Pastor’s Podium

It takes 12 full days for the message to sink in; the message that this baby, and the event of his birth is different than any other birth, even though it was an ordinary birth such as all human children have.

This child was a gift to his mother, certainly. But this child was a gift to Joseph, whom he would help his espoused wife raise. The baby was a gift to the extended families of both Mary and Joseph. But more than that, this child was a gift to all the people God had created; and that includes you and me and all others in all generations.

That fact learned by anyone should create a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, and become conscious of something that is very important to you. That moment is an Epiphany.

We Christians appropriated the word to denote our sudden understanding that Jesus was born to be our savior; that Jesus was God’s gift to all us, and that is most certainly true.

I am sure we have all had other Epiphanies. One that comes to mind for me is the time my father told me not to climb the ladder and get on the roof. When I finally stepped off of the ladder, and the ladder fell away from the eaves; I had an epiphany. I suddenly knew I was in real trouble; and if I ever managed to get my 5-year old body off of the roof, I was going to be in trouble. It was a profoundly startling moment, and an Epiphany. I was not disappointed. The event was sudden and eye opening.

To this day many Christian Churches have set aside Jan. 6 each year as a celebration of the sudden realization that the Christ child was born to all mankind; to save all mankind from the strictness of Deuteronomic law, and the separation of the Gentiles from God’s love and concern.

Oddly, the suddenness of that fact really did not arrive in the minds of the early church fathers until late in the second century, nearly 200 years after the nativity. It was late, surely, but when the idea was brought to the surface the early church took it and used the message to assure that all people are God’s people; and the salvation offered by Jesus was meant for them, too. That idea has traveled down the ages, and means today just what it meant 19 centuries ago. Jesus love and sacrifice is meant for us, all of us today, too.

While the Day of Epiphany is Jan. 6, this year we will celebrate the event with seven more Sundays in which the lessons read in churches will tell us of the importance of the realization of an Epiphany in our lives.

On Sunday, Jan. 12, we will hear how in the Book of Acts it is written, “Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’ This was an Epiphany message for us in this Kansas nation in the 21st century, said by Peter witnessing to the crowds after the resurrection.

On Feb. 9 we read of Paul instructing the people of Corinth, in Greece, a place far away from Bethlehem in the Spirit of Jesus that is with them. “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is from God, so that we understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.” That spirit and that message is to be carried throughout God’s earth, to all of us.

The messages are many in this season of Epiphany to assure you that the power of the spirit of Jesus, and the caring love of God are meant for you, and the person next to you, and down the street, in the next town, and everywhere.

God’s gift of Jesus, his own Son, a part of himself, is a gift to all mankind if they would but hear of it and accept it. Then the awakening epiphany would startle the world into a place of Love and Peace as God would have it.

Amen.