On the Christian Calendar and Epiphany

Epiphany n.

1. A Christian feast celebrating the manifestation of the divine nature of Jesus to the Gentiles, traditionally observed on January 6. ...
2. A sudden insight or intuitive understanding, from epi-, nearby or forth, + phan-, to show (thefreedictionary.com)

I’ll share some realizations that have shown themselves near my heart each winter for the past dozen years or so. A few are epiphanies for me during this current winter. Most are slow realizations that I’ve grown to stand under and live into.

I understand and express Spirit-related experiences with Christian images and terms. My growth into what understanding I’ve found has always been underlaid with a Quaker framework. Your understanding may come in different formats. Whatever our levels of comfort with each other’s terms, I hope and trust that we might have a loving conversation about the underlying Truth when next we engage.

I grew up exchanging presents on Christmas Day among a relatively rich extended family. Well before I grew into a Christian faith, I came to understand that giving presents to other people when it was Jesus’s birthday wasn’t all I wanted to do. Giving a present or two to Jesus seemed healthier. I knew that he’d taught, “as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me....” (NRSVUE) So service to our neighbors became a holiday practice for me.

Advent is the four weeks before Christmas starts, traditionally a time of reflection and quiet. Engaging with that process is natural. It aligns with the shortening of daylight hours in our hemisphere. It is also counter to the prevailing stream of North American economies and societies. While the wider society is fairly frantic, fitting in shopping around office parties and trying to finish it all before Christmas Day, I have found more spiritual sustenance in calming prayer and listening to Gregorian chant. This can help me understand that I’m hoping for Light and looking for something more in life.Spread through the year there are other traditional and natural customs that Christians have developed and followed over centuries. They can lead to spiritual understanding. Each season has fitting Bible stories, psalms, and prophecies for its time. I don’t observe all of them, or even any of the days devoted to those celebrated as saints. Starting with Advent, I’ve grown to appreciate several seasons.

Over the past couple of decades I’ve found an inclination to celebrate the seasonal return of Light and the birth of one who embodied it. This urge begins a few days after my calendar marks the Winter solstice, when I notice the sun staying up for a few more minutes and some related changes in my mood. I started observing the twelve Christmas days, starting at sundown on 12/24 and continuing until the evening of 1/5. This is somewhat different from the mood and schedule of many neighbors, who can be tired from the celebrations they engaged in before Christmas. Sometimes it fits with other friends. More than once, our local Meeting has delayed planning for a party long enough that we held it during this time.

I’ve also started engaging with Bible readings that are drawn from the Christian calendar. Many churches use these readings during their worship each week. For about five years I’ve been blessed to be part of a contemplative Bible group with Episcopalians and Quakers. We read, consider, and reflect with each other on a weekly selection from a gospel. The local Episcopal church uses it as part of its worship that week. This has given me a sense of how the traditional calendar moves through each year.

Epiphany is celebrating the realization of the identity between a Jewish infant with a remarkable birth and the Christ, Light, or Word. This season has a teaching message that is apt for many liberal Quakers. Many of us have personal experiences of an in- reaching or in-dwelling aspect of God. This is consonant with the long experience of Friends. The person of God who reaches to individuals in whatever state we open ourselves to Him is known as Christ.

Jesus is remarkable. Not just for one family and some shepherds who happened by, but for Jewish seers who hung out in the Temple in Jerusalem, and for visiting astrologers who followed the Light to find this baby.

Liberal Friends stand apart from mainstream and evangelical Christianity. Many of us are slow to take on theologies we’ve found destructive to our emotional health and identity. Calling ourselves Christian is often a bridge too far to cross.

Empires have oppressed Christian renewal and practice, except when they manage to moderate the message to be about individual morality and repentance, rather than including societal and economic reform. Christ’s message and the practice of a life attuned to it threatens Empire, megalo-Geeks, oligarchies, entertainment moguls, and a commerce built around over consumption.

We can learn from and happily follow Jesus’s teaching. We experience a Light or a Word from beyond ourselves that is a guide to our lives. The lesson of Epiphany is that those two are identical; Jesus is Light.

That’s a lesson I want to study ‒ a Truth I can stand under to try it on for comfort and size.