The epiphany of there being no (capital “E”) Epiphany?

The Nativity at Night (c. 1490) by Geertgen tot Sint Jans

In Western traditions of Christianity, the season of epiphany, which has just begun, centres upon a short legendary tale told only by Matthew (2:1-12) concerning a group of Zoroastrian astrologer-priests out of the east who, guided by a star, take a long journey west to visit and make obeisance — that is to say, to pay deferential respect — to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. Matthew tells us that whilst passing through Jerusalem they inform King Herod that they are looking for the newborn King of the Judaeans, and Herod, in reply, asks them to return to him once they have found the child so he, too, may go and make his own obeisance. Leaving Jerusalem they eventually find their way to Bethlehem and, having paid their respects and given gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh to the child, they depart for their own country by another path having been warned in a dream not to return to King Herod.

As many of you will know, the mainstream Western Christian tradition has long interpreted this story as being the archetypal moment when Jesus — who, in the words of the Nicene Creed (325CE), most Christians believe to be, in some fashion, very God of very God — first appeared, or was made manifest, to the Gentiles, i.e. to those who were not Jewish as was Jesus and his family. The word “epiphany,” remember, is simply the Koine Greek word meaning manifestation or appearance.

Now, there are many things I might say about this story, but one thing that has long struck me as particularly interesting concerns something that is missing from the story, glaringly so when you think about it. It is the absence of any further information about what the Zoroastrian astrologer-priests, the Magi, make of their meeting with Jesus. In the story, after giving their gifts, they simply up and leave, and no more is ever heard about them.

I suppose that most Christians through the centuries have simply assumed that meeting Jesus caused them to experience an epiphany which caused them to cease being Zoroastrian astrologer-priests and become Christians (or at least proto-Christians) in some fashion. But really, there is no reason to assume this was the case and, in fact, we cannot be sure they experienced any epiphany at all, let alone the one the Christian tradition thinks they experienced.

Although I realise this story is a mythopoetic one and not history, assuming they did experience some kind of epiphany, it’s entirely conceivable to me that their epiphany could have been one born out of disappointment when, on arriving in Bethlehem, they did not find either the King of the Judeans or the Christ Child of later Christian legend, for whom it is suggested they were seeking, but simply a lovely, newborn child of the kind that can be found everywhere and always across all generations and geography. 

 

If that were the case, you might reasonably ask why on earth they left their valuable gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh behind? Surely, they would have taken them with them? But what if this disappointment turned out to be the catalyst for an epiphany of the everyday mystery and miracle of life itself? Something of what this kind of epiphany can be like was famously expressed by the eighth-century Chinese Zen poet, Layman P’ang (740-808):

          My daily affairs are quite ordinary;
          but I’m in total harmony with them.
          I don’t hold onto anything, don’t reject anything;
          Nowhere an obstacle or conflict.
          Who cares about wealth and honour?
          Even the poorest thing shines.
          My miraculous power and spiritual activity:
          Drawing water and carrying wood.

 

It’s important to see that such an epiphany would not have required the Magi to convert from one religion to another. However, it could have brought about a truly radical change of perspective that deepened their own understanding of their inherited Zoroastrian faith and made them different, and perhaps, more faithful and more rounded astrologer-priests than before. It is also possible to imagine another scenario in which this kind of epiphany entirely ended for them their certainty in their old faith and helped them to enter upon a clearly new type of spiritual path. Perhaps that new path was a type of proto-Christianity — there’s no need to deny that possibility — but it’s just as easy to imagine that their new spiritual path was something which, in Japan, my own Unitarian tradition calls jijū shūkyō, namely, a creative, enquiring, free and liberative religion, that is radically open to seeing the mystery and miracle of life displayed in countless different ways everywhere, at all times, and in all cultures and religious traditions; that knows no specific religion either monopolises religious truth nor is it the ultimate embodiment of it. 

 

At least from my perspective, this latter kind of epiphany would have been a very good reason for the Magi to have left behind their wonderful gifts for the use of this, otherwise quite ordinary, poor family but which, for them at least, was now a family the heart of which was shining with everyday miraculous power and spiritual activity. I’ve rarely seen this idea more beautifully symbolised than by Geertgen tot Sint Jans in his wonderful painting from about 1490 called “The Nativity at Night” (see picture at the top of this post) in which the newborn Jesus is shining at the centre of the scene as a manifestation of the everyday mystery and miracle found in the life of every newborn child. As the twentieth-century Unitarian minister and hymn-writer John Andrew Storey (1935-1997) once wrote in his carol “The Universal Incarnation”:

          Around the crib all peoples throng
          In honour of the Christ-child’s birth,
          And raise again the ancient song:
          ‘Goodwill to all, and peace on earth.’

