Epiphany Sunday
January 5, 2025

Epiphanies and Revelations

Matt Helms
Associate Pastor

Isaiah 60:1–6
Matthew 2:1–12

It’s great to be with you all on the first Sunday of this new year — or Epiphany Sunday, as it’s known in our liturgical calendar. Epiphany marks the official end of the twelve days of Christmas celebrations, although judging from the number of people I saw taking down lights and decorations over this past weekend, it’s safe to say that Christmas feels like a distant memory for many of us at this point. The word Epiphany comes from a Greek word that means “manifestation” or “appearance,” traditionally connected to the appearance of first light at dawn but which would later be linked to an appearance of God or the divine. However it is parsed, though, it is clear that something special and sacred is taking place, and for Matthew, this visit of the magi to see the baby Jesus comes to define the dawning of an entirely new era.

We admittedly don’t know much about who the magi were. In fact, most people are shocked to hear that Matthew never actually says there were three magi who visited, only that they brought three gifts. And while they are sometimes referred to as kings, that description really only comes from prophecies in Isaiah and the psalms rather than anything that Matthew writes. The King James translation was the first one to introduce the term “Wise Men,” but at this point, scholars’ best guess is that these magi would have been astrologers or court priests from the Parthian Empire — or the area that used to be ruled by Persia. About the only thing we actually know about them for certain is that they come from outside of Israel — that they were Gentiles. But that detail is incredibly important to Matthew and his audience. Gentiles showing Jesus reverence would have been the fulfillment of a hope that pops up over and over in the biblical text: of a time when all the world would worship God. “All the nations you have made shall come and bow down before you” Psalm 86 triumphantly proclaims; “they shall glorify your name.” “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” Isaiah proclaims on behalf of God; “I will gather others besides those already gathered.” For Matthew, the Epiphany was a seismic shift in history. In Christ, God had truly come for all people — and that is exactly what Epiphany Sunday primarily celebrates in our liturgical year: a promise that God’s grace is not limited to a few but is a gift freely given to all.

In our context, though, we tend to think about and use the word epiphany in a related but slightly different way. For us, an epiphany is more of a flash of insight or a moment of clarity, one that comes suddenly and without warning but has a profound impact on us — whether in allowing us to solve previously unsolvable problems or in giving us a deeper understanding of ourselves. Famous epiphanies include Archimedes’ triumphant “Eureka” moment in discovering volume in a bathtub or the infamous falling apple that sparked Isaac Newton’s concept of gravity — moments that were unexpected but unlocked great scientific discoveries — although we certainly apply the term to self-discovery as well.

Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to experience some level of a personal or professional epiphany in your life before, even if only once or twice. As I thought back on it, I could only remember one time when I truly felt struck by a moment of insight and clarity. I was nearing the end of high school and for years had been fielding variations of the well-meaning question “What are you going to be when you grow up?” from my parents and family and at church. As I began applying to colleges and looking to specialize in what I’d be studying, the question began to take on a whole new sense of urgency. What was I going to do after college? For months I didn’t have an answer, and I was really troubled by that. Then one afternoon I was suddenly struck by this crystal-clear sense of what I was meant to do — of what God was calling me to — in a moment I can only describe as an epiphany. It was something that had been a consistent part of my life since grade school, and I was always fascinated by it. It wasn’t a career I would have once thought of for myself, and yet something about it just felt unmistakably right. And so I began telling friends and family that I had finally figured out what I was meant to be: I was going to be a statistician.

That epiphany didn’t quite pan out, as you can tell. Life has a funny way of taking us down different roads despite all our certainties — something the magi would also discover after their encounter with Jesus. Instead, what ultimately led me into ministry wasn’t a grand flash of inspiration or an overwhelming revelation of God’s call in my life. It started with a simple invitation. And before that, it started with belonging and welcome. It wasn’t a moment of epiphany but rather a season — a quiet collection of moments over a long period of time that shaped and guided me just as powerfully as any flash of insight could have and yet ultimately led me where I needed to go.

