EPIPHANIES & THEOPHANIES A Meditation on the Way to Christmas

EPIPHANIES & THEOPHANIES
A Meditation on the Way to Christmas

James Ishmael Ford

19 December 2021

First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles

Text

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

The Gospel According to Matthew

Christmas arrives in six days. For some of us this is a wonderful and sweet and beautiful time. For others among us it opens wounds. And for a number of us it is just a colossal waste of time, an unabashed orgy devoted principally to consumerism.

Actually. It’s all those things. And more.

Last year I spoke of how Unitarians both in England and here in America have had a long affinity with the Christmas story. It shifts the focus of the normative tradition. It’s not centered on that strange and mysterious cosmic passion that turns on the crucifixion and resurrection. Rather it’s about the poor, about refuges, and in the midst of so much suffering, the birth of a child. It is all about how in the darkest times hope births. It’s a celebration in the face of so many hard, hard things of possibilities.

And, as we’re still six days away, this all triggers for me thoughts of those three kings in the story, the ones who are slowly making their way to the manger. They actually feature in another festival of the Christian church called Epiphany, which is traditionally dated seven days after Jesus’ birth. So, we’re nearly two weeks before they will arrive.

In this time, coming on the tag end of the second year of Covid and looking hard at a third. Well, I think of journeys. And as the journey of the Kings, of the Magi in the story of Christmas are still on their way… Well, that captures me. And my imagination. And my dreams.

I was talking with Jan about how much I loved that carol “We Three Kings of Orient Are” by the mid nineteenth century Episcopal clergyman John Henry Hopkins, Jr. As I was waxing eloquent on this subject, as on occasion is my wont, I was surprised to see her shiver. We were indoors, and it was warm, and it’s a great song. And, really, I hadn’t gone on all that long. When I get carried away about something, she usually goes quiet, she might roll her eyes, but she doesn’t shiver.

So, I asked, what gives? Jan then explained how when she was about eleven, she and her sister and brother were dragooned into a church production, a family rendition of the carol, with each kid, dressed as one of the kings, taking a solo part.

It didn’t go well. As their parts came up, she and her brother each stumbled forward, looked hard down at their shoes and mumbled the required words. Perhaps audibly. At least, I suspect, if you were in the front row. Jan recalls choking out her part, “Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying./Sealed in the stone-cold tomb,” darkly wondering how she got saddled with those particular lines. On the other hand, for Karen, their kid sister, maybe four at the time, it was when she discovered she really liked the stage, and the lights, and, very much, the audience. She stepped forward and belted her part out to the rafters. On tune. It’s interesting how early our adult personalities peek out of our childhood faces.

I asked Jan if she hated the carol. Interestingly, she said, no. And then added how actually other than that flashback of personal humiliation, it really is kind of wonderful.

Today in the midst of several journeys, political disarray, ecological catastrophe, of course Covid, very much with Covid on our minds, with all that and more, grand and intimate, we are at the same time trudging toward something. Some Bethlehem of our dreams.

I think of that verse of welcome often sung in Unitarian churches, a line attributed to the Muslim Sufi Jelaluddin Rumi. Here it is in a more literal translation than we usually hear. “Come!/Come whoever you are./An unbeliever, a worshipper, a lover of leaving/If you have fallen a thousand times/Come!/Come whoever you are, for this is not the door of despair/Come,/Just as you are.” In the version we usually hear there is a caravan. And of course, there is. We’re being invited on to a journey. And this is that caravan, which is also a door. And those kings? They are us. Heading toward something. But. What is it?

In We Three Kings we are given a hint at what the real treasures are we might find at the heart of our searching. Gold and frankincense and myrrh are really compelling images. From antiquity the gift of gold was seen as symbolizing kingship. Frankincense was widely used in religious rites symbolizing homage to the holy. While myrrh is used in embalming, foreshadowing in the traditional telling Jesus’ death. But, really, about the hard fact of another journey we’re all on and a destination to which we will eventually arrive. I suggest there are other ways to consider these gifts, some perhaps more useful for many of us. We will return to that unpacking in due course.

