Preached on the Feast of Epiphany (transferred), January 5, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Phillip Lienau.
Isaiah 60:1-6
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
Psalm 72:1-7,10-14
Three Wise Men, by J C Leyendecker
Some time ago I encountered a man who related a dramatic story about his life. It starts in a dark place. He described himself as a law-abiding citizen, and faithful in his religious community. In the time of his life in which this story takes place, his country seemed to be torn apart by different political factions, and some people seemed to be taking advantage of the situation by spouting blasphemous things. You could say ideas are just ideas, but this man saw that some ideas are more dangerous than others, and he saw some people spreading ideas that could lead to further division in the country, and beyond that, great violence and suffering.
He once had occasion to help, in his small way, make a difference in his community. He was able to serve as a witness in the trial of one of the people spreading dangerous ideas. Now, he was respected among his fellow citizens, and when he spoke, they tended to listen. With his help, the criminal was found guilty, and was executed, which sent a message to all those like him that there was indeed a limit to what you could get away with in a civilized country. So far so good.
Here is where the story takes a turn. This man, this faithful, law-abiding citizen, had an epiphany, which is why I am telling this story. Today we celebrate the Epiphany. The word epiphany has at least three, related, definitions. The first is the most general: a sudden revelation or insight. That’s it.
The sudden revelation or insight that this man had was that he had been wrong about the criminal. Some time (I don’t know how long) after the execution, the man realized that the so-called criminal had not, in fact, done anything wrong, or at least certainly not worthy of death. Imagine with me how he must have felt, realizing suddenly that he was at least partially responsible for the death of an innocent person. I have not knowingly been in that situation myself, but I imagine that it must have been shattering to this man, to his sense of himself as faithful and law-abiding. He had been party to the law being used wrongly. His faith taught him to tell the truth, and he had been party to what he later realized was a lie.
What was he to do? Nothing he could do would bring back the man who had been killed. This is where the second definition of epiphany comes in. It adds some specificity to the first definition: a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being. So it’s still a sudden revelation or insight, but now it is specifically about the divine. In the depths of shame, in the pit of this man’s realization of his crime in helping to put an innocent man to death, in his insight into his role in a state-sanctioned murder, God manifested to him. He had thought himself faithful in his religious community, and in many ways, he no doubt had been, but now he was gifted a revelation of God that broke open all his assumptions about himself and the world around him.
Now to hear him tell the story, the manifestation of God came first, and his sudden realization of his sin came after. I hope he will forgive me for switching the order around a little. I do this because it is my opinion that self-realization of sin and manifestation of God are, for many of us, a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Sometimes it can be hard to tell for sure which comes first. In any case, this man had now experienced two of the three definitions of epiphany: a sudden realization or insight, but also one that includes a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.
He now was at a crossroads in his life. He knew that what he had done in the past was wrong. But he was still part of his society. He was still, to his neighbors, the same faithful, law-abiding citizen. But inside he had been transformed. He now had a choice. On the one hand he could lay low, certainly not participate in any more trials like the one before, but also not say anything to anyone that might change what they think of him. He could just keep quiet, keep his head down, do no harm, but also not speak up about what was going on politically around him. On the other hand, he could speak up about what he had done wrong, he could again be a witness, but this time a witness in defense of those being wrongfully imprisoned and executed.
This is where we encounter the third and final definition of epiphany: the manifestation of Christ.
By now I expect that many of you, perhaps all, have guessed the name of the man in question. His name is Paul, the patron of this house, and the man executed, Stephen. I know that we will remember the conversion of St. Paul later this month, so we will hear this story again. But I hope you will indulge me, because it is my opinion that the story of what Saul did, and how Saul became Paul, and then what Paul did, is a story worth retelling over and over again, and especially today, Epiphany.
The specificity of Epiphany being about Christ is important. This is because it could be easy for us to say, we are Christian, here we are in a church, we’ve just been celebrating Christmas, so of course what we do is about Christ. But those are just words. Christ is not a passive element of our existence. Christ is a transformative divine presence in our lives, in fact, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Christ is the definitive presence in our lives.
This is why the epiphany of Saul made clear his choice. Saul’s epiphany was not just any sudden revelation or insight, nor even of just any divine or supernatural being. Rather, Saul’s epiphany was of Christ, and Christ’s transforming action in Saul’s heart led him to not lay low, but to get up, and speak up, and change the world. Paul worked tirelessly from the time of his epiphany to save the lives of people like Stephen, in whose death Saul had participated.
As we heard in the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians, he calls himself “the very least of the saints.” He knew his past had not been erased. But that did not stop him from accepting, as he says, “the gift of God’s grace,” so that he could become a servant of the Gospel.
There is more to the story of course. Saul is struck blind. Christ speaks to him. His epiphany is as dramatic as any. But epiphany does not require that drama, not really. We have access to epiphany all the time. It is in our Baptism. If you don’t remember your baptism, that’s okay; epiphany is available to you every time we renew our Baptismal vows. And epiphany is available to us every time we celebrate the Eucharist.
The question for each and every one of us is this: what is your epiphany? We all have the potential for epiphany, because we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. God is always speaking to us, not just on the road to Damascus. God is always doing God’s part of epiphany. Are we ready to receive revelation, insight, and not just any revelation, but that of Christ, whose presence in our lives promises to transform us?
In hindsight, Paul’s conversion may seem a foregone conclusion. Who is Paul if not St. Paul? But Saul had a choice. Remember, there are plenty of people in our Scriptures who receive revelation, and reject it. Or Saul could have called himself a Christian, gone through the motions, but not become an evangelist. That’s not necessarily bad, but it wouldn’t have been what God called Paul to do.
So I repeat the question: what is your epiphany, and when – not if, when – Christ calls you to transformation, how will you respond?