Feast of the Epiphany

I had learned in church school that the Epiphany was the festival of the church commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi. I am not sure I understood what ‘manifestation’ was about; I just remember that we were threatened in confirmation class that if we couldn’t spell ‘epiphany’ or ‘Episcopalian’ that we couldn’t be confirmed. That was enough to strike terror into my sixth-grade heart because I really, really wanted to be confirmed. I figured, I think, that I would get around to the meaning of Epiphany later on in life.

Then I learned that ‘epiphany’ had another, deeper meaning. It could be ‘a sudden, intuitive perception of, or insight into, the reality of the essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.’ By extension, people can have access to the divine through intuition, insight and perhaps even their dreams.

Think of Proust’s seeing his past in the form of the madeline cookie he dipped into his tea, or the clarity (the answer to that miggly problem you couldn’t figure out) that bursts into your mind when you’re walking or exercising. A simple experience can open up the world to you.

For those of us who have tested as ‘intuitives’ on the Meyers Briggs’ test, we understand well the leaps of logic for which we constantly must apologise or fill in the gaps for those who don’t share the same way of responding to the world. It may be easier to access the divine because of the way our brain is wired. But even the non-intuitive, sensory thinker can access the divine and has moments of intuition that defy reason.

Clearly that’s what this passage from Matthew is all about. Even Herod had an intuition about Jesus—so strong that he called together Three Wise Men to go and search for him—God only knows why. Apparently, the Three Wise Men did as well. Intuitively—or, as scripture says, ‘having been warned in a dream’—they ‘did not return to Herod, but left for their own country by another road.’ Common sense would have told them to be obedient to the King. Apparently, common sense has little to do with the manifestations of God.

Have you ever had the driving sense to do something, contact someone or act not fully knowing why but knowing you have to, because somehow God is involved in that drive? Sometimes you do and find out that your reaching out to a person at a particular moment was the life-saving gesture that that person needed. Sometimes God’s reason, manifested as our intuition or in our dreams, supercedes our reason. And it’s OK.

Intuition. Insight. Dreams. They’re all stuff of God. All manifestations of the divine spark we were each given at the beginning of our own creation. It’s not ancient history at all because it happens over and over again in the days and times of our own lives.

When we allow ourselves to trust that divine spark within each of us, and follow where it leads, we may find ourselves smack in the presence of God. Then we, like the three Magi, may find ourselves overwhelmed with inexplicable joy. Humbled beyond understanding in the presence of the simple, the homely or the commonplace. And generous beyond measure in the midst of the essential meaning of it all.

Which may well be the first steps to the manifestation of true wisdom, leading to our own epiphanies.