Celestial Beauty, An Epiphany Sermon
Preaching on Luke 2:22-40 :
In my twenties I was self-employed, and one of my clients was a restaurant in Western North Carolina in a community called Sapphire Valley. I loved my clients and the delicious food they served there and would often go at dinner time to take food marketing photos in the kitchen before the food went out to the patrons to be used on social media.
Because of the nature of this work, I would end my work with the client around 10pm usually, and then would drive the two hours back to where I lived in South Carolina on windy mountain roads, unlit and dark. Renting a hotel room was never an option because this wasn’t an area where you could just pop into a Hampton Inn. It was a high-end destination community, and if you did book a room in the nearby hotels and inns, you’d be looking upwards of several hundred dollars.
So, at 25, I’d hop back into my sedan and make the trek. The Trees and mountain foliage was high and dense, and those roads felt spiritually thin. You’d have to turn on your lights to bright and rarely you’d encounter another person on the road but, hardly ever for two hours just switchbacks and shadows. I grew up near this area and was told folklore of haints and spirits that would try to take advantage of wary solo travelers.
One January, at about eleven PM, as I climbed and turned a curve, I saw a flashlight waving off the side of the mountain. I had to make a split second decision at this point. Stop the car, and see if someone needed true help, or as a single woman, do I keep driving? I have to confess, a HUGE part of my concern was what if it’s one of those Appalachian ghosts.
Cautiously I looked out my window and I saw a family huddled on the side of the road covered in blankets and a man frantically waving and pointing up the mountain at a parked truck that looked charred. The temperature was in the teens, and they had gotten out of an old pick up truck that had broken down because they were afraid someone might hit them and push them off the side of the mountain into the darkness.
I hurriedly stopped my car (there was no way to pull over to the side) and turned my brights on to shine at the car and talked to the parents. It turned out, their truck had caught fire an hour or so earlier. We ended up putting my car behind their car with hazards on to help illuminate the broken down truck in case any folks passed by in a hurry and might get injured.
By some miracle, I had 1 bar of service and was able to phone 911 to get the fire department to come out and tow them to safety.
That family was so vulnerable without light, with their children in the cold, and that truck- a sitting duck in the middle of the mountain switchback in the complete Appalachian darkness.
That child’s tiny play flash light had been their saving grace, a tiny little plastic flashlight, emitting the smallest ray of light, but just enough- to catch my attention as I drove by.
Sometimes, a tiny ray of light in the mountain’s darkness- that’s all we need though to give us hope.
Our holy scripture begins with, “In the beginning, the earth was without form and void: darkness was upon the face of the deep. Then God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.
1A. God brings light to the deep darkness.
2A. Humans have a natural fear of darkness and the unknown.
3A. Darkness makes us more aware of our limitations as a species- without sight, we’re more vulnerable. Thanks to the moon and stars, fire and now electricity, the darkness of night is never truly fully void of light.
4A. The oldest expression of human fear of the pitch black night comes from the Book of the Dead, a funerary text from the Egypt’s used for 1500 years until 50 BC, in which a scribe named Ani says, “What manner of land is this into which I have come? It hath not water, it hath not air, it is deep, unfathomable, it is black as the blackest night, and men wander helplessly therein.”
So, what is Epiphany? The actual word: Let’s get nerdy- According to the PCUSA Mission Agency, the word “epiphany” (from the Greek epiphaneia or theophaneia) means “appearance” or “manifestation” of God, and has roots in the word for sunrise or dawn. This appearance can come in the forms of signs- such as the Star in the sky that the Magi and shepherds see and follow.
I find it fascinating that in 2023, we use the word epiphany as a sudden realization. Much like Oprah’s infamous Ah-ha moments, it would seem that epiphanies now are not considered as a gift of special revelation from God. We might say loudly, I had an epiphany, and let our own brilliance take the credit, instead of reveling in gratitude for what God has brought forth in our hearts and minds.
Epiphanies are mental moments where we have instant clarity, which can turn into motivation to change and charge forward.
But not all epiphanies are created equally. Some demand a deep inward search, and you'll be stuck asking the tough questions to see what you are made of.
