January Journal, First Sunday after Epiphany

Holy Family of Nazareth, Denise Gosselin Gravel, Iconographer

This year, Epiphanytide, swinging on the date of Easter, a moveable feast, runs a full five weeks. The longest it can be is six weeks, so we are close to hearing all of the lessons appointed for this season of light. Today, the first Sunday after January 6, Epiphany, the Gospel lesson reveals another revealing of the Christ Child, who he is and why it matters.

The story is told by Saint Luke, thought to have been particularly close to Mary, and thus this writer also gives us the main narrative of Christ’s birth. It touches me, as a mother, for we forever worry about our children. My son is fifty-two, and when I learned there were raging fires in Los Angeles on the day his plane was due to arrive from Bangkok (Wednesday) I doubled, no tripled, my worrying. The plane arrived safely and one day I will find out what he saw in those skies, but for now I am grateful he made his connection home to Denver, albeit in the middle of the night. It is moments like these that make me grateful for cell phones, messaging, and even FaceBook. How did we ever manage without instant communication?

But returning to the story in today’s Gospel, about the boy Jesus in the Temple. We are told he is twelve years old and goes missing, at least his parents cannot find him. When they do, they fuss over him asking what was he thinking going off like that. (Sounds familiar.) And of course he replies that he was about his “Father’s business.”

An epiphany. A light shines on Jesus and who he really is.

The story produced other epiphanies in my little brain. He was born a baby, a human baby, and would have grown as we all grow, learning from our environment. He must have absorbed the lessons of the local synagogue, the readings, the conversations, as he grew up, for he needed to know these things, the history and rituals of his people, their prophets, their challenges. And so he is drawn to the temple in Jerusalem when they visit for the Passover feast. Luke writes that they had gone there every year (!) as was the custom. And yet we only have this one account of Jesus questioning the rabbis.

Given the choices all writers make, I have often thought the Gospel accounts were carefully curated. When there is a feeding of five thousand, this is only one account of many feedings we do not hear about. The healings too are probably too numerous to list, both of soul and of body. How many did Christ the Lord raise from the dead?

And just so, Mary and Joseph most likely were challenged with the boy Jesus and his remarkable parentage and his ways of learning, led by his Heavenly Father, guided by the Holy Spirit. This was their twelfth Jerusalem Passover, but Jesus is now of an age – a precocious age as mothers know – when his mental and physical growth take new turns. We call it adolescence. They called it becoming a man.

Today we ponder our time on Earth, Jesus’s time on Earth, and the accounts we are given, so carefully and prayerfully written “for our learning.” We are told in the Collect for Advent II to “inwardly digest” the Word, Holy Scripture. For indeed, these accounts, historical accounts, are food for our souls. Scripture tells us what is important in life, what is good and what is bad. Scripture, and those who interpret these Holy Words for us, gives meaning to our time, meaning to our individual lives. These words set us on the right path, shining a light in the dark forest of our days.

I for one am glad and grateful, for with every lesson, new epiphanies reveal more glory here and now and then in Heaven and eternity. What we don’t know, what we don’t understand, doesn’t matter. What matters is in the pages of this book called the Holy Bible. What matters is what we do about these matters in our own lives.

Are we part of a church community, one that welcomes us on board to sail the seas of our time? For community is one of the pillars found in Holy Scripture – community that teaches us, feeds us, leads us through the rough waters. It is the church family that gives us the songs to sing, the prayers to pray, the eucharists to strengthen our hearts and souls.

The answers to life’s questions are here for the taking. We need only trust and obey as the old hymn goes. Looking for happiness? Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

One of my grandchildren said she couldn’t find a church she liked. I suppose she thought there was a perfect one, just for her, as if she were at a buffet table, trying each dish. Alas, I told her, every church community is fallen, for it is made up of fallen men and women just like you and me. Find one close by and attend regularly. Be slow to judge and quick to forgive.

For without being a member of the community we call the Bride of Christ, the Church, we will die a slow death from spiritual starvation. We need to be fed, and this is where Christ is, feeding his sheep, caring for you and me. Don’t go it alone, or even imagine it is possible. Hermits are few and far between.

If you want to experience epiphanies of heart and soul, walk through those doors, take a seat, and sing with all your might. Pray prayers of repentance, prayers of petition, and prayers of thanksgiving. Listen and learn from the lessons read and the sermons preached. And do these glorious things with others, your new brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers. One day you will be in their shoes, and you will be given parish children, grandchildren, in your church family. One day you will open the doors for those outside who want to come inside, in from the cold, the damp, and the dark of our world.

One day you will see them from Heaven and you will hear the words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Welcome home.” You will turn and see the Master, the one who questioned the rabbis in the temple and set our worlds in motion. And you will know the ultimate epiphany, Christ himself.