Sunday, January 8, 2023
Epiphany Sunday
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Listen to your imagination
Darkness covers the earth and thick clouds cover the peoples; but upon you the Lord shines, and over you appears his glory.
Another day of epiphany, this time celebrated on the nearest Sunday after January 6, when the magi at last appear and encourage us to see the world around us the way they do, with less focus and more imagination, less fear and more expectation. They followed a star, and we can too, if we put away our telescopes and carbon dating for awhile and let God inhabit us and all the world around us.
Baby Jesus, Son of Man and Son of God, grew into the roles of prophet, priest and king. Richard Rohr writes about the prophets, and the prophetic side of Jesus:
The prophets kept the word of God earthy. They kept it whole. They kept it real. They would not let us divide earth from heaven. They put heaven and earth together and they said, “It’s all one.”
Already at age 12 Jesus knew how near God was to all of us. He asked the scribes questions, sure, but he introduced more questions in their minds than they answered for him.
Raise your eyes and look about; they all gather and come to you.
Our deepest desire (whether we name it or not) lies dormant too long and too often, until the marvelous moment when somehow what God “thinks” imposes itself. I can close it off, but then my mind quiets and opens on its own. After all, God made me, fearfully and wonderfully, and God wants me to know it. This is the wonder of epiphany. This was the life of the prophets, says Rohr:
It seems, somehow, that they’ve entered into the heart of God. They’re bold enough and brazen enough to almost dare to say, “I’ve seen God. I know what God thinks. I’m going to tell you what God thinks.”
The joy of the Lord is my strength. This strength flows clean and clear, as God frees me from all the falseness that has needlessly weighed me down and shut my spiritual senses. Now life in heaven and life on earth seem one and the same.
Then you shall be radiant at what you see, your heart shall throb and overflow, as if the riches of the sea shall be emptied out before you, the wealth of nations brought to you.
This first week of 2023, last week of Christmas, this Sunday of Epiphany brings me finally face to face with the magi. We are glad to see each other. Together we search the skies and together we close our eyes and encounter God, our Maker.
Behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Rohr wants, as do I, to live in the world of the magi and learn the art of being a prophet here, now, and always.
The prophets explode our imaginations if we can learn how to listen to them. The prophets give us a sense of the possible and also of the impossible, as they push back the limits of our imagination. They increase our capacity to feel. They intensify our capacity for suffering. Prophets increase our ability to feel what God is feeling, to feel God’s pain, God’s desire, God’s longing, and even God’s anger, if you’ll allow.
Call this all epiphany, and rejoice.
(Isaiah 60, Psalm 72, Ephesians 3, Matthew 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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