Several years ago, my mother handed me my baby book.
In addition to highlights surrounding my day of birth, my mother included the weather that day.
Also included in the baby book is the date of my baptism, November 22, 1949, the names of my godparents, and others who sent cards and gifts.
Which brings me to my reflection on the Feast of Epiphany. Origin stories are interesting to us.
We desire to know more about ourselves and those significant to us.
Jewish followers of Jesus in the first century embraced Matthew’s account of the Good News.
They were believers who were honestly grappling with the gentile question.
They looked more to the Apostle James for guidance rather than the Apostle Paul.
Matthew concludes his account with the Risen Christ appearing to the eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee.
He instructs them to go and make disciples of all nations.
The Jerusalem Church will disappear in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70.
But the dispersed community along with the churches founded by other apostles will continue to preach the Good News throughout the world as they knew it.
Matthew’s point of view comes through clearly in Jesus’ origin story.
The mighty are portrayed by Herod, the cruel, capricious ruler of Palestine who was so insecure in his position of power that the story of a child could set him off scheming on how to protect himself.
The learned are portrayed by the scholars in Jerusalem who can read the scriptures but do not trust in the efficacy of the Word of God and its power to save.
The honest seekers are portrayed by the magi.
Those who follow the light will arrive at the house of the God made flesh.
God has flung the doors wide open that mercy can flow to the smallest hamlet and to the most humble of homes.
Centuries later, the popular piety that grew up around this passage led to followers of Jesus using chalk to mark the lintels of their doors with 20 + C + M + B + 26.
The initials can either stand for the initials of the fictitious names we ascribe to the magi [Caspar (or Gaspar), Melchior, and Balthazar], or it can stand for the Latin blessing, Christus mansionem benedicat.
This translates to English as “May Christ Bless This House.”
But wait, this is not the only epiphany celebrated by Christ’s followers.
This feast as we know it was advanced by popular piety in the early Middle Ages in western Europe.
Before that the revelation of Jesus as the God come among us was celebrated with the gospel passages about Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River.
Still other epiphany or theophany celebrations grew up around the passage in John’s gospel about the wedding feast at Cana.
And the transfiguration stories were also celebrated as epiphanies.
What we have here today is the beginning of an epiphany season that will conclude on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday.
Sometimes we glimpse the fulfillment of what has been revealed, the pure light of mercy, of God’s loving faithfulness.
For most of this liturgical year we will hear from Matthew’s gospel account.
The author focuses us on the teachings of Jesus.
I am reminded of a pedagogical saying I heard a long time ago. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
If we approach the good news in a spirit of humility, we will be students ready to learn.
Ready to learn how to be the Body of Christ to the world.
We will see that God precedes us into every encounter, big and small.
Two writers have inspired my prayer life in the past two weeks as I ponder the mystery of the incarnation.
Both speak of the incarnation as clothing.
The first is Caryll Houselander, an English author popular in the 1930s and 40s.
In her book, the Passion of the Infant Christ, she writes, “God changes everything.
“God sends us to where God wants us to be; among those whom God wishes to be among; to do that which God wishes to do in our lives.
“God brings to the Bethlehem of our lives those people to whom God wishes to show the Infant Christ in us; those who are to give us something for him, just as God brought whom he would to Bethlehem: animals, angels, shepherds, and kings. unlikely people, proving that, though there are distinctions between different kinds of people in the world, when they come into Christ’s presence there is to be no distinction, no selection; the rich and the poor, the ignorant and the learned, the laborer and the king, must kneel together to the Infant Christ.
“With all the ingenuity and all the sincerity in the world we cannot arrange our lives as God can to ensure that we give the Infant Jesus his necessity in us, not our goods or our thoughts of him, but ourselves.
“Our humanity is to clothe him. Our love is to be the four walls that shelter him. Our life to sustain him.”
– [The Passion of the Infant Christ, p. 128]
The other author is John Neil Alexander, a bishop in the episcopal church and liturgical scholar.
In his book, waiting for the coming, he writes
The incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is about belonging. In the most intimate way possible, God crawled up under our skin, the very flesh that was first a gift to us, and wore it as a royal robe lest we forget our belonging. It was God’s way of saying, “You belong to me just as I belong to you.”
“Go ahead,” says Christ, “pinch yourself. It’s only me.”
There is no deeper, more profound human need than the need to belong. There is no greater mission for the church of Jesus Christ than to be a safe place of human belonging. There is no greater way to honor the birth of God among us than to gently and lovingly belong to each other. There is no greater praise to render Christ than thanksgiving for the joy of belonging to him.
Sing, with awe and love’s sensation, Hallelujah, God with us!