Epiphany

We know very little about the Magi, but we do know what they were looking for. They were looking for a king: that is why they went to Jerusalem, because that was where the King of the Jews was to be found. When they had spoken to Herod, he too knew what he was looking for. He was looking for a child who would threaten his power, and he wanted to kill him.

But Epiphany—the word means ‘showing forth—is not about looking, but about showing. When we look for something, we generally know what it is that we expect to find. We have a frame of expectation. But showing is different. To be shown something, you have to lay aside your expectations; otherwise you will not see what is in front of you. If looking is grounded in expectation, showing goes with surprise, with the paradoxical recognition of something that you have never seen before.

Our age does a great deal of looking, and it is pretty clear about the limits of what there is to find. Read a Sunday newspaper: the world is a dangerous place, faced by threats that are likely to be terminal, but in the meantime there are nice things to do, nice places to visit, nice things to eat. If Christmas began as the pagan world cheering itself up against the bleakness of winter, for us it is despairing humanity cosseting itself against the bleakness of a world from which hope seems to have withdrawn.

What did the Magi find? Certainly, not what they were looking for, not what they had expected. The birth of Jesus was no great event, nothing that initiated a new age of monarchical triumph or conquest.

Yet we know that they were not disappointed: ‘when they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.’ They knew they had come to the right place. When they entered the house, it was no longer a matter of looking, but of being shown something; they recognised what they saw as the goal of their journey, the reason for their joy: ‘they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.’

Showing goes with surprise, with the recognition of what we haven’t expected. But it also has consequences. When the Magi saw what they had been shown, they knew that their plans would have to change. Instead of going back to the ever-so-helpful Herod, they returned to their own country ‘by another route’.

Surprise, recognition of the never-before-seen, a change of plan: that is Epiphany. Ask yourself at this time of the year, not ‘what am I looking for?’, but ‘what have I been shown?’ Not in some mystical vision, but in the detail of your life. What have you been shown that breaks the frame of your expectations, that leads you back to hope, that frees you from the despairing scenarios of our world?

Like what? Well, it could be some words said to you in love. It could be the music that you have heard this evening. It will be different for each of us, and it almost certainly won’t carry a religious label. But there will be surprise, recognition, and the possibility of a change of direction. And when that happens, we have known Christ’s epiphany; because it is only Christ who breaks the frame of our despairing expectations to illumine our lives as the star illuminated the house at Bethlehem.