Explore Faith : An Epiphany by The Rev. George S. Yandell

An Epiphany

An epiphany, a manifesting, shows something for what it is. Its true, deep meaning is displayed. An epiphany can be a 'thought crystallization', to borrow the phrase from Robert Persig in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. To us people who follow Jesus, the word Epiphany is a formal term as well as a fixed point in time. The Feast of the Epiphany is January 6 each and every year. It recalls the manifesting of Jesus to the Gentile world through the presence of the Persian astrologers at the house where Jesus was born in Bethlehem [Matthew 2:1-12]. In the early years of the Church (and in the Eastern Church down to the present day) the Epiphany was celebrated to recall the Lord's Baptism. In the Episcopal Church, the first Sunday after the Epiphany is when we observe the baptism of Jesus and the inception of his public ministry. [Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1977, Second Edition, eds. Cross and Livingstone] It makes sense to recall both the visit of the Magi and the Baptism of Jesus by John as revealing Jesus for who and what he is.

Another type of 'epiphany' is a ship's manifest--the detailed list of contents of the cargo and crew a ship carries. Some years ago I received a gift of a marvelous book, A Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. It tells the tale of Tommy Thompson, engineer and deep sea salvor. Thompson had to invent whole new technologies to retrieve the contents of a paddle-wheeled steamer that sank in the 1800's with millions of dollars of gold on board. He knew about the wreck because of the manifest, filed at the port of departure. But he had to search thousands of miles of deep-ocean bottom in order to find the wreck's location.

Finding and keeping alive faith in Jesus, present and resurrected now in our time and space, can be like a pursuit of elusive treasure. It's like searching the depths, since we don't see Jesus as clearly as did his family and first disciples. Or so we think. In the Letter to the Hebrews, we are delivered of this definition of faith: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." [11:1] The revealing of God to you and me is, more often than not, a life-long discovering of God in subtle ways, often in unexplored regions of our soul. We are caught in the tension of the man Jesus, born into our world, baptized with real water in the Jordan River, and the Christ who rules over history, resurrected at God's right hand in eternity. We have the evidence and we have hope, but sometimes lack conviction. It may be that the simplest of methods yields the treasure we seek.

So I offer this suggestion: take a few moments to sit still at the beginning, in the midst, or at the end of your work days. Find places that offer some respite from all that engages you, and say a prayer like this one, asking God to be present to you: