Epiphany People

by Kaytlyn Cobb

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown to appreciate the Liturgical Calendar. I have loved learning about the seasons, celebrations, and feasts that the Church has observed throughout the centuries; their history, rituals, and practices. The ones we’re likely most familiar with are Advent (the four weeks leading up to Christmas), Christmas Day, Lent (the forty days before Easter), and Easter. Depending on your upbringing you may also be familiar with Pentecost, Ordinary Time, or some of the other feasts and festivals set aside to recognize and celebrate throughout the year. 

What I find so beautiful about this is that no matter the event or time of year the invitation is the same: these days on the calendar all point us to our living and Holy God and invite us to see His character, bring to mind what He has done and point our hearts and lives in worship to Him. Much like our New City family practices Communion together each Sunday or how we just recently celebrated the Advent season together, these days and seasons are an invitation for us to slow down, remember, and create rhythms and practices in our lives that remind us of the Good News.

Advent and Christmastide

Did you know that in the Church calendar, the Christmas season doesn’t end on Christmas Day? We celebrate Advent during the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day, and we use these weeks to consider humanity’s longing and need for a Savior. Traditionally, these four weeks are a season of fasting for the church. Of sober reflection on the brokenness of the world, the sin of our own hearts, and our need to be rescued. Like Isaiah writes, this is when we recognize that we are a “people living in darkness.”

We remember that in the garden, sin separated humanity from God, and in Genesis 3:15 God made a promise to redeem and restore everything one day. We read Old Testament prophecies and stories that reflect on how God was passionately and relentlessly pursuing His people and the promises He was making for this long-awaited Savior. The seed of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3), lion of Judah (Genesis 49:10), son of David (Jeremiah 23:5, I Chronicles 17:12-13; Psalm 89:35-37; Isaiah 9:6-7), and Son of God (Psalm 2:2,7).

We spend these weeks singing songs that remind us of these truths, reading Scripture together and pausing in the quiet to reflect on the magnitude and significance of what God has done for us. We pause on Christmas Eve as a day where we are suspended between two worlds - one of darkness and sin and another of Light and Hope for all the world. And then Christmas Day comes, and we gather with loved ones, we feast and we celebrate a promise fulfilled to us from God through the birth of our Savior, Jesus. 

And then for most of us…that’s it. December 26th comes and we throw away discarded wrapping paper, unplug the tree, and begin taking down decorations as we quickly move our hearts and minds to the next thing: preparing well for the new year that’s right around the corner.

This has been my habit too, but I have felt my heart shifting these last couple of years as I’ve learned more about the Liturgical Calendar and the invitation we have for the Christmas season. Traditionally, Christmas Day begins the Twelve Days of Christmas (also known as Christmastide), a twelve-day celebration where we are invited to joyously gather, feast, and worship our Savior’s coming to the world. The celebration of Christmas doesn't end after Christmas Day, it truly was just the beginning! Without the fasting of Advent, we get to Christmas Day and we are partied out.

But when we miss the pattern of Advent - Christmastide, we miss a significant moment in the Christian year that follows.

Epiphany

After the twelve days of Christmastide, we reach a significant day - Epiphany (January 6). A day dedicated to remembering the long journey and arrival of the Wise Men to the child Jesus. Their journey was long, but they faithfully followed the bright star and were eventually led to a humble home where Jesus lived with Mary and Joseph. When they arrived at the home they rejoiced with “exceedingly great joy." (Matthew 2:1-11) They went into the home, laid their eyes upon Jesus, and fell down and worshiped Him. Then they presented the child with their treasures. This day is a reminder and invitation for us to seek Jesus with everything we have and lay our own gifts at His feet in adoration and worship. 

Ashley Tumlin Wallace is a great resource to me for the Liturgical calendar and incorporating it into regular rhythms of life. Her recent blog post describes Epiphany this way:

“Epiphany is from the Greek word “epiphaneia” which means manifestation. An epiphany, by definition, happens suddenly and it reveals the essential nature or meaning of something. Epiphany can also be described as an intuitive grasp of reality through something simple and striking. So what are these epiphanies that the church celebrates from Christmas Day until the end of Epiphany? The Church believes that Jesus is the revelation of God to us and through that major revelation come more detailed revelations. First and foremost, Jesus’ birth was the revelation of God to Israel, His chosen people. Next, the visit of the Three Wise Men is the revelation of God to the Gentiles, the baptism of Jesus revealed the Trinity, the miracle of the wedding at Cana revealed Jesus’ glory and the presentation of Jesus in the temple revealed Jesus as the Messiah.” 

So this day has great significance to the ministry of Jesus, it’s a day worthy of pausing and reflecting and calling to mind our own epiphanies of the way God chooses to reveal Himself to us.

I have felt like one of the reasons that I have such interest in the Church calendar is because I don’t want to miss out on anything God has in store for me. I want to experience each day and season fully, wringing them dry of every drop of what there is to experience. The Christmas season has felt like this for me. Why would I shut it down on December 26th when there’s still so much more to celebrate? We have this annual invitation to feast, celebrate, reflect, remember, and worship that just so happens to send us into the new year? 

This is how I want to walk into 2024: not neat and perfectly tidy with Christmas decor all packed up and my brand new calendar unwrapped with a fresh pen laid beside it. I want to walk into it feasting and celebrating in worship and adoration that our Savior did indeed come to redeem us and I am invited into relationship with Him! I want my heart ready and my eyes wide open to the epiphanies around me and what God wants to reveal and teach to me in the new year as He has so faithfully done throughout history. 

I want to live as a person of Epiphany - with eyes up and open, faithfully following wherever God leads and seeing His great and mighty work around me as He continues to fulfill His promises and restore humanity to Himself, once and for all. 

Church, we’re all invited to do the same! Yes, this is a single day on the calendar, but I believe it sets our hearts in a beautiful place to begin the new year, reminding us that we are following a God who is faithful in His promises and has done, and still does great and mighty things.

The liturgical calendar isn’t a law to follow, it is an invitation to see every day and every season as a part of God’s unfolding story of redemption and restoration in the world. To celebrate the goodness of the gospel of Jesus as we live, work, and play.

Let’s walk into 2024 as a people of Epiphany, a Church that has witnessed great and mighty things and has Good News to share.

Amen?