The Epiphany of the Lord
Isaiah 60:1-6 | Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6 | Matthew 2:1-12
Oh, God, who on this day revealed your Only Begotten Son to the nations by the guidance of a star, grant in your mercy that we who know you already by faith may be brought to behold the beauty of your sublime glory. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.
This feast focuses on the theme of light. The image of light in the Scriptures is synonymous with the work of the Spirit within each of our hearts. It’s called enlightenment. From the beginning, there has been a promise made to human beings that God would come to them to save them, to bring them life, to bring them light (enlightenment) and to teach them. The promise from the very beginning is that this would be a place of freedom, a land flowing with milk and honey; a rich, wonderful place to feast on the beauty of the creation of this God who then created us. Besides that experience of being in a place of freedom, a place of beauty, a place of joy and abundance is another image, the most interesting of all the qualities we are expected to attain as followers of Christ, and that is peace. I’ve tried to figure out how to say what peace really is. I know it’s a spirit, a feeling, a sense that is felt most in my heart, not so much in my mind. Somehow in that place of peace, there is a sense of a warm, golden light within which I see nothing other than beauty, but the beauty that I see is not the absence of ugliness or tension. It’s much more mysterious than that. It’s this mysterious way in which we are able to be in the midst of all kinds of things that we normally would respond to in a negative way, and all of a sudden, that negative reaction is not there. Somehow we see past it. We see through it. We see beyond it.
So how do we find this mysterious thing called peace? Where do we get it? How do we achieve it? It’s like everything else in the spiritual world. It’s not something that you can necessarily achieve on your own, but it’s something that you long for. And when the longing is there, it seems that you’re open to the gift that this virtue offers, this virtue of peace, and as you’re open to it, you wait for it to take root within you. So I want to see if I can talk about that whole process, that mysterious process of seeking the light and finding it.
Let’s look at the Scriptures and see what they offer us. One of the things that the first reading talks about is the city of Jerusalem, and the city is a marvelous place. It is a symbol of God’s people, and the thing that’s so fascinating about the Old Testament is how God chose to partner with a particular group of people. Why not everyone? Why just the Israelites? Why just call Abraham to form a people around him? Why did Moses only free the Israelites from slavery? Why didn’t he do something for the Egyptians? It’s a great mystery. God had favorites in the Old Testament. God chose a group of people, and he wanted to manifest to them what he was able to accomplish ultimately for everyone, so he took them under his wing. But the one thing that is so fascinating about this promise he makes to take them under his wing is that he says, “I love you. You’re my beloved. You’re the one that I long to be with. You’re the special ones.” And human nature being what it is, there’s nothing more flattering than to be chosen above other people, to be the special ones, to be the special tribe.
Look at religions. I grew up as a Catholic. We were the true ones, the right ones. If I had grown up as a Baptist, we would have been considered the right ones, the true ones. The Americans, we’re the greatest. All that tribal business feeds something in the ego, and I find it fascinating that, when you see the work of God, he’s always working with his people wherever we are. And so he knew that these would be the ways in which he could persuade a people that he was their special God, by telling them they were special to him, and the easiest way to make them special was to make them better than others.
So we see Jerusalem having gone through a very dark time. The people have drifted away from God, but now they’ve returned. When they return to God in this relationship, with the Israelites as strong and powerful, then God rushes in with light, a light that when the Israelites see this light, they become the light. And their hearts start to throb, resonating life, light and energy. What was it that was happening to Jerusalem at this time? It was nothing other than God returning and saying, “You are my favorites. My favor is with you. I love you. I’ve forgiven you. Everything is forgotten.” There’s something so core [basic] in that experience of being loved that is at the heart of all salvation history.
So look at the second reading. Paul, now in the New Testament, having experienced this redemption, this amazing gift of God pouring his light, his love into the world, announces for the first time something that would have seemed absolutely incredible to those of the Old Testament. He is saying that God has revealed to him that all the outsiders, all the negative people — think of any person you have in your imagination who seems less than you because of the way you imagine who they are. Maybe they are in some way less intelligent, less moral, whatever, and superiority enters in. But he’s saying that whatever we do, when we feel ourselves better than someone else, all of that has to die. It has to go away, and what God is saying to St. Paul, and through him to us, “No, everyone — everyone is part of my special people. You’re all my favorites.” Now, wait a minute. These people didn’t follow the law. People didn’t do what they were told to do. They were not yet living the life God called them to, but isn’t it true in the Old Testament, whenever the Israelites turned away from God, God pulled away from them and left them to wallow in their darkness, and then waited until they experienced enough darkness to realize what they had done, and saw something about their choices that helped them not choose it again? But what really happened is he would come back with the light, his love, his acceptance, his presence, his mercy, his forgiveness and he would change them for a while. But now Jesus has inaugurated a new time. It’s the New Testament, the new way, and what he’s saying is so important for you to hear and for me to hear, because as we grow and we mature and we grow in consciousness, we’re aware that this God is offering love to everyone — to everyone. And yet the Old Testament still is there. The need to be special is still there. It’s not gone, and we fall back to it.
