Theophany (Ephesians 3)

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     I have always preferred the Orthodox name for this feast, ‘Theophany’, to the western name ‘Epiphany’. ‘Theophany’ means “God-showing” and is more emphatic, and less general, than ‘Epiphany’, which means merely “manifestation.” Anciently, ‘epiphany’ referred to an appearance of a king before his people, in the manner of a British sovereign’s appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. In ancient times, kings had a godlike status, and even now kings have an aura of divinity, so perhaps we can sense the impact of this word.

        But nowadays the word has lost some of that impact; we like to say, when we come up with a clever idea or insight, that we’ve had an ‘epiphany’. Not on the same level as the ancient meaning!  And, no matter how clever our insight is, we’re not likely to say that we’ve had a ‘theophany’!

     The Letter to the Ephesians is about what God in Christ has shown to Paul the Apostle, and, through him, to us. The Letter itself is a theophany, and expresses Paul’s understanding of his experience of God’s revelation to him. We get a sense of the impact of this revelation in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, in which he, referring to himself, writes, “ I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a person…who…was caught up to the third heaven…Such a person…was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” We may call this experience ‘theophany’, and in the Letter to the Ephesians Paul expands a little on his experience, and does in fact repeat something of God’s revelation to him.

     Today’s reading begins, “This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner.” Our lectionary has dropped us into the middle of a discussion here. Paul doesn’t announce the reason right away. Paul leads us back to an earlier part of the Letter, when he writes that “the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ.”

     And that understanding is this, as Paul writes in the first chapter: “a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” That plan includes the Gentiles, “strangers to the covenants” as Paul calls them, as well as the “commonwealth of Israel.” God in Christ is creating “one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.” These are glimpses of the revelation, the theophany, the God-showing, that Paul experienced. They are not the whole story, since he tells us that he heard things that “no mortal is permitted to repeat.” But he is permitted to repeat the Gospel as he understands it, and so he writes, “the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise of Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

     Paul goes on to say, “Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace.” Paul experiences his service as a gift, as the revelation he experienced is a gift. And it’s a gift that he wants everyone else to have, as he says, to “see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God”. Paul has seen more of this plan than anyone else, and he is revealing that part of it that God allows.

     If I’m reading this section of the Letter correctly, it seems to me that there is a suggestion that Paul has been shown even more than what the angels in heaven have seen, and that what he has seen he has passed on to the church. Paul writes, “Through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” What can this mean? Do we, the church, have something to make known to the angels in heaven, something that they can’t know in any other way? It is an astonishing notion, that we have something to show even to the rulers and authorities in heaven, our own theophany, so to speak. And our own theophany is “the wisdom of God in its rich variety,” God as he manifests himself in the world. The “rich variety” is the infinite number of ways that the Incarnation works in us and through us, to produce all the unique individual ways we come to know and love and serve God and one another, in order to become the people that God means us to be. The vocation of the church is not simply to receive a revelation, but to be a revelation, not just to each other and the rest of the human race, but to the heavenly world as well. The risen, ascended, incarnate Lord in heaven is completed, as it were, by us his incarnate Body in the world, by all Christians past, present, and future, who make known to the heavenly places God’s “rich variety.” So the theophany, the epiphany, the manifestation of God is not only something which we see, hear, perceive, but is also something which we show to God; we are, as it were, transmitting back to God his gifts of grace, which have been transformed and transfigured in us “in accordance” as Paul says, “with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have access to God.” So, like the magi bringing their individual gifts to Jesus, we bring our gifts to God and show Him in our theophany how we have revealed his gifts to the world. “Lead us,” we pray, in the words of today’s collect, “to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face.” In our faces will be the glory that God has enabled us to reveal, and that we have shown to each other and to the world.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.