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.