What happens is there is something about competing with an image of ourselves, let’s say, the perfect self, the one I want to be, the person who is always kind, always generous, always forgiving, the nice guy, the one everybody loves, all that. We get that image in us, because it’s so clear that God is asking something from us that demands we get our act together. And the danger of all that is, if we have this goal or this model that we’re working on, let’s face it, we’re probably apt to create something that we’re not yet ready for, or that even feels healthy, because it’s like all the New Year’s resolutions: I want to lose weight. I’m going to eat better. I’m going to be nicer. I don't know. I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to be better." Well, what if that’s wrong? What if we’re not supposed to work so hard to be better, to be perfect, but what if enlightenment is light that God brings into us that awakens a light in us that then makes our heart throb? What is that experience other than being loved unconditionally, completely, totally, exactly as we are?
When I was a child, it was in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and it was pretty clear that there was one thing you should never do to a child, and that was give him or her too much attention, at least from a parent’s perspective, because you might make the child a spoiled child, an egotistical child, a narcissistic child. We didn’t have those terms back then, but the worst thing you could do was spoil a child. So you always were tough on them, and that would make a tough child and a better child. But the toughness often came at a great price, because it seemed that we were often expected to be more than we are at this moment. And if you’re living in an environment in which you’re always called to be more than you are in this moment, and love is withheld until you reach that moment of fulfillment, then you grow up with this kind of gnawing sense that you’re not enough, you’re not good enough. And the world loves to tell us that, because they like to sell us something or give us something that would make us feel that we’re good enough. The world works on a kind of premise that, if you reward people, they’ll work harder. If you take things away from them, that will make them work even harder. You need to reward them and punish them. All that is there, but when you’re doing this reward and punishment business, it’s always contingent upon your performance, as to how you’re treated, how you’re rewarded.
What if that’s wrong? I’m not saying it’s wrong in the sense of the way the world works, but what if it’s wrong when it comes to the spiritual journey, the spiritual life? What if the most essential thing is to follow a light, as it's described in the gospel, a light in the darkness? The light is the realization that I’m loved unconditionally with constant mercy. Never is my value questioned because of my actions. I can be the worst possible person in the world, and God still looks at me and sees something in me that’s beautiful. Love is absolutely unstoppable, and yet even when I’m saying these words, I think, well, you can’t just tell everybody that they’re loved and that everything is fine, and God is going to take care of them no matter what. Isn’t that going to make them lazy, and won’t they all of a sudden start taking advantage of it and become selfish and narcissistic? No. It’s so weird, but when you know you’re loved like that, it’s so transforming. It so radically changes us that the thought of forgiving someone is not something that would be, in any way, shape or form, unnatural if he or she has harmed us, because we’ve already been forgiven, or the thought of continuing to stay in a relationship that’s difficult or hard — it doesn’t mean that we have to live with them necessarily if they’re destructive, but I’m talking about what is it in ourselves that is so quick to judge and to condemn and to exclude people. It comes from a very real deep realization inside us, I think, that it’s the way God deals with us, and if God deals with us that way, if the culture deals with us that way, then there’s no way we can possibly do something different. How can we become like God if the very God we believe in treats us like our culture does? And we tend to think he does. No, the glory of God — the glory of God is unconditional love, his mercy, his unmerited affection. It’s so intense, so powerful that, if we’ll just let it penetrate the very cells of our body like a light that penetrates the darkness of a deep forest, if we let it in, it makes all the difference in the world. So as we look to the light that has come, this loving figure that reminds us, teaches us, tells us of the love of God, I pray that we will be open to this gift, and once feeling it, knowing it, believing in it, the heart does throb. Somehow a throbbing heart is a heart that resonates love, that is attracted to the beauty of everything around us. How can we see beauty in the darkness? How can we see beauty in the ugliness? It’s there somehow, mysteriously, and only enlightenment — only the enlightenment that comes from the Spirit can reveal it to us.
Father, your glory is often hidden from us by those around us who refuse to receive the gift of your love. Bless them with openness. Open ourselves also so that, as we feel the love that you feel for us, we can be awakened to the value, the beauty, the dignity that this brings to every human being, especially the awesome gift of peace. And we ask this through Christ our Lord, amen.