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For one enchanted evening a very long time ago I was one of the Magi - a Wise Man. My black moustache and beard were part of my older cousin's make up purse and my turban was one of my mother's colourful scarves. I think my all-enveloping outer garment was the dressing gown of some diminutive family member. 

I've forgotten which of the Wise Men I was, but I do remember having some imaginary frankincense in a small glass bottle that my dad had been given by an old army friend who had served in India. That alone of course made it a mysterious and romantic bottle. Frankincense suggests from what we know of the ancient tradition that I was playing Balthazar. Together with two other choirboys playing Caspar and Melchior, we made a grand entrance on to the parochial hall stage. Miss Greenish, our Sunday School teacher played the parish piano, and we manfully led the audience - mainly proud parents - in "We Three Kings from Orient Are." 

Thus, childhood memories link us to long ago. But the question is, why when the editor asked me for a serious article about the meaning of Epiphany and Lent do I begin so playfully? Should I not be serious and suitably theological? Yes, indeed I should, but there is something paradoxical about childhood memory. You realize that it was making sure that you would never forget this because in your adult life you were going to realize that some things - like the Epiphany and Lent were to become a very big deal. The very vividness of the childhood memory ensures that you realize the seriousness all those years later. 

Matthew tells us the story of the Wise Men. In doing so he’s finding a way to show us that the birth of this child in this small stable in this tiny village is a long way from being small. It is an immensely big part of God’s plan that involves the whole world, so nothing less than the whole world needs to be told about it. 

Unknown to the humble family among whom the child has been born, Persian scholars a thousand miles away have decided that an astronomical event in the heavens has a deep astrological meaning. A delegation takes the long journey north and west, arriving to find a child before whom they kneel and present gifts. For them this journey has persuaded them that this birth has meaning far beyond itself. They have what we call an epiphany - a moment of understanding something as being much much more than just what it seems.

So how do we handle all this today? We worship each week, we listen - carefully if we are really worshipping - to a passage of the Gospel. Then we try to plumb the depths of what our Lord Jesus Christ means for us. 

For instance this year, Year A of the lectionary, we are given Sunday by Sunday no less than eight readings in all of which either we see someone having an encounter with Jesus that enriches their understanding of Him (and of course ours) or we will read of individuals becoming aware of the consequences of Jesus life and ministry for them - and, again for ours.  Each of those readings gave them (and gives us) an “Epiphany”, a surprise, an eye opener!  In the last of these readings, we read of Jesus giving a group of friends what was probably the surprise of their lives in that they would never forget it. We call that shattering surprise - or epiphany - the transfiguration of Jesus. 

So that’s the wonderful climax of the season of Epiphany. You might also say that’s the wonderful stuff that we experience before the tough stuff called Lent. 

When you come to think of it, what you and I are doing every time we worship is that we are sharing an aspect of Jesus' life and ministry. I fact I have just this moment thought of a new way of grasping all this. You know the famous pilgrimage route in Spain called El Camino. Anyone who has ever taken that pilgrimage will tell you that what makes it fascinating is the people you meet walking it with you. Well, I have suddenly realized that if I attentively read the Gospel passages in Epiphany and Lent that the lectionary gives me, the simply wonderful fact is that I am walking a kind of Camino (or Pilgrim Way) in the company of Jesus! I watch as he deals with individuals, as he deals with groups and crowds, as he speaks of things of the spirit, as he heals, as he wrestles with death itself in the case off his friend Lazarus. In these Sunday gospel passages I am receiving nothing less than a master class in the Christian way. Near the end I must decide whether I have it in me to share the terrible part of my companion's journey, the part that ends in pain and death on Calvary. If I do stay with Him for that part of the journey, I am given the wonder and the Joy of Easter! 

All of this is ahead of you and me as you read this. So, make the decision to set out on El Camino with our Lord. You’ll find Him very good company.           

IMAGE

A pilgrim doing the pilgrimage way known as the Xacobeo way to Santiago in the north of Spain.

Photo ID: 526058695

Photo Credit: nmillondeelefantes