Epiphany--Making Visible

For many of us who call ourselves Christians, the season of Epiphany, which falls between Christmas Season and Lent is one of the most important seasons of the year.  The reason the season is so important for Christians and the Christian faith is the meaning of the word Epiphany itself.  Epiphany means to make manifest or to make known or perhaps even, to make visible.  The Gospel readings for the Sunday’s of Epiphany are selected to demonstrate to today’s Christians’ the ways in which Jesus showed himself to the people of his day and time.

We easily remember the most obvious: the Wise Men at the House bringing gifts to the baby and good news to his parents of God’s favor.  The baptism of Jesus which we celebrate on the second Sunday of the Epiphany and the declaration to the Samaritan woman at the well that he is, in fact, the Messiah for whom she and her people are waiting.

There are many other manifestations of Jesus as Christ and Messiah and I want to share just a few of them with you from the first Chapter of the Gospel of Mark.

Beginning with the verse of chapter one, Jesus and his disciples enter the synagogue in Capernaum in order for Jesus to teach.  The scripture doesn’t tell us what he taught, I wish it did, but it does tell us that the people were astounded because, Jesus taught as one with authority, and not as a scribe.  I have to assume that whatever he taught and however he said it was so powerful that the people knew they were in the presence of a person very different from any they had ever encountered in worship.  As if this wasn’t enough, a man with an unclean spirit recognized Jesus when the others there did not.  He said, “what have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”  Jesus ordered the demon to leave the man, which he did and the people were even more impressed.  The people saw Jesus’ authority and power and knew that something was different about him.  His presence and his actions in the synagogue had been an Epiphany, a manifestation of the presence of God in the world and in their lives.

This passage is situated between two other passages in Mark which show the way God acts in the world through Jesus: The first is Jesus’ calling of the first four disciples and telling them that they will no longer catch fish but that they will become fishers of people.  Jesus will teach them, how to bring about the kingdom of God in this world.  The lesson which follows our passage is Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, after which she gets up and feeds Jesus and the disciples giving them the energy and strength and power to heal all the sick and all those possessed of demons.  Surely Jesus’ presence changes us, surely his presence changes the world.

How wonderful that the Gospel shows us many epiphanies of Jesus to the people of his day.  I believe this prepares us to receive the epiphanies God gives to us in our own day.   Jesus has shown himself to the world in these manifestations.  After healing Peter’s mother-in-law Jesus goes out to “heal all the sick and those possessed with demons.”  If we reflect on the portion of  the Gospel of Mark we have talked about today, it seems to me that Jesus is particularly present in the actions of teaching, healing and freeing.  Now, as then, Jesus heals us and frees us from the chains that bind us:  physical, mental, emotional and spiritual and then teaches us how to live a new life of freedom and trust.

Jesus heals us in many ways: the power of the holy spirit directly, the wisdom and knowledge given to physicians, therapists, and other health care professionals, medication developed for physical, mental and emotional diseases and disorders, and the love and prayers of friends and family as well as our own faith communities.   I share with you two stories of healing which changed my life and my faith.

Many years ago, when I was serving as a priest in New Orleans, I was in the hospital to be with an 80 year old, dying man and his wife.  These were two wonderful people whom I had come to love, and who had been married for well over fifty years.  The husband, who had been a Roman Catholic (this is important) was in a coma, dying of kidney failure.  I cautiously asked the wife if I could anoint him for healing, explaining that healing sometimes meant leaving your pain behind and going to be in the “nearer presence of God.”  She agreed, and she held her husband’s hand as I anointed him and prayed that God would heal him, even if that healing was his earthly death.  Before being anointed he was agitated and anxious and not at peace at all.  After I anointed him he squeezed his wife’s had, relaxed his entire body and simply died.  Later, out in the hall, the wife looked at me and asked if I had seen what happened. I said that I had and she told me that she truly felt God’s presence in their lives in that moment.  I too felt God’s presence in all of our lives, God’s manifestation, God’s showing, God’s Epiphany.

The next incident was the first “healing service” we held at St. George’s Episcopal Church in New Orleans In the late nineties.   Believing that God desires our healing and having a liturgy in our prayer book for healing, the worship team decided to add a healing service once a month during our regular worship time on Sunday.  The genesis for this was the presence of a young woman in our congregation with breast cancer.  I had asked her if she would like to be anointed for healing during worship.  She replied that she had been anointed in her former church in Florida and would like for St. George’s to do this as well.  If you know the history of this sacrament in the Episcopal Church, you know that it is usually done on a weekday at an inconvenient time and that less than a handful of people participate.  When I introduced the sacrament, I explained that people were invited to come up to be anointed for healing:  for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual healing.  The wording of the invitation changed the whole perception of this wonderful and powerful sacrament.  From a practical standpoint, we were also blessed to have two priests and a deacon to assist with the anointing.  To my surprise, three-quarters of the congregation come for healing.  After the anointing for healing, when I moved back to the altar to begin the Eucharistic prayer, I was so spiritually and physically drained that It was very difficult to complete our worship.  What happened that day was best described by a member of the congregation who told me afterward that it felt as if a “bucket of Peace” had been poured on her head and had run down her body to her toes.

That may well have been the most powerful experience of the presence of the risen Christ I have ever had in my life.  This continued to be a monthly epiphany that changed the congregation and brought us all into the presence of God.

These are just two examples of how Jesus the Christ manifested himself in us in ways that changed us and then sent us out into the world “rejoicing in the power and the presence of the Holy spirit.”