The Manifestation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, commonly called Epiphany, by Fr Jack

Isaiah 60.1-6
St Paul to the Ephesians 3.1-12
St Matthew 2.1-12

The Manifestation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, commonly called Epiphany. It’s all about revelation. A moment of realisation.

That is today, and that fundamental reality of revelation and realisation defines so much of the hymns, music, readings and theological character of how we will live and worship together in these days of Epiphany. It is one long ‘aha!’ moment, these days of Epiphany.

We will dive into the layers of Magi coming, but also the water into wine at Cana, Christ’s first miracle, revealing His power and God’s party-loving ways. And the Baptism of Christ too - the voice of the Father, the Holy Spirit descends, Jesus is God with us.

As I said a few weeks ago, our siblings in the Eastern Church celebrate Christmas at Epiphany, not on the 25th December, because it is now that we gentiles (represented in the Magi) arrive to the Holy Family and realise who Jesus is.

And having realised who this child is, and what this means for you and me and the whole world, we leave changed.

And that pattern is something we live again and again in our life’s pilgrimage. We wander through life, through fear and consolation, through doubt and trust, through delight and difficulty. And each time we encounter these things, we are changed and journey on in a new way. Every time we come to Holy Communion, every time we say our prayers or read the scriptures, is a little moment of coming to the manger, having our eyes opened, and then continuing on life’s road.

Being a Christian is not a simple journey from A to B. I believe, I become a Christian, I live a good life, I donate to OXFAM, I die, I go to heaven. A much more realistic picture is this journey of the Magi, and the unknown rest of their lives. Our life, like theirs, is a series of comings and goings. Indeed, of course, ‘conversion’ means ‘turning towards’.

If you sit for a few quiet moments in church to prepare your hearts for the Parish Eucharist, or in the quiet having received a blessing or Holy Communion, or at home in a peaceful chair, to have some time with God. I bet you - if you are anything like me - for the first 10 seconds you’re settling, for the next 10 seconds you’re thinking rather nicely about God or something holy - then you’re thinking about lunch, or the washing you haven’t taken out of the machine. Oh, blast! Right let’s think about God again…. Oh and I must write to Susan to thank her for that cyclamen pot. Oh Blast!

Even our prayer life is a constant micro example of life, of the Magi’s comings and goings. We drift and we return.  So is our pattern of worship, we come to Holy Communion, but we don’t stay here at the altar 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We are sent from here (ita missa est) taking God with us into the world, and then we return, we convert, to get topped up.

We live again and again the pattern set by the Magi today. Not one big Epiphany as there’s was, but a lifetime of mini epiphanies, returning and being changed, formed and fed and sent, and returning etc…

I think it was the great wartime Archbishop William Temple who was once asked by an earnest evangelical when he was ‘saved’. The earnest young man expected the Archbishop to name a place and moment when he first took Jesus into his heart, and that was that. But I think the Archbishop replied something like: ‘I am being saved today’. Something like that.

And of course our conversions come in all shapes and sizes, there is no right and wrong way for God to be at work in our lives, but I feel much more affinity with Archbishop Temple. Everyday, my feet bring me to the altar, and every day I am returning, converting, meeting God, being changed. Every day, we are Magi’s being invited to come and be changed into who we truly are. A lifetime of epiphanies, if only we would open our eyes, hearts, minds and lives, to what God is doing in us.

These are the ‘eternal purposes’ carried out in Christ of which St Paul writes to the Ephesians today. And we are invited to come with ‘boldness and confidence’ (as the Apostle writes today) at what God might be up to. Likewise, that effusive and excited sense in Isaiah, today’s first reading. Come! Arise! Shine! And bring everyone with you. Like children running down the stairs on Christmas Day to presents under the tree. ‘Your heart shall thrill and rejoice!’, as the Prophet writes. What a wonderful image.

I know every sunday of the year, as the alarm goes off, all of us are giddy with excitement, leaping out of bed, and running down through the streets of our parish to get to church, just like children bowling down the stairs on Christmas Day. It’s the same, I know, when we go to work or school or hospital appointments, we skip there every time thinking: Golly, gosh! I wonder what encounter with God I might have today. I wonder how my teacher or colleague or customer or GP’s receptionist might reveal to me something of God’s loving purposes in the world today!

No!? You mean, you don’t live like that?

Well, today Epiphany reminds us, that despite all the realities of life that will soon resume for us in the path of 2026, in truth, underneath all the humdrum and normality, every moment, every encounter, every time of quiet prayer, and every bus load of strangers: each and every one is a stable and a manger for us, in which God’s life and purposes are waiting to be found, if only we had the wisdom and grace to see them, and be shaped by them, and then journey on like the Magi. How many travellers to Bethlehem or Nazareth in those days walked past the Holy Family without spotting it? Hundreds. But we today make like the magi, to stop, to kneel and adore.

There are many spiritual disciplines that have this in mind, the Jesuits are especially good at it. They practice a twice daily examen. A short time of prayer at lunchtime and in the evening. They ask God for light and wisdom, and then look back on the preceding hours asking, where was God in all that, and how can I live more truthfully as a result. And then they carry on with their day.

All this helps them, helps us, to live each day alive to where is Christ in this moment, where is Christ in this meeting/classroom/bus/time of prayer/in the tangle of my own thoughts/in this supermarket aisle/in this conversation.

Where is Christ? And allowing the noticing and recognising of Christ’s presence, Christ’s character, Christ’s love or suffering or care, beauty or vulnerability. To see the world pregnant with Christ, as it is, and to be formed for life by awareness of His presence.

Just like the Magi. Just like Isaiah’s rushing excited people. Just like St Paul.

In the quiet after Holy Communion or receiving a blessing, pray for Magi-like grace and wisdom to turn into 2026 with ‘boldness and confidence’ that Christ is there waiting for you and me at every moment. Waiting to be spotted, found and met, again and again, Bethlehem by Bethlehem, Nazareth by Nazareth.