But first a little background. The oldest version of the story of the kings, actually the magi, the three wise people, gender isn’t actually stated, visiting the newborn Jesus, is found in the gospel according to Matthew. It is probably worth noting that it doesn’t appear anywhere else in the Bible and what’s there is pretty sketchy.

Much of what we know as the story is filled in over the years. For instance, perhaps drawing upon the three gifts, which are there from the beginning, in the West from early on three magi are named and eventually given backstories. However, Matthew actually not only doesn’t designate gender, he doesn’t give us a number, much less names. And so, it doesn’t have to be that way. In the Eastern churches, for instance, there are twelve magi. I prefer keeping it simple and focused, so those three, and their haunting gifts. As I said, I’ll return to those gifts before long.

But there’s something else here, I want to be sure to hold up. Epiphany as a celebration in the Christian church happens as I said, a week after the birth of Jesus. We’re working toward it. Although I do suggest its already here for those with eyes to see. Another word for the moment is Theophany. Epiphany means manifestation or a striking appearance, while Theophany means a vision of the divine. Startling moments that disrupt the world we thought we were living in.

I’ve thought a lot about those striking moments that redirect our lives. I think of the first of our ancestors who noticed she is alive and will die. I think of our own realizations that Covid isn’t going away anytime soon. And. We’re not yet to Christmas, much less the twelfth day, the seventh after Jesus mythic birth. But, those kings, those wise souls, well, they’re already on their way. Toward something. Toward, well, an epiphany.

Today we give that term “epiphany” to all sorts of shifts of consciousness, from the slightest notion that things were not the way we thought, such as “Expensive chocolates are not always better than inexpensive chocolates!” Good to know, I’m sure. But should that word epiphany mean both that and to speak of the moment when I discovered I loved Jan, deeply, unspeakably so, and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her? Or, for that moment when the mess of the world falls into place, as when the Buddha saw the morning star and knew from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head, and declared, “Oh, beautiful! I see the world and I awake together.”

For me, the answer is yes. I like that epiphany can stand for both the smallest and the greatest shifts in our lives. For one thing, in the heat of the moment of those realizations, we don’t actually know if they’re transformative or not. We don’t even know what a piece of chocolate can mean.

The poet Lynn Ungar sings to us out of another season:

Sunday morning at the marina/Barely enough wind to keep the kites aloft/and so we drifted to the ground/to nibble bagels, chocolate,/giant loose-skinned oranges,/random poetry, blades of grass/Sacraments and indulgences for the first of Spring.//And in the moment before sleep/my breast against your arm/sang Gloria/and the soles of my feet/cried Sanctus to the sun/Placing the last chocolate/in your mouth I whispered/’This is my body, take and eat’/and we melted, very slowly,/on. The earth’s tongue…”

We don’t really know what will come with the realization Covid is going to be around for a while, yet. Still, while being open to all shifts, for me for an epiphany to be of the spiritual sort, the sort that breathes new life, the sort that really matters. It has to actually shift the world we live in. The moment can be as small as a taste of chocolate, and it can be an earthquake.

Now, I want to assert how these epiphanies, these insights, are ours naturally as human beings. For me this is the secret heart of the Universalist impulse, that sense of reconciliation, that intuition of wholeness which manifests as the belief that while we may be broken, and I actually find that brokenness a truth impossible to ignore, we are at the very same time and in the very same place, blessed. Blessed from before the creation of the stars in heaven. The caravan, even if the words are not actually there in the original, that caravan is not about despair. In fact it is a door.

We look around and find hints and pointers everywhere. But often best in spiritual stories, if often oblique, if sometimes hidden. Organized religions have a really problematic relationship with these insights because at the end of the day they always threaten established authority. And it’s all here. The Gospel of Matthew is all about establishing authority, in this case how Jesus is the foretold king, the messiah of prophecy within the Jewish tradition. And it contains the seeds that tear down the walls of the oppressors, the very settle authorities.

