Epiphany may have crept past
us unnoticed on January 6th. Maybe that's the most biblical
way to mark Epiphany: slipping by, unobserved.
Someone asked me recently,
"Were they really astrologers, these wise men?"
Visions of Russell Grant and assorted mystics arriving at
Joseph Bar-Jacob's family home in Bethlehem, looking for
the One Born to Be King. And I winced.
Why is this so unpalatable
to my mind? What is it about such characters that makes
it impossible for me to imagine them searching out Jesus?
Perhaps it's not so much
something about them as something about me, about my idea
of insiders and outsiders, those who are acceptable and
those who aren't.
The penny drops, the light
comes on. This is Epiphany: outsiders are welcomed to the
heart of the Good News. Unlikely worshippers come and offer
worship that is fitting and costly. And return home…
wise enough to take another route, but still, home to the
place they come from.
This is the moment where
the excluded wise people - academics and scholars, "magicians"
with power, leaders in their own territory - come to the
heart of things, showing by the profound and generous gifts
they bring that they know the heart of this King, this Priest,
this suffering Prophet, in a way the insiders don't.
Meanwhile, the insiders carry
on regardless, oblivious to the promises to the nations
(not to mention the ritually unclean, the outcast, sinners,
the sick and lame, the blind and those in prison…).
Busy being God's people, busy living our lives, righteously
dismissing what we don't understand, as ungodly and therefore
ignorant, or as foreign and therefore ungodly, or as unbiblical
and therefore unreachable by God's revelation.
Another Epiphany: why would
Herod's own scribes and wise men not follow the Magi to
Bethlehem to see what it is they are looking for? It's obvious:
the scribes are busy with their own lives and priorities;
besides, no one wants to look foolish or waste their time
following these outsiders and their star. We already have
our Scripture. Why would we listen to these people with
funny accents and different culture? What would we have
to learn from them? Wouldn't it be wrong to be guided by
them?
The scribes know the Messiah
is to be born in Bethlehem. Fat lot of good it does them.
The mothers and children of Bethlehem don't benefit from
this parsimonious use of Scripture.
Maybe what we need this year
is someone to narrate the story of the scribe who secretly
followed the Magi. And imagine where it would lead.
A light for revelation to
the Gentiles, or, as The Street Bible puts it, "the
eye-opener of the outsiders" (Luke 2:30-32). It sounds
like a tin-opener. Maybe a can of worms… one most of
us would rather keep closed.
Some of our most able politicians
had their epiphanies in prison, through encounters, through
education, in the soul-searching of the long dark nights.
Those moments empowered them to live differently, to strive
for change, for ways forward, out of violence towards democracy
and politics.
My epiphany comes late, thinking
of David Ervine, of what it might mean to have lost his
voice, vision and impact in our society; thinking of the
support that decent, Bible-believing people like me never
quite got round to giving him, despite being impressed with
his rhetoric. He certainly talked a good talk, but my cynicism
always held me back from believing it wasn't just a front
- or he wasn't just being used - for less noble ends. I
was put off by where he came from, (the violence, not the
street) instead of being inspired by where he was leading.
My busy churchiness has kept me from following the star
he was following. Except, perhaps with the detached interest
in current affairs of the disillusioned.
As the old song goes, "Don't
it always seem to go that you don't know what you got until
it's gone."
One wise man from the East…
Pray there will be others, with wisdom to prevent who knows
what slaughter of innocents.
