Worldly Epiphanies

Then Jesus began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’.

The Season of Epiphany, which will come to a close next Sunday with the celebration of Candlemas, is a bit of a poor relation of the church year – overshadowed, even outclassed perhaps – by Christmas before it and Lent after it.  An ‘epiphany’, not a word much used in every day conversation, is, technically a manifestation of something divine.  Or to put it more plainly, about seeing something or someone in a way we hadn’t before – a ‘aha’ moment.  Epiphany begins with the visit of the wise men to the infant Christ:  a manifestation of Christ as the Redeemer not only of his own people, but of the whole world.  The Feast of the Epiphany nicely bookends with Candlemas, where again the infant Jesus is revealed, this time not in a domestic setting but in the Temple in Jerusalem as ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles: and … the glory of thy people Israel’ as we sing at every Evensong.  Epiphany season continues with the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist which inaugurates Jesus’ ministry. 

Last Sunday we heard about the miracle at the wedding in Cana, which is only in John’s gospel.  Like today, it is an episode that comes early in Jesus’ ministry.  He hasn’t got much beyond gathering a group of disciples around him.  In John’s gospel the turning water into wine is the first miracle or sign of Jesus’ ministry.  The water into wine story is a curious one in many ways:  deeply domestic; there is abundance brought out of scarcity, yes, but a rather modest impact compared to healing the sick.  It is a popular reading for weddings and I once made the mistake in a wedding homily of saying that running out of wine at wedding wasn’t, you know, the end of the world or a life altering event, like restoring sight to the blind, in the way many of Jesus’ other miracles are.  I’ve never seen such horrified faces in a church before as no doubt people were thinking of the awkward cousin or tedious uncle they were going to be next to at the dinner for hours:  a fate only to be faced by being fortified by wine.

Today’s Epiphany takes us to Luke’s gospel and is another episode early in Jesus’ public ministry.  In Luke’s narrative, Jesus has been baptized; he has been tempted in the wilderness; he has begun to preach in synagogues in the region and is meeting with some success – people are starting to take notice.   But he is not recorded as performing any miracles yet, nor has he yet begun to call his disciples – those will follow quickly after our passage for today.  Today, Jesus returns to his hometown church and meets people who have known him all his life.  Will there be an Epiphany or not?  Will he be seen in new ways by those who think they know who he is?

It goes conventionally enough.  Then, as now, there is a sermon.  Jesus reads the lesson.  He is given the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah.  He unrolls it and finds his text:   ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’  Then he rolls up the scroll, gives it back and sits down to teach.  Everything is going exactly like folks would expect at a service.  No ‘aha’ moments here.    

And just as the congregation are settled in for the usual line by line exposition of the text, settling down perhaps for the usual platitudes that they are used to coming from the pulpit, Jesus gives them much more than they bargained for.  He says, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’  Jesus doesn’t interpret Scripture; he fulfils it.  Or, to put it another way, his fulfilment of the prophecy is his interpretation of it.  Jesus is God spelled out in language that we can see and understand – an epiphany.

So in this sermon in Nazareth, Jesus sets the agenda for his entire ministry, binds action to his words, walks his own talk, does what he says.  He can say both with integrity, ‘Do as I do,’ but also ‘Do as I say.’

Reading a few verses beyond our passage for today, at first Jesus is a hit.  The hometown boy has done good.  ‘All spoke well of him’, Luke says just after the end of our passage for today.  But then, it starts, the muttering, the ‘tut tutting’:  ‘is this not Joseph’s son?’  This is an epiphany that has not been seen; an epiphany that has not been received.  Jesus gives his hometown church folk a pretty frank assessment of their complacency, so much so that he is driven out of town and they try to throw him off a cliff edge – not a usual reaction to a sermon – and one generally not encouraged in the Church of England.

Perhaps not all ‘epiphanies’ are comfortable or comforting.  Then as now, when was the last time the poor heard good news?  Was there release to the captives?  How come we’re building more and bigger prisons?  Liberty to the oppressed – how is that going?  And how come we have a health care crisis if there is so much healing going on?  To see the ‘epiphany’ at Jesus’ hometown,  we need to see Jesus’ words as actions.  It isn’t just Jesus talking, it is a statement about ourselves:   ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because he has anointed us to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.’  But what about the rest?  Can we say, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled.’?

But that’s the thing:  the redeeming, liberating presence of Christ can only be communicated by the liberating presence of those who have been liberated and redeemed by him.  It’s our call now to be the redemptive presence of Christ in the world.  And this is a worldly task, done in the world by worldly people:  embodied, incarnate, members of one another, working with heart and mind and strength to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.  When we see ourselves as Christ’s co-workers, it is, well, an epiphany.