Summary: "Epiphany." We celebrate a holiday with that name on January 6; and since this is the Second Sunday after Epiphany, we are getting used to the word, or if it is familiar, we are refreshing our understanding of it. We can't say that "Epiphany" is much used and heard outside of church, although now and then an excited writer or actor will reveal that he or she experienced an "epiphany." If we spend a moment discussing it, we are not wasting time, as if with an idle scholarly diversion. No, it helps us to crack open today's crowded and rich text from the Gospel of John and, along with that, to ponder the decisive turn in Christian history and Christian faith signaled by "Epiphany." We might simply have passed the word by, noting it the way we see a notice on a church bulletin board outside a sanctuary. But now we are, as it were, invited in to ponder it and let what the word means stand a chance of changing our lives. As trackers of words usually do, we open a dictionary or google the word. We read what is called the "simple definition" for Epiphany. It tells us that "epiphany is a Christian festival . . . in honor of the coming of the three kings to the infant Jesus Christ." And then there is another definition. An epiphany is also "a moment in which we suddenly see or understand something in a new or very clear way." Our text today will help us do just this. Reading on, refreshed by a definition and before we hurry away from the dictionaries, we learn, or re-learn, that behind the word "epiphany" is a Greek word which tells us that it refers to an "appearance" or a "manifestation." Even deeper behind that is the Greek word for "show." The Gospel chosen for this day helps us "suddenly . . . to understand" the coming and meaning of Jesus in a very clear way. It is a time when we team up with the "three kings" in the Gospel story to have Jesus "shown" to us and the nations.
