Epiphany Me

Today is the day of celebration of God’s revealing in Jesus the Christ, as made manifest to the magi, the wise men from the east, who came bearing gifts fit for Christ’s true identity as Lord of All.

Epiphany:  a bursting forth suddenness of revealing.  The groundwork having been laid, it is the magician’s ta-da pull-back-the-curtain moment.  Greatly anticipated, now we see what before was only imagined.

Epiphany: the God-reveal revealing us to ourselves – the who-we-were-made-to-be of things.  Child of God . . . that is who we are called to be . . . that is who we are.

From Flickr

Epiphany: the prodigal son at the moment of the father-running embrace.  Son tried to run away from who he was, to turn his back on the father who loved him.  Ultimately he came back, but even when he was the farthest away from home, he was always the beloved son.  So was I right that his epiphany moment was at the hug, the fatherly embrace?  Or was his epiphany sooner, felt only in his feet, finding themselves willing to turn homeward?

I think the feet knew best.  After all, the son’s identity did not change because he rejected it.  And that, that is grace abounding.  Claiming to be someone, something, else, God still and yet loves.

Does it matter that we know?  That we’re aware that the curtain’s been pulled back?  No and yes.  No – we are who we are, whether we know it or not.  Yes – for to know the identity not of self, but of God, is to be forever changed . . . to know the identity of God is to come into the presence of God . . . in ways quiet and ways fantastical . . . in ways earth-shattering and in ways barely earth-registering, we all are invited into the presence of God . . . to sit a spell . . . and just be . . . be the ones we were made to be . . .

In such a space everything else falls away . . . And we know who we are . . . for the first time . . . Who am I?  Is another way of asking Why am I?  And in the asking as much as in the answering . . . is . . . God . . .

In meeting God, we come to the end of ourselves as we see and the beginning of ourselves as God sees . . .

So today, perhaps our prayer might be . . .

Lord God, epiphany me.