What is Epiphany?

 2025-06
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle

 Transcribed by Jess Isenberg
Sunday just before Epiphany, January  05, 2025
Jeremiah 31:7-14 ; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a ; Matthew 2:1-12 ; Psalm 84 or 84:1-8

In this process of getting to know each other, I want you to know that I’m having an interactive service today. And, when I say interactive that means that you need to act with me. I promise not to do this every week, but today is epiphany, it’s a wonderful day. It’s a day that a lot of us don’t have a clue what it means.

But, every year, on January 6^th, the 13^th day after Christmas, we celebrate the coming of the Wise Men, and the manifestation of Christ. We, as I said last week, decided to move it up a day, because who’s going to come tomorrow to celebrate this great feast when we could just do it today.

So, here we have it. This is going to take some doing to explain all of what Epiphany is about. Let me just start by saying that I have a collection of 142 nativity sets, which is absurd, I live in 800 square feet! My smallest set is the size of a walnut, and my largest takes up the front of the piano approximately. But I love especially the wise men and the camels. The first church I was the rector of the children 20 years before I got there had named all the wise men and all the camels. They would move them, week after week onto different windowsills, and saying ‘here goes Bozo’! Bozo was one of the camels.

I brought my own wise men today; these are from Puerto Rico. In much of the world, Epiphany is really celebrated! It’s really important. The three wise men are a big deal, they’re not the ‘we don’t need to bring them forward, we have Mary and Joseph, the important ones’. These are made in Puerto Rico, they’re made of paper mâché, I know you can’t see them in the back, but they brought the best gifts of all. They brought a toy truck, a hobby horse and a doll.

Now, for our first act of interactive action, I need (counting) six people to come up, because the wise men and camels are not supposed to be. Will you help me move the wise men and camels?

Can we have a little We Three Kings to with this? [Alan Lynch plays We Three Kings on the organ]

So, Epiphany. What does ‘epiphany’ mean? [Gestures to several people with their hands raised] Enlightenment is a really good word. A revelation, a very good word. Surprise! There is a sense of ‘ooh, wow’! I love the old advertisements for V-8 juice, “I could have had a V-8”! That’s kind of the aha! There it is! Eureka, I’ve found it! Yes, all those words are part of Epiphany. So, it’s a day of celebration. What it actually means, found in the Bible in 1^st Timothy, is the manifestation of God.

At Christmastime, we have the incarnation of God, that Jesus takes on our flesh, and comes and dwells among us. But Jesus

was born in a stable in a little village in Bethlehem, and not a whole lot of people were going to find out about it, until the wise men showed up. It’s a wonderful story that we heard in our gospel this morning. The Wise Men, or Magi, or Kings, they’re from far away, and they are not Jews. They’re from Arabia, or Saba, or some other place. They see in the stars in the heavens that something is happening somewhere, and they follow that star. I wouldn’t know where to go, I would get lost in a moment, but they keep following the star and end up in Jerusalem, thinking a King is going to be in Jerusalem!

But there’s only King Herod.

And he never comes across as a good guy in the scriptures.

King Herod says ‘ooh’, and he makes nice. ‘Oh, isn’t that wonderful, a new king is being born!’ and ‘wow, I would love to go and worship and bring gifts too, can you please come back and tell me about this wonderful event that’s happening somewhere!’

And the wise men think ‘sure’ and they go. And they worship Jesus, a baby, surrounded by animals, in a cave maybe, in a manger. We don’t know exactly what it looks like, but this is our western image of what it looked like, it looks much cleaner than any stable I’ve ever seen. They fall to their knees because they know a mighty thing has happened.

And then they do an amazing thing.

They don’t listen to Herod.

Herod has just said ‘come back and tell me where that baby is’. They go home a different way, and at that point the real event of Epiphany happens, which is they tell the rest of the world what happened.

I’m going to be very bold and say that because of Epiphany, because of that work of the wise men, we have the right to become Christians. Jesus was prophesied about in the Old Testament, in Isaiah particularly; “Unto you a child will be born, and his name will be Emmanuel and He will be a Prince of Peace and a Comforter” and all those things. Isaiah was Jewish, so to whom was he writing? The Jews! There was no thought that some… gentiles in Federal Way Washington would care about this baby, or would be redeemed by this baby, saved by this baby, comforted by this baby.

