I am going to begin this morning by going a little “meta,” and by that I don’t mean Zuckerberg’s civilization-destroying company. What I mean by “meta” is zooming out and looking at how the proverbial sausage is made, thinking about how we think about Epiphany.
Like other dates on the liturgical calendar, Epiphany wasn’t really a Congregational thing. Those Puritans and Pilgrims were a dry and cranky lot, only interested in the basics. Remember, they outlawed Christmas at one point. Thankfully that didn’t last too long. But there were plenty of ancient feasts and practices they still considered “Papist,” including Epiphany.
It was only a century ago, when the ecumenical spirit was in the air worldwide, that we started re-examining and restoring some of the Christian traditions we had thrown off, especially important as we grew closer to parts of the German church in America that were as much Lutheran as they were Reform.
Unlike the Feast of Christ the King, a 20th century fabrication, there is at least a real tradition, actual scripture, around Epiphany. It is the Twelfth Day of Christmas, as in the proverbial partridge in a pear tree and all that, and the date associated with today’s reading from Matthew, the arrival of wise people from the East at the home (not manger!) of Joseph and Mary.
The word “Epiphany” itself comes from the Biblical Greek for an appearance or manifestation, and so shares somewhat with the word “apocalypse,” which simply means to reveal or make known. Both lean into seeing as a way of knowing.
In particular, Christians have traditionally connected the story of the wise travelers with the gospel message to the Gentiles, that is, to people who were not ethnically or religiously connected to the tribe of Israel. Which is kind of important, because no good news for the Gentiles means no us, no Sistine Chapel, no Mozart Requiem, no Azusa Street revival.
Because there is that star, because there is that message to the Gentiles, pastors all-too-often slip into the sin of supersessionism, the wrong-headed theology that claims Christians replaced the Israelites in covenant with God, contributing to centuries of antisemitism, to Auschwitz and the Tree of Life Massacre.
Just as often pastors lean into the language of light, connecting to old tropes that equate good with whiteness and evil with darkness, not only paralleled in racism, but also ignoring the very real and important role darkness plays in life, in rest, in mystery. Christmastide, the season from the Christmas Eve service through Epiphany, as well as Eastertide, the season from Easter Sunday until Pentecost, are assigned white as the liturgical color, because white is assumed to be good.
It is not that all of those pastors are intentionally racist or antisemitic. It is simply that we have this slow construction of story, a soup of ancient superstition and scientific knowledge.
So let’s ignore those old tropes, and, as they might say on a television police procedural, let’s just stick to the story, ma’am.
Continue reading “The Burning World: 8 January 2023”