Looking for Epiphanies in 2021
Every heightened demarcation of time inevitably brings reflection and anticipation and few are as universal and culturally highlighted as the beginning of a new calendar year. This year is an incredibly poignant example. With good reason, I don’t think I saw nearly the number of “year in review” type shows and specials this year as in the recent past. It was especially odd to be reminded that the show “Tiger King” aired in 2020 as it seemed like everyone was watching that series so so long ago. The pandemic, the loss of George Floyd and the revelation for some of the struggle of racial injustice, the intense political environment, and personal loss experienced by so many has made 2020 a year that is bound to be remembered with very little nostalgia. Thus, the beginning of January this year brought less rosy retrospect and a more hopeful imagining of what lay ahead.
This forward focus brings us to the liturgical Feast of the Epiphany. The Epiphany and the season that follows is a period of unveiling and discovery in which the promise of God’s deliverance is made known to all people to have come in Jesus Christ. In the Eastern traditions, this is called the Theophany. Either way, this part of the church year points our hearts and minds toward the revelation of God that is ever unfolding before us.
While we include the wise men from the East in some of our Christmas observances, it is more accurate to place that occurrence at the Epiphany as this is a moment in which we learn that Jesus came not just for the people of Judea, but for gentiles too. Jesus came for all, not just some, of us. For a religious community that had been waiting for thousands of years for the Messiah, this would have been quite a revelation. This Sunday is the observance of the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ which always falls on the first Sunday after the Epiphany. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus will rise out of the Jordan river as he is baptized by John and the heavens will open and God will proclaim “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” It is with this revelation that the Gospel of Mark begins and in which our hope lies.
Friends, we do not know what 2021 will hold, but like God’s chosen people who were delivered from slavery in Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea, we anticipate and wait to know what God has in store for us. You are also delivered through the waters of baptism and while we acknowledge that 2020 was a hard year in so many ways, we know that our God is a God of deliverance, love, and care. Everything that has come before and whatever is to come is all wrapped up in that truth. May we have many epiphanies in which this is more deeply revealed.
We love you and God loves you.