January 6, 2013          David Timbs (Melbourne)       David's previous articles

The text for the Epiphany comes from Matthew, the most explicitly ‘Jewish’ of the four Gospels. The Evangelist situates his story within an historical and biblical context that Jewish-Christians would immediately recognise and understand. The time-frame is probably within the final year or two of Herod the Great’s life. Herod was a client ‘King’ of the Romans and appointed as an enforcer of control and stability in Judea. The Jews never referred to Herod as ‘King.’ They actually recoiled from him and despised him as just another murderous tyrant.

Into the post-birth story of Jesus, Matthew introduces the ‘men from the East’ who came to Jerusalem. He does not tell us their number but he gives them a name, Magi. These were known in antiquity as astrologers who constantly searched the stars for signs and manifestations of divine interventions in history. Unfortunately for them, they immediately put themselves at risk by asking bizarre questions in Jerusalem about where the ‘King of the Jews’ might be found in order to worship him. The ‘King of the Jews’ was the immediate object of the Magi’s search but their inquiries clearly triggered off ideas of the expected Messiah for the Jewish priests and Temple scribes. Either way, this was double trouble for the paranoid Herod. He shrewdly uses the ’men from the East’ to lead him to the baby interloper in Bethlehem in order to destroy the perceived threat to his rule.

What Matthew invites his community to do with this story is to explore what the Magi’s quest was focused on. It was illumination, an epiphany of divine intervention. They were searchers for wisdom and so it is not surprising that their presence supports the key Wisdom (Sophia in Greek) theme of the first Gospel. They were symbols of an outside world desperately in need of enlightenment and guidance. This made a great deal of sense to Matthew’s disciples as the Hebrew Scriptures and the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers were full of references to the quest for divine Wisdom.

Both of these groups struggled with the idea of how the supreme spiritual Being, above and beyond the limits of physicality could possibly have any direct contact with created matter. It was inconceivable that God who is removed from any want or need should appear to be in need of anything outside of the divine existence. The Jewish scholars, for their part, solved the problem at least to their satisfaction. They taught that the unchangeable God who was/is dependent on nothing freely chose in an act of love to be related to all things through the creative power of Wisdom. Divine Wisdom, however, remained for them a divine quality, not the person of the One God.

John’s lofty poetic expression, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us is given a more banal expression in the language of a baby born in poverty in an animal shelter. Human wisdom and presumption are overthrown in the disclosure of God’s Wisdom. It does not consist in power but powerlessness, not in the extraordinary and incomprehensible but in the ordinary and the understandable. In Matthew’s narrative, God’s Wisdom is embodied and personalised in the dependent infant Jesus and not in the corridors of power or the halls of human learning. Thirty five or so years earlier, Paul of Tarsus began the serious Christian exploration of the strange anti- logic of God. He wrote,

“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jew and foolishness to non-Jews, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human beings, and the weakness of God is stronger than mortals.” (1 Cor 1: 23-25)

The ongoing journey into the unfolding mystery of Jesus’ true identity became something of a rollercoaster for the Christian Community, especially during the first five centuries. It was only after intense debate, dissentions, schisms and many great Church Councils that insight and clarity developed in the Christian understanding of who Jesus actually was in his life and what he continued to mean in history. In the early creeds, especially the Nicene, Jesus the Word (Logos) and Wisdom (Sophia) of God is no longer affirmed simply as a lesser deity, an intermediary between God and creation. Jesus is disclosed as God become personally a human being.

The richness of that mystery is ageless and beyond limit. The surprises have never ceased for the People of God. In 1962 perhaps the most powerful and tangible manifestation of the enduring presence of Immanuel-God-with-us Epiphany was witnessed with the beginning of the Second Vatican Council. John XXIII opened the windows of a stuffy ecclesiastical atmosphere. His prophetic gesture occasioned an almost unprecedented revelation of the spirit of Christ in modern times.

The Epiphany memorialises the great truth that God, through Jesus, has joined the human family and the community of nations. The entirety of the human condition is now the domain of an Incarnate God and it is central to the baptismal call of the People of God to affirm and live that reality. This was a statement of faith, a solemn pledge and promise of the Council to humanity,

“The joys and the hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or afflicted in any way, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community comprised of human beings. United with Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of the Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for all. That is why this community realises that it is truly linked with humanity and its history by the deepest bonds.” Gaudium et Spes #1.

David Timbs writes from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.