreign astrologers who came to worship the Newborn King of the Jews. 

All of which brings me to that for which I am thankful tonight. I am grateful that God didn’t choose to reveal himself only to some special group of people who were then charged with preservation of secret codes and rituals, leaving the vast majority of us out in the cold. Epiphany is about God shouting to the world, “Here is Life! It is available if you’ll only receive him through whom it is given.” Christ has come, and today we celebrate the fact that his coming wasn’t hidden, that it was a real, historical event, and that life here and now can be transformed because of his Advent. My math epiphanies have long since faded into forgetful obscurity. The Epiphany of Jesus has not. He has been revealed to the world, and is ready for anyone who will come and see the Savior of Mankind.