As Christians, Epiphany is the celebration of God’s manifestation or self-revelation to the world in Jesus Christ. In particular, we celebrate the revelation of God’s promise and purpose to the nations of the world, as the magi came from the East to worship to the Christ child, and God’s covenant of grace is extended to all who believe the good news of Christ Jesus.
Throughout the Bible, and particularly during the mere 1 day season of Epiphany, which occurs 12 days after Christmas in our Christian Calendar- The symbolism of light is important. In some church traditions, there is a feast after service. Last year, I had the opportunity to spend Epiphany with Coptic Christians at the Anafora Monastery in Upper Egypt. The Priests and nuns worshipped together, alongside other Christians from nearby. After a lengthily three hour service, the priests presided with large light candles and incense up to a pool of water where immersion baptisms often were held, in complete silence the Priests lit floating crosses on the water, and began singing joyfully. Afterward we all gathered and feasted on dates, honey, bread and stew.
In our celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany we rejoice in the dawning and the arising of Light in darkness. … Epiphany not only discloses the Savior to the world but also calls the world to show forth Christ, to be witnesses to God’s true Light.
The timeless mystery of the incarnation, God in flesh, leads us forth to show and tell of Christ as God’s gift of grace and salvation for all persons. Some call this ongoing epiphany the work of Christmas
I’ll share a personal story of epiphany I had, maybe a year after the experience of finding the family on the mountain. At a point in my life, 27 or 28, my business was taking off and doing pretty well. On paper, everything looked “successful”. I felt absolutely dead inside.
I remember one night, going out with some friends downtown Greenville, SC and running into a cast member of Southern Charm in the bathroom at the Poinsett Hotel. She was sharing with me a story of her life in the bathroom- as women do sometimes late at night in strange and glamorous bathrooms and I remember just hearing her story and having this weird gut feeling that if I didn’t change my life, I’d end up just like this woman.
On paper, she too had it all. And yet, as she was sharing, despite the fame and money and expensive trips and attractive boyfriend, she was living an empty life.
It was a wake up call.
I felt that night that I experienced a spiritual death. I just looked back at the 27 years of my life up unto that point and realized I was wasting my life trying to get rich and famous.
I literally walked out of that bathroom, straight to the corner of the street and prayed to God that I’d give him the rest of my life because I didn’t want to end up like that woman. My business was shut down within 4 months, I took a stable job at a tech company - I spent 18 months paying off the remainder of my business debt and I was at seminary two years later.
In Epiphany, the usual scripture we read is from the Gospel of Matthew. The story goes that King Herod sends 3 Magi (wise men who studied the stars) to visit Baby Jesus and deliver gold, frankincense and myrrth to pay respect to Jesus. They follow a giant star in the sky which leads them on a long journey to Bethlehem. As they visit Jesus, the 3 magi have an “epiphany” a dream- to not return to King Herod. They depart and take an alternate route to their homelands.
Joseph, father of Jesus epiphany:
- Then, similarly, Joseph has a dream warning him to flee with his family to Egypt.
- When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
- So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”[c]
- 16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.
It is suspected that Joseph and Mary and Jesus lived in an area outside of Cairo, Egypt for 3 years. This part of the world now is known as Old Coptic Cairo, and while hard to prove, there is a very old church called the Cavern Church which claims to be built over the home-site of the Holy Family while Joseph perhaps worked at the nearby Babylon fortress.
The last epiphany here is Joseph’s last dream: After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
There’s no exact way we must celebrate Epiphany, you can create your own ritual that speaks directly to your personal lived experience and spiritual practices of exploring where God has placed guiding stars in your life. This celestial beauty that greets us in the darkness is holy.
Holy, not only because of the star that guided the magi, but as it relates to the bright dawning of God’s self-revelation in Christ that we rejoice in every season.
In a moment, you will be invited to to the Table, as we do with communion and select a star to guide your year ahead.
These stars each have a different word on them, and it’s up to you to decide how to incorporate that word into your life this year ahead.
The next step is courage. And taking that step to live out your epiphany is when real transformation happens.