We tend to think about major changes taking place in big and dramatic ways — or at the very least I certainly tend to — and yet transformation is often much more subtle and quiet, something that’s worth paying attention to in this time of year when many of us make resolutions to reinvent something in ourselves or something around us. There is a temptation to wait for big moments or sudden epiphanies to make major changes in our lives. We tell ourselves stories about how someday in the future things will be different. We will spend more time with those we love or we’ll finally finish that project we’ve been wanting to do. We will be able to give more of our time or live more generously, how someday we will make a difference in others’ lives or advocate for causes we believe in, whatever our most hopeful visions might be — as long as we just wait for the right moment to enact them. And yet there is a transformative power to living our future hopes now, even if they may not come to fruition as we had once thought, even if we begin with more questions than answers as we take those first steps.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

For as momentous an occasion as Epiphany Sunday can be in our liturgical calendar, the events it describes are both humble and incomplete. In fact, the magi end up spending more time with Herod in Matthew’s second chapter than they do with the baby Jesus, only staying with him for all of a single verse before they return to their country by another road. They kneel, they honor Jesus, and share gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh — gifts with royal significance to be sure — but I doubt they would have understood themselves as witnessing a fundamental change in God’s relationship with humanity. Instead, they had merely done what they knew how to do best — they interpreted and followed a star, perhaps only out of sheer curiosity. And yet even if they did not see the bigger picture, they still followed, and their path eventually brought them exactly where they were meant to be.

When we look at world-changing figures from history, so often we assume that they had this unmistakable sense of calling — that they knew from a young age the path they were meant to follow — and yet so often that couldn’t be further from the truth. They were merely following what they believed was the right thing to do in that particular moment, living the questions without yet being able to see the final answer. Nelson Mandela, one of the great reformers and activists of the twentieth century, would reflect back late in his life on his struggle against apartheid and the Dutch South African government — “I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, and a thousand unremembered moments produced an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, ‘Henceforth, I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so and could not do otherwise.’”

Bringing about true change and transformation is rarely a sudden and straightforward thing, even in the biblical text. The Gospel of Matthew ends with the disciples being sent out to the ends of the earth — finally beginning the work of proclaiming the Epiphany that had been shared with the magi near the very start of the Gospel. Frankly, we’re still trying to learn the lessons of the magi and God’s embrace of all people, not terribly successfully at that. But if we are committed to seeing God’s kingdom come into being, then perhaps all we can do is begin with whatever work is before us — to do what we believe is right in any given moment — not waiting for grand epiphanies but trusting in God’s ongoing revelations; knowing we may have far more questions than answers along the way; knowing that ultimately whatever we do will be incomplete and will be just a small part of a much larger picture. All we need is the courage to take those first steps — trusting God will be with us on the way.

We are given precious little to go off of in understanding how the magi were changed by their encounter with the newborn Christ. The only thing Matthew shares is that they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and they left for their country by another road. And yet in that single sentence we witness the first steps of their transformation. When the magi came, their first instinct was to head to Jerusalem to consult with Herod, the client king of that region, the one who represented Roman authority. Now they were following something greater than the powers and principalities of the day — they were being led down another road, one in which Christ was Lord rather than Herod, one in which they would share the overwhelming news of great joy given to them, one in which they proclaimed the good news to all of God’s people. We don’t ultimately know where the road led them, but I believe they took those first steps with faith and gratitude, trusting that the child they had just seen would indeed one day transform the world.

Perhaps that’s what we are being invited to at the outset of a new year: invited to begin down another road — being led by love, by a generosity of spirit, and by a depth of compassion — still holding on to that promise of hope given by that child in the manger, even as we leave this Christmas season behind. And whatever those first steps look like, I pray that we can take them with faith and gratitude, knowing we might not fully see where this journey will take us but trusting that God will continue to guide us along the way. The poet John Milton once remarked that “gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world,” so rather than waiting for epiphanies to occur to us, perhaps we are meant to find and create them, having the courage to begin down another road when we need to change the one we’re on, having a spirit of gratitude for all that we have rather than lamenting what we don’t, and having faith that the light and love Christ came to bring into this world will one day be seen and known in full. In the gift of this new year, may we be filled with courage, gratitude, and faith as we return to our lives, but this time by another road — the one that follows ever closer to Christ’s way. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church