Dig into the story and you can see it. We can get gold for the preciousness of life, frankincense for the prayers of the longing heart, and anointing myrrh for the possibility of victory even over death. And, if that’s what we get in our noticing of things, that would be good. Still, there are even deeper possibilities, astonishing realizations, revolutionary insights that end empires, and take us into who we are and what we might become. All pointed at by these gifts.

I suggest these three gifts are in fact the great gifts, which when we notice them, become treasures of unimaginable wealth. The treasures that tear down thrones and raise up the poor. I find it wonderful that two of these most radical of insights, that when we notice them as true about us, you and me, are like having taken a sip of water and knowing for ourselves whether it is cool or warm. Noticing these things we find our lives disrupted and something new revealed.

Now, the first key to understanding these things in spiritual texts, the three gifts, is to realize they’re about us, about you and me, and what comes with the birth of our deepest insight. To underscore. These stories, this story, these gifts are not found within our generality as human beings, or about people long ago and far away. But found in our own actual messy real-life particularity as specific human beings: You. Me. That singular thing. As we are. And, with that we are invited to notice the first gift is gold. That’s you. That’s me. Pure gold. Even in our temporariness, in our woundedness, in our brokenness, we’re golden. Gold through and through.

Who knows how we come to this insight? It’s a gift. An epiphany. When we notice our lives and how precious and beautiful they can be, we are opening a new world. Horns toot. Angels sing. And we are. I am. You are.

Now with any really true thing, this is both powerful and dangerous. If we were to stop there, with here I am, if this was our only insight, we become cramped and twisted. Narcissist, sociopath are words that come to mind.

So, another gift, another insight to be experienced for ourselves, presenting itself like another angel. Like frankincense filling a sanctuary, joining everything in its holy cloud: the mystery of interconnectedness, of how we are woven out of each other. Our precious individuality birthed into the world by the world. We see our family in each other, and if we’re particularly blessed in the vision, in seeing the rocks and the trees and the mountains the oceans. All one family. The great family of things. Everything is holy. This is a great liberation.

And. With any really true thing, it is both powerful and dangerous. If we were to stop there, if this was our only insight, we become unbalanced and disconnected from our own lives. Loving humanity but hating people, and blind collectivisms stamping out the individual light comes to mind.

With both insights, however, with both angels singing their presence to us, we have a harmony. We come to something pretty healthy, a binocular vision of the world. And with that having depth perception, and, I suggest, a radical and revolutionary vision of the world.

But there’s one more insight, one more epiphany, a terrible and compelling thing, a dark angel calling us out of even the idea of the individual and the deep connections. Myrrh, the embalming spice, calling us to step beyond all boundaries, where we lose our idea of this or that, where all the conventions of language collapse, where we discover everything composed of parts, comes apart. Including you. Including me. Here we discover boundlessness, what one of my friends, the Zen priest Michael Fieleke so lovingly calls the edgeless world.

With any really true thing, it is both powerful and dangerous. If we were to stop there, if this was our only insight, we turn our backs on the world and even on our own lives. Despair and nihilism come to mind.

But, taken together, as the three legs of a stool, as insights we have found for ourselves, the way of the wise heart emerges, of the religion behind all religions, of the call to the fully human. The mature. The wise.

Three angels come to us. Three gifts ours by right.

Not yet here. Two weeks away in the story. And it has always been present. Right here, in this breath.

A secret message proclaimed before the world. Don’t you love the irony? A hint found in an old Christmas carol, and possibly, in any given moment. We are, after all, talking about our lives, not someone else’s. Your epiphany. Mine. And we start by waking to what is.

We just need to open our hearts to the moment where this all takes place. This moment. Not another. This one. Join in the song, the heavenly chorus, the ancient hallelujah. Do this, and even if we’re flustered and embarrassed and look down at our shoes and can only mutter the words haltingly and maybe off tune.

It will turn out to be enough.

It is our song. It is our life. Hidden. And. Revealed.

Amen.