It was all for the Jews. But the magi go off and tell the story. Because of them, we, in Federal Way, get to tell this story.

So, Epiphany starts out as being a day of sharing the Good News. I already said it last week, but you’re going to hear it from me again, that evangelism is a scary thing, isn’t it.

This idea that we have to go tell other people that we know some good news, that we know the source of life itself. Yet that’s what we’re called to do.

Many years ago, on Epiphany, I was preaching this sharing the good news idea of Epiphany, and the words from Ephesians chapter 6 came up, where Paul talks about putting on the whole armor of God. He says to put on the shoes of eagerness to spread the Gospel.

So I said, ‘Everyone, in this church, next week bring your shoes. I’m going to bless your shoes, and then you’re going to be eager to spread the Gospel’. And you know, everyone brought shoes, we had a big pile of shoes in front of the altar. We blessed the shoes, and then half an hour later we were separating out who’s shoe belonged to whom. Maybe not the best idea I had.

But people were willing to go out. People willing to say ‘gosh, yes, this is good news’.

I had an 8-year-old who was preparing for Baptism, and I was going through the baptismal service with her. One of the

questions that is asked during the examination of baptismal services is ‘will you share with others the good news of Jesus Christ?’. I said, ‘How are you going to do that, Lacy’, she said ‘oh really easily, on Monday morning after I’m baptized, I’m going to go to the principal of my school, and he makes announcements over the intercom to all the classrooms and I’m going to say that I am Baptized and I believe in Jesus Christ’.

I said “Okay”. And she did that, she got it.

Her life was changed, and that’s part of that epiphany, that wonderful sense.

Well, Epiphany has other aspects to it, not just tennis shoes and eagerness about the Gospel, not just singing about the wise men. But in various cultures, Epiphany has other ideas, one of which is water. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, that’s Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, and other Eastern Orthodox people, they bless all the water for the whole year on Epiphany.

I lived in Frankfurt, Germany for five years, I was the rector of the Episcopal church in Frankfurt. On Epiphany, I was invited to the blessing of the waters, where all the priests from the different traditions came to the river Rhine, which is a really big river. They stood there with their big beards, their wonderful robes and vestments. They blessed the whole river, the ships on it, and blessed the activity on it. Then, they marched back to their churches. People brought water jugs, empty jugs. They blessed tons and tons of jugs, and people filled their water jugs to take home their water to bless their homes, their cars, their families, and the events of their lives. It was a big deal, and if you ran out of water throughout the year you went back to church with your jug and refilled your jug. People understood this sense of God is among us, God is real, and we’re going to bless for more of this.

We are going to have a little water blessing today. We’re not done with our interactive work yet.

Another part of Epiphany, especially when I lived in Germany, everywhere I looked houses and doorways had little letters across the top. You’ve done that here at Church of the Good Shepherd, where you write letters across the top of the doorway.

We’re going to do that today.

Through the wonders of Amazon, on Friday night at midnight I ordered 100 pieces of chalk. They arrived last night. Each of you is invited to take a napkin and a piece of chalk to take them home, then you can bless your own homes with chalking over the top of your doorway. We are going to do that here this morning as well.

What you’re doing is that you are saying, for the year 2025, you are following in the footsteps of the wise men. There are three letters that are put across the door, “C”, “B”, and “M” for Casper, Balthazar, and Melchior. However. they may be written. It is a blessing for a whole year, but it’s also a way of blessing those who enter your home or into this church, that you are welcoming and also sending forth, again with those shoes of eagerness.

So, my questions to you are:

First, do you know who brought you to faith in Jesus? We have the wise men, but did someone or some event or something bring you into the church or bring you to or increase your faith? I’ll tell two stories before I ask you, and you don’t have to tell me your answer(but you are more than welcome to email office@goodshepherdfw.org or rector@goodshepherdfw.org ). The first story is about a friend of mine. He had been a hippie and had done everything but ever go to church. He was a musician.

