Sermon given Sunday, January 7, 2024
 

Epiphany is More than Just the Wise Men

(Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; 
Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; and Matthew 2:1-12)

Most of us are aware of the intimate connection between Christmas and the Epiphany, but what most of us may not be aware of is that in the early church, the Epiphany was a feast before Christmas ever was.

As a matter of fact, to this day, the Armenian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 6th. They also celebrate the Epiphany on January 6th. For them, it's one feast.

Now, if you paid attention to the news a couple of weeks ago, Ukraine announced that they were moving Christmas from January 6th, which is when they have been celebrating it, to December 25th to match the way it's celebrated in the West. I haven't quite figured out how you just change your liturgical calendar, but apparently they're going to.

But there's a reason in the Latin Church we have two separate feasts, and that is because Christmas and Epiphany have two different emphases. Christmas is all about the Incarnation. God becomes man. As Saint Paul puts it, God humbled himself to become one of us.

Epiphany, on the other hand, is all about the realization that the baby in the manger is truly God. Now, Epiphany actually has three celebrations: the Magi arriving at the manger, the wedding feast at Cana, and the baptism of the Lord. And in all three of those, Jesus is revealed as God.

The Magi kneel at the manger, recognizing that they have seen the great King. At the baptism of the Lord, the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus and announces, 'This is my beloved Son.' And at the wedding feast of Cana, Jesus, at the urging of his mother, performs his first sign, or miracle, changing ordinary handwashing water into the finest wine. I still wish I could do that.

But why do we have these two different emphases? In theology, we have this concept called low Christology and high Christology. Low Christology is when we look at Jesus as man and work our way up to Jesus as God. We see this in Matthew's Gospel account. Matthew begins with the Incarnation. God becomes man.

But we also have high Christology, where we begin with Jesus as God and work our way down to Jesus as man. We see this in John's Gospel account, which begins, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'

The great mystery of Christmas, of course, is the idea that God, the creator of the entire universe, can become this little helpless baby.

Now, this isn't just a mystery to us. It's been a mystery from the very beginning of the church. And in spite of that, all sorts of heresies arose in the early church trying to explain this great mystery.

There was Adoptionism, which believed that Jesus was a man, and at some point, God just adopted him. Most of their scholars said this happened at the baptism when the Holy Spirit descended, and God said, 'Yep, you're my son now.' 

But there was also Apollinarism, and that was the belief that Jesus had a human body and a human soul but a divine mind.

Of course, we all know Arianism, which lasted for 400 years, and that was the idea that Jesus was never God at all, that Jesus was the highest creation of God, but not God.

And then there was the heresy of Docetism. And that was the belief that Jesus's physical body was just an illusion. He was never a man at all. He was always a spirit, which meant that Jesus could never have died on the cross.

There was also Nestorianism, which was the belief that Jesus was actually two persons, one human and one divine.

And so the church, in its wisdom, gives us Christmas and the Epiphany to celebrate the Incarnation, that God became man, but also the realization that he never stopped being God.

We might refer to this in the Latin Church as the two bookends of Christmas.

Now, in our world today, we have much less problem with low Christology than with high Christology. We have no problem seeing Jesus as a very nice man who taught some very nice things. But we struggle with the idea that Jesus was God, and in order to follow Jesus, we have to leave our old lives behind and seek divinity in our lives.

And that we find challenging. Now, what does all this mean for us today? Well, I think the Epiphany for us is a challenge because it calls us to recognize Jesus as God. And nowhere is this more important than at the Mass.

I want you all to notice something about the nativity scene: Other than the Angel. Every person in that nativity is on their knees.

Think about Mass at the consecration, when we all kneel in worship. And the idea is that when Father holds up that consecrated host, we, like the Magi at the manger, recognize Jesus as God. That we have that epiphany. That the words that come from our heart to our mind at that moment are, 'My Lord, and my God.'

We live in a world where we think we know it all. Epiphany is a reminder that we do not, that we constantly need to be reminded of that promise that Jesus made to never abandon us, which he has kept for 2000 years. That he continues to be with us and continues to reveal himself to us at every single Mass.

That should be our epiphany. That should be our realization that that same God the Wise Men worshiped at the manger is the same God that we encounter at every single Mass.

As we enter into ordinary time, may we always be mindful that there's nothing ordinary about the Mass.

If we encounter Christ, we should have an epiphany.

Jesus, I trust in you. 

Amen.