Sunday 20 January 2013, Third Sunday of Epiphany

"Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him."

But what did they believe? That their friend had miraculous power over the DNA of creation? Probably. In the turning of water into wine they had witnessed something otherwise inexplicable. That their friend was the Anointed One for whom their people had been waiting?   Possibly. The abundant provision of wine was one of the signs of the Messianic age that their prophets had foretold. Or that their friend was God Incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity? Certainly not. It took the church several decades to work that out.

It's not that any of the three beliefs are wrong, judged from the standpoint of later Christian doctrine; it's not that any of the three beliefs contradicts the others. But they differ, and their difference might prompt us to reflect upon what we believe. "His disciples believed in him", and belief in Jesus is as much a cornerstone of twenty-first century faith as it was of first-century faith. We believe in Jesus. What do we believe?

In my last weeks as Vicar of St Peter's I promise that I will try to refrain from graciously  bestowing upon you the fruits of the immense wisdom I have gained in the last six years; and if I break my promise then I'm sure you'll correct me. But perhaps I might share with you four distinct times of my life, and four distinct ways in which I have believed in Jesus.

The first is my childhood, when Jesus was as real to me as King Alfred the Great or Admiral Lord Nelson, two other favourite historical characters who dominated my imagination. I read countless books about all of them. I knew their stories. I knew their characters. I even knew what they looked like - of course! I had little idea of their chronology - I felt badly cheated when my father told me that he did not remember the Battle of Trafalgar. I had little idea of their significance - although I knew that Jesus's was to be found in church rather than at the fireside where Alfred burned the cakes. But I knew that they were real, unlike Batman or the Famous Five. I believed in Jesus. He was the one who turned water into wine. My belief lacked a reasoned foundation; my belief was limited in scope; but it was a belief.

The second is when I was an undergraduate. It was the mid-1980s. The miners' movement had been crushed but the student movement, as we liked to call it, was on the march: against apartheid, for gay rights, against the American missile bases, for the Sandinistas. I studied political thought, was impressed by Lenin's monograph The State and Revolution and became a passionate Marxist. That lasted a fortnight. In this fevered milieu Christianity was neither right-on nor cool. My belief in Jesus needed a different basis and it found one. Jesus had been an anti-capitalist agitator. (If only he had realized it!) 'Love one another' he had said: what he had really meant was, obviously, 'peace, bread and land'. He was a class warrior, a radical. I believed in Jesus. He gave wine to those whose vessels were empty. My belief lacked doctrinal content; my belief was selective in its scope; but it was a belief.

The third is when I was an ordinand at theological college. I arrived there from a career in the law, a career which had shown me justice and mercy in operation. I arrived there full of questions about the justice of the atonement effected by God in Christ. I did not understand how the wrath of a supposedly merciful Father could be satisfied by the death of his guiltless Son. I knew our judges could do rather better. I found the answer in the Anglican divines of the twentieth century, in Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy and Bill Vanstone. They taught me to look for Jesus in the dock rather than on the bench; in the trenches rather than in the battalion headquarters; on the shop floor rather than in the boardroom. They taught me that in Jesus we see God: not the rebellious, campaigning God of my undergraduate days, but rather a vulnerable God, a victim God, a God who identifies absolutely with the grief and misery of creation. I believed in Jesus. He turned water into vast quantities of wine and demonstrated thereby God's reckless love for the world. My belief lacked any notion of glory; my belief was earth-bound in its scope; my belief nailed Jesus to the world and thus overlooked the call of heaven; but it was a belief.

The fourth is in my six years as Vicar of St Peter's Eaton Square. It has been one of my chiefest privileges to baptize many here, to be the agent of God's gratuitous love for his people. It has been my enormous privilege to see many respond to their baptism, to see people responding to God's gratuitous love for them - not by becoming, or by  trying to become, something that they are not, but by becoming, or trying to become, what they already are. Jesus is the one whose mortal body shines with celestial light on the mountain of his Transfiguration. Jesus is the one whose life lives within us from the moment that we are. Jesus is the one whose light is kindled within us in the sacrament of baptism. By his incarnation Jesus has gathered into one things earthly and heavenly. He has become human that we might become divine. I believe in Jesus. He is the one whose life and death and resurrection have changed the water of mortality into the wine of eternity. My belief lacks...well, I'm not yet sure what it lacks. Tell me. Or invite me back in a few years time. I'll have worked it out, and I'll believe something new.

Perhaps I'll call Jesus as my best friend. Perhaps I'll call him my King and perhaps I won't grit my teeth as I do so. Perhaps I'll have fallen in love with him (although I rather doubt it). Whatever I believe about Jesus, inexorably he calls me, inexorably he draws me, and there is no refusing. I believe in Jesus. Amen.

