Epiphany to Candlemas

Albrecht Durer: Sketch? for the visit of the Magi - c.1520.

If the curb side evidence was anything to go by when I lived in Arizona, Christmas was over with around mid-morning on the 26th December. This morning, when I went in the grocery store, the Valentine's Day candy was already beginning to populate the 'Seasonal' section, so the secular world has put Christmas behind it. It seems it is just us and the carillon at the church across the road that are still in the Christmas spirit - and I think they'll probably change their tune - literally - either tomorrow or Tuesday.

We are encouraged today to view the Middle Ages as an era of ignorance and superstition, but that is only part of the story. When you dive into the literature you discover that they knew perfectly well the world was a globe, and the Oxford Calculators of the 13th century, men such as Robert Grosseteste, were already laying the foundations for the work of Galileo and Newton. Prior to the Black Death which ravaged Europe from 1347-51, theology and spirituality remained fairly healthy as the Western Church still maintained the Augustinian synthesis of the late-antiquity. One of the healthy customs that in fact survived up until the Reformation, and perhaps a little beyond was giving equal weight to Christmas and Easter by celebrating them for forty days. This makes sense when you think about it - there is no cross without the cradle, and Our Lord's incarnation was the means by which God and Man were reconciled.

The Incarnation - the Eternal Son of God becoming man - was itself the supreme saving act which made everything possible. The whole of Jesus' earthly life contributed to the salvation of humanity because it meant that God came to embrace and experience fully, from the inside, what it means to be human. Thus, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says,

"For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."

This underscores the totality of the Son's identification with the human experience in order to redeem it, and to restore the damage done by the first Adam who had rebelled against God. This work of salvation culminated in His death and resurrection, but the babe of Bethlehem, the toddler who returns with His parents from Egypt, and the child who gets "lost" in the Temple are as much part of our salvation as the God-Man who suffered on the Cross, harrowed hell, and rose again.

The Gospels for Epiphany-tide underline this incarnational theme. Epiphany itself deals with the visit of the Magi to our Lord, then the three Sundays after Epiphany that we keep this year invite us to explore his Jesus visit to Jerusalem when He was twelve years old, which is more than a case of His getting lost in Temple; His baptism; and His first miracle at Cana in Galilee - themes that invite us to continue meditating on the fact that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." His ministry was a thirty-three year long theophany - manifestation of God - in the world which perfected our Salvation. If you are free on Tuesday, January 6th, you are invited to join us for the celebration of the feast of the Epiphany. Remember, we also meet every Sunday at 11am and 5pm to worship God in spirit and in truth according to the time-honored Prayer Book liturgy.