          But not alone on Christmas morn
          Was God made one with humankind:
          Each time a girl or boy is born,
          Incarnate deity we find.

          This Christmastide let us rejoice
          And celebrate our human worth,
          Proclaiming with united voice
          The miracle of every birth.

          Round every crib all people throng
          To honour God in each new birth,
          And raise again the ancient song:
          ‘Goodwill to all, and peace on earth.’

 

But, be that as it may, I’m absolutely sure that only a little more thinking would suggest to us other kinds of epiphany that the Magi might have experienced. However, today, I don’t need to run through all the possibilities because a key point I wish to make today about Matthew’s story itself — and make really quite strongly — is that the Magi’s actual epiphany, if epiphany there was, is something that will, forever, remain unknown and unknowable and, to borrow a phrase from the twentieth-century American philosopher, Bruce W. Wilshire (1932–2013) we need to be clear that we cannot spin the Magi’s actual epiphany out of our heads as if we were gods. To cite Wilshire again, all we can ever do as pilgrims of faith ourselves — latter-day Magi, if you will — is to “listen, resonate to affinities, send out questions, listen for answers, send out more questions. We can only continuously echo-locate and re-locate ourselves” (The Primal Roots of American Philosophy: Pragmatism, Phenomenology, and Native American Thought, Penn State Press, 2000, p. 171).

Because of this, over the years, the season of Epiphany has primarily become for me, not a time to remember a story about some past event occurring to people other than you and me (although it is also that), but instead a time to recall the need always-already to be entering into the mystery and miracle of daily life itself by engaging in the kind of listening that helps me better to resonate to affinities by encouraging me always to be sending out new questions, listening for new answers, sending out more new questions in the endless, but joyfully creative act of echo-locating and re-locating myself in the rich landscape of existence. It seems to me that this is precisely what a spirituality course like this is all about.

 

However, if you agree with me that at the heart of this story there exists an ancient call to keep ourselves always-already open to the mystery and miracle of daily life (which is an ongoing creative process) then it is vital to realise that, for any epiphany to be true to this call, then no individual epiphany can ever be understood as being the final word on any matter. Any epiphanal word that helps us locate and re-locate ourselves in the world in this or that moment should, of course, be gracefully and joyfully accepted because for a time it will gift us with comforting knowledge of where we currently are. But, but, but, in a creative and ever-moving world in which we are pilgrims of faith, there will always come the need for the next epiphanal, locating word, and the next, and the next as we continue to travel on through an ever-changing landscape of life and experience, just as once-upon-a-time did the Magi. I would hope this also helps us to see there has never been one single, great and final, capital “E” Epiphany in our world, but only a participation in a continuous flow of epiphany, sometimes obvious, sometimes less obvious, sometimes smooth, sometimes turbulent.

 

Consequently — or rather, at least as far as I understand the consequence of this — all true individual epiphanies about the world and our place in it, must simultaneously bring with them an explicit recognition that minute by minute, day by day, year by year, millennium by millennium, new epiphanies of all kinds will always be being experienced by humankind that, at least in principle, have the power radically to change our individual and collective ideas about how we should best and most honestly be living our own lives in the here and now. And, as far as those of us involved in particular forms of religious community are concerned, to reiterate a point I’ve already made, I think this requires us to be absolutely clear to all who seek us out, that no religion — nor, indeed, any philosophy — can ever monopolise religious truth nor be the ultimate embodiment of it.
 

Surely this insight has rarely been better and more directly expressed within the nineteenth-century, British, liberal Protestant Christian tradition than by the Congregationalist lay-person, George Rawson’s (1807-1889) in his once well-known hymn lyric, the opening two verses of which conclude my thoughts for you today:

We limit not the truth of God
  To our poor reach of mind,
By notions of our day and sect,
  Crude, partial and confined.
Now let a new and better hope
  Within our hearts be stirred:
The Lord hath yet more light and truth
  To break forth from His Word.

Who dares to bind by his dull sense
  The oracles of heaven,
For all the nations, tongues and climes
  And all the ages given!
The universe how much unknown!
  That ocean unexplored!
The Lord hath yet more light and truth
  To break forth from His Word.