Epiphany (epiphaneia, “to show, to appear”) is the celebration of Christ’s appearing, first to the magi or the Baptist or the guests at the wedding in Cana, and then to us. Like the disciples we wonder, “What kind of man is this?” without rushing to an answer. We linger. We wonder. We are curious again. We put off the curse of knowledge and we allow ourselves to be surprised, even shocked at who Jesus is. But how do we inspire that among those who followed him for most of their lives? That’s the predicament many of our people are in so this year we’ll come at it differently.

Most of the time we celebrate the stories of things that Jesus said and did. We’re looking for manifestations of that in our lives today. We are, in a sense, remembering, reflecting, observing all that happened in his first appearing. What is sometimes lost is that this word, epiphany, is used of another appearing. Paul speaks of “the splendor (epiphaneia) of his coming,” (2 Thess. 2:8), or of “his glorious appearing (epiphaneia)” (Titus 2:13). Five times Paul uses this word to describe, not something that has happened, but something that is happening, something still to come. Five times! So epiphany is not just a remembrance, but an anticipation of another appearing.

This year we’ll look at the mystery of who Jesus is through the lens of Revelation, “the Revelation of Jesus Christ,” (1:1). We’ll read it, not as a book of predictions, but as a letter to the Church, to our Church, calling us back to confidence in Jesus Christ. Read like this, the main characters are no longer the four horsemen and the antichrist, but the Lamb and his witnesses whether dead or alive. The threat is not the “great tribulation,” but the temptation toward complicity with the empire. The message, while convoluted at times, is always the same: The present chaos is predictable, but God is faithful, establishing His kingdom and dismantling the powers, and in the end, God will make everything new, not by force or all at once, but slowly, quietly, inevitably. Even now, he is coming. He is overcoming the world. Each one of us is part of that process. John’s message is that, “Because Christ already reigns as Lord, we are engaged in the process of delivering over to Christ by our bodily obedience the piece of the world which we ourselves are,” (Lyons, Holiness & Ecclesiology, p.240).