Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms. Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you. A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.
(Isaiah 60:1-6)
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Almost everyone knows what a live nativity scene is. Many of you have probably gone to one at one time or another, or perhaps you’ve even been a part of one. They start to appear sometime in December as Christmas approaches. They’re a re-creation of the scene at the manger on Christmas night. There are two main differences between a live nativity scene and the sort of Christmas pageants that often take place in churches. One is that the live nativity is outdoors, and the church Christmas pageant is indoors. The other is that the live nativity scene uses real animals. So the manger is surrounded by real sheep. For some reason that’s hard to fathom, churches shy away from having live sheep in their sanctuaries, and so we usually have children dressed up as sheep (and possibly a few teenagers as we had a few weeks ago.) Most of us have seen live nativity scenes, but in the last few days I started wondering what a live Epiphany scene would look like.
Epiphany was last Wednesday. It’s always on January 6. The name comes from the Greek root word “epiphanos,” which means basically “the manifestation” or “the revelation” or something along those lines. In an epiphany, something is suddenly revealed that had either been hidden or had only been understood very vaguely. A veil gets removed; darkness gets lifted; light appears. Isaiah speaks of light - “your light has come,” is how the prophet put it. Suddenly - we know. There may still be some mystery. We may not know exactly what has happened - but we know that something has happened that has changed our lives. Change and transformation are a big part of epiphany experiences. Light always changes the world. Some have said that the most important invention in human history was Thomas Edison’s invention of the first commercially viable light bulb. With the light bulb providing a consistent and clean source of light, all of a sudden human lives were no longer governed by the rising and setting of the sun. The light bulb revolutionized human society almost 150 years ago in the same way cell phones have done - suddenly, there didn’t have to be any down time. Night and day didn’t matter. I’d like to think that the Epiphany that happened with the appearance of Jesus revolutionized human society as well - but in a perhaps more peaceful and gentle and productive way.
The great Epiphany story of the Bible , of course, is the story of the appearance of the magi to present gifts to Jesus and to worship him. We get it wrong, of course. For whatever reason we’ve forced it into the Christmas story, so that the magi appear at the manger, but actually Matthew’s Gospel tells us that they travelled from the east and came to King Herod, explaining that they were looking for the one whose coming had been foretold by a star - and Herod was disturbed. The magi then found Jesus as a boy at a house. This is a different story from what Luke tells us. The magi were Gentiles. Traditionally we portray them as three - and in most artwork, one is pictured as black, one as white and one as Asian, which is a way of saying that they represent all the races of the world who now share with Israel knowledge of God. There’s another epiphany story in the Bible that’s less known as an epiphany story. It’s in John 12. Jesus has entered Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowds, and the Pharisees were disturbed. “The whole world has gone after him,” they cried, and then (as if to show that what the Pharisees had said was true) some Greeks appear in the story. They go to Philip and say, “sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Again - people from outside the Jewish community have heard of Jesus in some way, and they’ve appeared with a desire to find him. The point of both stories is that Jesus came for the world. This is the message of Epiphany. Jesus came for the world. No one can box him in or claim him as simply their own. The role of believers is simply to be the light that draws people to an encounter with Jesus. So, at a time of year when the live nativity scenes that draw people to see them are finished, where are the live epiphany scenes?
There’s a need for them. The prophet Isaiah wrote that “darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the people.” There is darkness out there. One of the more interesting public opinion polls I’ve ever seen was one conducted back in 2011. It suggested that 30% of Canadians don’t believe in God. That I didn’t find surprising. What surprised me about the poll was that 28% of those who self-identified as Protestants said that they didn’t believe in God. Which, to me, is mind boggling. But perhaps it’s not that surprising. Our culture seems to deliberately discourage the light of faith from shining. I’m not getting into the silliness that some people spread about Christianity being persecuted in our society. It’s not persecution. It’s the growing belief that religion and faith are private matters; that they’re not to be spoken of in public. Religion and faith are for home and church and nowhere else. And too often we give in to that. We stop being light; we stop sharing the stories of our faith; we stop inviting others to explore this faith that’s so precious to us. And we do it in spite of Isaiah’s call for us to be an Epiphany: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you,” the prophet said. “For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.” If there’s darkness out there - and as I said, I believe there is - then we are called to confront it. We are to arise and shine with the light of God. Jesus said to his disciples that he was the light of the world, but he also told his disciples that they were to be the light of the world. So, the truth is that we don’t really need live nativity scenes. What we need are live epiphany scenes. Where do we find those? The answer is simple: look around you.
We are the live epiphany scene. We are the light that is to draw the world to Jesus. Sometimes we think that’s hard work, or that it’s scary to think of doing it, but it doesn’t have to be. I’m not talking about door to door evangelism or street corner preaching. Rachel Held Evans is 34 years old and lives in Tennessee. She left the Christian faith after a fundamentalist upbringing and returned to faith as an Episcopalian and she’s now a well known writer and commenter on the religious scene. Here’s what she wrote about her journey back to faith:
What finally brought me back, after years of running away ... was ... Baptism, confession, Communion, preaching the Word, anointing the sick - ... those strange rituals and traditions Christians have been practicing for the past 2,000 years. [These] are what make the church relevant, no matter the culture or era. They don’t need to be repackaged or rebranded; they just need to be practiced, offered and explained in the context of a loving, authentic and inclusive community. ... No one’s trying to sell me anything. No one’s desperately trying to make the Gospel hip or relevant or cool. They’re just joining me in proclaiming the great mystery of the faith - that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again - which, in spite of my persistent doubts and knee-jerk cynicism, I still believe most days.
Rachel Held Evans journeyed back to Jesus because she encountered a live epiphany scene: light shining from people who simply chose to be authentically themselves, and authentically for Jesus. I hope that as you look around you in this sanctuary on any given Sunday, you’ll also see a live epiphany scene, and I hope we’ll continue to live as that live Epiphany scene when we leave this place, sharing light, showing others the love of God and drawing them to Jesus.
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