Mass readings for the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord:
Isaiah 60.1-6 Psalm 72.1-2, 7-8, 10-13 Ephesians 3.2-3a, 5-6 Matthew 2.1-12
Some here may know that Epiphany, among ancient Christians, was the greater celebration of this season. Indeed, Epiphany, and not Christmas, is the culmination of things, the nativity is a start to what reaches a crescendo in the visit of the wise men.
That’s because this is about revelation – a revelation that hitherto had been basically private: Mary knows, Joseph knows, then a few shepherds; what is celebrated now is the revelation to the world and the wise men are seen as representatives of the world. This speaks to the mandate we’ve received to share this revelation, to reveal Christ to the world. That entails our knowing our faith, and living in a manner such that Christ is manifest in our lives; that when we present the facts, argue the logic, the authority we have flows from the evidence of the gospel’s transformative effect on us. We don’t need to dress up the good news. The stable and the manger provided the bare necessities, the presence of Mary and Joseph as representatives of Israel, and of the house of David was sufficient. This is all the magi saw, and they left convinced they’d found the newborn king.
We need to be bold in our assertion that Christ is God, that Jesus is the king and lord of all, even as we ourselves exhibit the humility of the shepherds who knew their good fortune when they found the Christ child. How amazing the grace they received, that we’ve all received such that we know who this child was, the man he would become, and the saviour he proved to be.
An epiphany is a manifestation of a god to human beings. It was a phenomenon known by pagans, and such stories about them were not merely those of mythology. There are ancient accounts (taken to be “historical”) of gods walking a city’s walls in a time of war to assure its inhabitants of protection. Goddesses would appear in a manner that would remind us of Marian apparitions. Egypt’s pharoah was held to be a god; and some Greek kings even took the name “epiphany” to indicate their divinity. Suffice to say, Christians proclaiming the Epiphany resonated with those who followed the old gods, making them curious about Jesus.
And it would have been a curiousity indeed for them to consider an epiphany what we see here: a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Indeed, many a pagan would say it’s no epiphany at all. Where is the glowing nimbus, the halo, and all the other evidences of a divine visitation? Well, we know the whole story, we know about the heavenly host of angels greeting the shepherds. But this is not what the wise men experience. No, it’s a rather unremarkable and domestic scene when you consider it: a family sheltering where they can during a housing shortage, making something cozy out of a small barn. Go to Rome at that time, the greatest city in the world, and you’d have found families renting parts of rooms, and indeed, sleeping in all kinds of places not intended for the purpose. We can’t emphasize enough the lowliness of Christ’s birth in a stable; and still, we call this an epiphany.
So, this celebration was a subtle “in your face” assertion toward the pagans that surrounded the early Christians. We need to remember, at the time this story was set down, and in the era in which the first celebrations based on it occurred, the Christian population of the Roman Empire, and that of the immediately adjoining kingdoms and empires, was around 10 percent. Even at the time Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of his empire, at most 1 in 5 were Christian. What we have then is the use of this story of the magi as a vehicle of engagement with the world. We know from ancient non-Christian histories, we know from ancient graffiti from places like the famous city of Pompeii, that non-Christians knew elements of the gospel story – but their knowledge was partial, and in many instances, faulty. And that continued to be the case through history, and continues to be the case today.
The most famous instance of someone getting a mangled gospel was Mohammed, who went on to found a religion that is riddled with all kinds of misconceptions concerning Jesus and Mary; of having a mangled recounting of the Old Testament stories such that the prophecies that explain Christ are missing or so distorted that the clarity of their message is lost. His understanding was so bad that in the Quran there is a complete misrepresentation of the trinity as it identifies it as being God the Father, Christ the Son, and Mary the Mother, and not Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s for us to dispute these errors – but, of course, to do so is to demonstrate the Quran’s claim to infallibility as false. That’s bound to upset.
I’ve had several encounters in my ministry with Hindus, who were perfectly lovely people and had nothing but good things to say about Jesus. But in their polytheism, could do no better than to set Jesus among their other gods. And yet, Eastern mystical religion has a philosophical tradition that speaks of the ultimate spirit that lies behind their pantheon. And for us, as Christians, we know that ultimate to be God (with a capital “g”), and that Christ is the principle upon which all things exist: that is, a self-offering of love is what makes life and everything possible (and so, also “God”). We can’t keep that to ourselves for the sake of tolerance and diversity. I’m quite appreciative of the culture and art that Hinduism has produced, just as I can enjoy the cultural heritage of Japan’s Shintoism, or that of African animism and native American shamanism. As Catholics, we know that the Church teaches that aspects of the truth, elements of God’s revelation of his nature, these can be found throughout the many human philosophies and in the world’s many religions. We can recognize and commend these, but nonetheless maintain that all of this points to Jesus as God.
That astrology brought the wise men from, well it’s likely Mesopotamia, maybe from the what is today Iran, isn’t an endorsement of that elaborate superstition. The gospel isn’t telling us to start reading our daily horoscope because that pseudo-science got lucky and brought some of its practitioners to the right spot at the right time. In fact, our catechism tells us explicitly to not practice astrology as it contradicts the honour, respect, and loving fear we owe to God alone. (2116). Indeed, we know the magi, as educated far above most people as they were, have faulty information from the outset. They believe the stars are telling them a king is to be born in Judea – a real king. Yet they go to the palace of Herod the Great. If they were better informed, they would have known he was no true king, but a usurper, an interloper. Herod wasn’t even Judean, he came from Idumea. He wasn’t even born a Jew, he converted. So, by the standards of the day, he couldn’t be the true king of the people of Judea, and no child born to him a future king. They needed to do some genealogical research… and interestingly enough, the gospel of Matthew provides this, in the chapter right before the one I just read. It lays out the royal line from its origins in the family of Abraham, to Jesse and his son David who founds the royal house, down to Joseph.
We all must recognize that the call to diversity and tolerance often masks an agenda that intends to reduce faith in Christ to one among many religions, really in the mind of the secular world order, one among many irrational superstitions. And so, it is no surprise to see that as the current world order collapses under the weight of its contradictions, it turns to censorship to stop the conversations, the flow of information that is freeing so many.
One of the most underreported trends of recent years is the decline of militant, repressive Islam in Muslim heartlands even as we see it in evidence in the West. Iran is undergoing a second, quiet revolution, news of which we are beginning to hear, and a big part of it is that people now have better information about the world, informed conversations about religion, critical analyses that had hitherto been blocked and labelled as blasphemy.
The darkness descends on people, on nations, on the world, in times of war, of widespread deceit, of demonic revolution and repression. However, this does not stop the light, and the Lord will arise, and his glory will appear. We are those called to hold up a light in the darkness, and to herald the coming dawn, for ourselves to look up and look around and see what God has done, is doing, and will do; and so, thrill and rejoice.
Amen.