I posted this on Epiphany last year: “Epiphany: One of us.” And since I don’t think I can improve on that this year, I’ll just repeat an excerpt here —
For an illustration of what we Christians celebrate on Epiphany, think of the movie Freaky Friday. Either one will do — the original with Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris or the remake with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis. Neither is really a great movie, but they’re both memorable and entertaining. The story is one we seem to like a lot, since we retell it with slight variations every couple of years in movie after movie. In Freaky Friday, a mother and daughter switch places — switch bodies, actually. How this happens isn’t really the point. The story isn’t about the dynamics of body-switching, it’s about the empathy and understanding that come from inhabiting another person’s life. That understanding is a kind of epiphany, but it doesn’t come instantaneously. Barbara Harris’ first thought is not “Ah, so now at last I understand my teenage daughter,” but rather, “Good grief, what am I doing here?”
Gradually, though, that understanding is revealed. It takes time to unfold, just as the Epiphany we Christians celebrate around January 6 took time to fully reveal itself, not just in a single night but over the course of 33 years or so. The incomprehensible was made into something we could grasp, something like us that we could understand.
… Maybe we’ll never be able to understand everything there is to know about God, but maybe we could be shown everything we need to know.
But also — and here’s a wonderful part of the story we too often forget — the epiphany that unfolds from this freaky incarnation works both ways. If the person and the life of Jesus Christ taught us humans everything we need to know about God, that life also taught God what it is like to be one of us.
— and then invite you to read the rest.
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