One day, he became a Christian, and he went home for Christmas. There was all his family gathered there in Montana. He said, ‘family, I want you to know that I am now a Christian’, and people looked at him like ‘you? Really?’ but a voice from the back of the room, his grandmother, said “Praise the Lord! I’ve been praying for you since you were born!”

Maybe there’s been someone who’s been praying for you. Maybe there’s been someone who invited you. I spent fifteen years as an atheist, which is really an agnostic because as soon as you say you don’t believe in god, you’re already saying there might be God. But anyway, one Thursday morning, a friend called me up and said ‘you know, our children really should be going to church. My husband’s a Muslim, and your husband’s a jerk’ which wasn’t very nice, of them to say, ‘but let’s take our children to church’. She was an Episcopalian, so we went off to St. Stephen’s Church in Warhurst, and I never left.

Someone invited me. Someone saw a need. I would encourage you to think who are the three kings in your life, who have spread good news to you. Maybe you have done the same for someone else.

Then, to think about the difference that today makes. What difference did it make to the kings? Those wise men were kings, they were used to people bowing before them, to receiving gifts and tributes. What did they do when they saw Jesus?

They bowed down. They fell in worship. They were transformed by coming and meeting Jesus. Then, they went forward and told others. We all have different gifts, different ways of knowing and coming to God. I encourage you to allow more and more of that deepening and transformation in your lives.

Now!

I would ask those of you who would like to and are able to move back to the baptismal font. We are going to move into the interactive part of the sermon.

I very carefully asked Karen if this water that we use to put in the baptismal font had been blessed, and she said no. So we’re going to begin by blessing it. We will ask god’s blessing on this water.

Lord God, we thank you for water

For the source of goodness and life,

Of renewal and refreshment

We thank you that you use water for blessing us and our communities in our service to You.

We ask Your blessing on this water in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Amen

I’m going to dip my bowl into this water, as is Anna, and we’re going to sprinkle you, it won’t be so much that it’ll be painful, but it’s cold. When you are sprinkled, it is appropriate to make the sign of the Cross, in remembrance of your own baptism. That is, at the baptism the priest, using crism[??] oil makes a sign of the cross on your forehead and says “You are sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever”. That is the joy that we have in remembering that today.

[To Anna Lynn] What am I supposed to say when I do this?

[Anna Lynn] Remember your baptism.

[Pastor Carola] Remember your baptism! [gesturing to Anna] The expert!

[Pastor Carola and Deacon Anna use little evergreen branches to fling the water that we just blessed at everyone gathered around the baptismal font, reminding them to “Remember your Baptism”]

Okay, let’s start moving towards the front door, we are coming back in again, you don’t get to leave!

The chalk and the napkins are here, so come on out, and I need one out here, so I’ll just take.. thank you!

I have a wonderful liturgy of the chalking of the doors, thanks to Alan, our musician. What I am going to need is the [counting] five tallest people in the room to chalk the doors.

Alright!

[if you want to enjoy the unedited ambient sounds of people moving in anticipation of something to come without seeing anything that is happening, may I suggest watching the video on demand on the Church of the Good Shepherd Federal Way’s youtube channel, under the “live” section]

[The responses made by the congregation will be bolded]

Peace be to this house and to all who enter here

Amen

May all who come to our place of worship here, rejoice to find Christ, and may we seek and serve in everyeone we meet that same Jesus, who is Your incarnate Word, now and forever

Amen

God of Heaven and Earth, you revealed your only begotton one to every nation by the guidance of the star, bless this church, this church family, and all those who inhabit it.

Fill us with the light of Christ, that our concern for others may reflect Your Love.

We ask this through Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

Amen

Now to the six wise men(or tall people).

The first one, please go up, and write the number 20 over the door and a plus sign. Good!

Next, the three wise men! Now, Casper, who makes a C and a plus sign. Excellent!

Melchior makes a M and a plus.

And Balthazar makes a B and a plus.

Someone else, you get to make a 25!

The three wise men, Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar, followed the star to Bethlehem and the child Jesus 2000 and 25 years ago, therefore those numbers.

May Christ bless our homes, our church and remain with us throughout this new year.

Amen!