Wednesday 6 January 2016

Epiphany, "God's Revealing"

It's been a while since I have been here, for many reasons really.  But hopefully now having gotten settled into a new parish over the past year I can get back to posting more regular reflections, giving light to the word.

It's the beginning of the New Year, January 6th being the Feast day of the Epiphany, I thought it time I start writing again.  Epiphany, meaning 'revelation', 'showing', 'manifestation' of God's appearing. The reading from Isaiah for this day begin with "Arise Shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you."(Isaiah 60:1)  The prophet is calling to the people to look to a new day, when the darkness they are feeling will be eradicated, there will be no darkness only light for them.  In the gospel for this day from Matthew, (matt 2:1-12) we have the arrival of the Wisemen from the East to Jerusalem. They have come  looking for "the child who has been born king of the Jews," because as they say they have seen "his star at its rising."

The star, a light in the night sky, was what told them where to find this child.  They however didn't go directly to Bethlehem to where the child was, but stopped in Jerusalem, presumably it is there they thought the child would be found. After their conversation there with Herod and finding out the child was to be born in Bethlehem, they set out again, and this time with directions from Herod to return and let him know where the child was so he too could go and pay him homage.  We know however Herod's intent was to get information from them so he could destroy the child, not to bring him gifts as the wisemen did.  For only a few days later, Mary and Joseph after being warned in a dream, flee to Egypt with the child, to escape what we know as the 'slaughter of the Innocents' when Herod ordered every male child under two in and around Jerusalem to be killed. The Wisemen after finding the child with Mary his mother, did not however go back to Herod, but it says, they too after having been warned in a dream went home by another way.

Going by another way may have meant taking a different route back to where they had come from, for a number of reasons, perhaps they realized what Herod was up to, and perhaps wanted to avoid been entangled in Herod's conspiracy to kill the child, or perhaps they just chose to go a more direct route rather then going back through Jerusalem.  Whatever the reason, these Wisemen play an important part in the Christmas Story, even though they come to it much later then the shepherds, they too were witnesses to the Christ Childs' Birth.  The Wisemen came believing what they had seen in the star, and it was that which brought them to Jesus, not Herod or his chief priest and scribes.  When they got back on the route to Bethlehem after leaving Jerusalem, it says, "they saw going ahead of them, the star they had seen at its rising" and when the star stopped over the place where the child was with his mother, they were filled with Joy. They knew they were at their destination's end. They had found the child.

How do we know we are at the right place in our lives, what directs us in the way we should go.  For the Wisemen it was the star they had seen at its rising, pointing the way for them to go to where the child was.  It was when they stopped in Jerusalem they seem to have lost their way, they inquire as to where the child is, expecting those whom they thought would know the whereabouts of the child to direct them, only to discover when they left they had all they needed it was right there in front of them.

What signs might we overlook in our life when God is calling us to go in a certain direction, might we too follow our own instincts as the Wisemen did going to Jerusalem looking for the child, might we too think we know our way, rather then listening to what God is saying to us through his word.  It is so easy to think that we have it right, when all the time we may be listening to voices, like Herod's was in trying to get the Wisemen fall in with his plot, it is when we get on track with God's Word that we hear him more clearly as the wisemen did when they got back on the route to Bethlehem.

In John's gospel, John speaks of Jesus coming into our World as the Light that gives life to the world, "the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not overcome it"(John 1:5).  Jesus is that light and it is shining the light on God's word that we too are enlightened to his truth, as the Wisemen were in following the star, seeing the child, and listening to the warning they were given in a dream.   Epiphany, God's revealing, showing, calls us to be more observant to the signs that God is giving to us in our own time, our own day, that we might get on the right track as to where we should be going, what we should be doing. Epiphany calls us to be ever more observant of the light that shines and continues to shine even in the midst of the darkness in our own world, so that we too will be on the right paths in our own lives and to where God is calling us.

God's Blessing,
Hannah+

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