The Epiphany 2013

'The Epiphany' states the Book of Common Prayer 'or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles'. It's a resonant title for today's feast, and one that has endured: the contemporary Collect we have prayed speaks still of God's Son being manifested to the peoples of the earth.  Yet there are two ways in which the title troubles me. First, when something is manifested it is displayed or shown. Too heavy an emphasis on manifestation - on display, on show -  can trap us into thinking of this as the day when Christ is unveiled, rather like a new work of art. The curtain is drawn back and  -  ta-dah - here he is! And secondly, in the coming of the Magi, I wonder if the Christ really is manifested to the Gentiles. I wonder if he is actually manifested to three Gentiles, to Melchior, Balthazar and Caspar.

There's a growing sense in which even the formal title, Epiphany, lends additional weight and authority to the understanding of manifestation as sudden unveiling.   It's used with increasing regularity in personal memoirs and self-searching recollections. "I had an epiphany when..."; "it was a little epiphany as...". Such phrases inevitably presage the dawning of a new realization or the discovery of a forgotten truth. The epiphanic moment when I knew she loved me; the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles: both suggest something that is sudden and once-for-all; whereas what we celebrate is something rather different. We celebrate a moment, yes, a moment when three men, three Magi, did something very strange. They flung themselves down before an unknown child and his mother. They paid him the homage due only to the king of kings. They offered him rare and precious gifts, laden with meaning. Now...why did they do that?

The answer is not that in that moment a covering was cast dramatically aside revealing the Christ for all to see. The answer is not that they experienced the sort of epiphany (small 'e') beloved of self-indulgent autobiographers. The answer is that they had come to the end of a journey. The Epiphany we celebrate does not hit us between the eyes with unavoidable and self-evident truth in the light of which nothing will ever be the same again: ta-dah.  The Epiphany invites us to begin a journey towards truth, a journey of our own.

The Magi's journey begins with their skill in astrology. They study the heavens, and their study alerts them to something: to a change, to a hitherto unknown astral presence, to a new star. Their study is informed and enlivened by what we might call faith, by a willingness to look beyond their discovery and see in it a sign of something with universal significance. So they set out to discover that something for themselves. The journey is long and costly. They leave behind comfort and familiarity. They enter a realm where their learning is pagan; they go among a people to whom they are outsiders. They travel to a place where their language and diet and appearance mark them out as strangers.

And they are changed by the experience. St Matthew doesn't tell us as much but if you doubt it, go and see The Hobbit - an Unexpected Journey. Remember how Tolkien's unlikely antihero, Bilbo Baggins, is changed by the quest upon which he is unwillingly entered without tobacco or pocket handkerchiefs. Travels change the traveller. It is their astrological wisdom and their willingness to believe beyond the limits of that wisdom that compel them to set out. It is their reliance upon what lies beyond wisdom, reliance forced upon them by their journey, that compel them to worship the child. The Epiphany is more Journey's End than Brief Encounter.

And this, I think, explains why in the coming of the Magi the Christ is manifested to three Gentiles. For we forget at our peril that others fail to see him as he is. The unnamed Magi to whom the names Melchior, Balthazar and Caspar have been given do not feature in our credal statements, unlike their fellow Gentile, Pontius Pilate. Pilate sees Jesus as the Magi see Jesus, yet he sees nothing but a Jewish prisoner condemned by his own people, arguably worthy of pity, but certainly not worthy of worship. In the governor's palace Christ is present before him, just as in the house in Bethlehem Christ is present before the Magi, yet Christ is not manifested to him as he is to them. But Pilate has not journeyed. He does not look at the things of earth with a willingness to see the things of heaven; he has not left behind comfort and familiarity; he has not ventured out in reliance only upon the wisdom that lies beyond his own wisdom. 'What is truth?' he asks. He probably doubts that such wisdom exists.

In these weeks of Epiphany God opens up the stall he has pitched in our midst and makes clear what he is claiming and what he is offering. At his Baptism Christ is revealed as the only Son of the Father; at the wedding in Cana Christ is revealed as the Alpha and Omega of all creation; at the coming of the Magi Christ is revealed as the sovereign Lord of all peoples. God is here; Christ is here; Love is here; but we are not there, not all of us, not yet. We have a journey before us, a journey that is both internal and external, a journey that will test the wisdom we have been given, a journey in which guiding stars will come and in which guiding stars will go, a journey which will take us beyond the secure and beyond the comfortable, a journey in which all too often the only certainty is our lack of certainty. It is our faithfulness to the journey - not our seeking after glory - that will lead us to worship the Christ. Amen.