Arise Your Light Has Come...Epiphany Wonder

By Rev. Juliet Hampton, Assistant to the Bishop

My parents were married in the late 1960’s, and early in their marriage they purchased an item that would unknowingly change my perception of how a Christmas tree had to look to feel complete to me.  Their purchase was a golden star, with a rotating plastic tube that would heat up from a lightbulb and shine hundreds of little beams of colored light from the all over the room.  My earliest childhood memory is having some aliment that kept me up all night during the harsh winter, and being rocked in my mother’s arms watching this light. I was fascinated by the reflection of the light onto the walls.  Little beams of color dancing all around the room would lull me to sleep.  I knew this was good, but I didn’t have an understanding of why it was good.  I didn’t understand until the first Christmas when my own child was ill, and I rocked him in front of a similar star of light on my own tree.

Epiphany continues to resonate with me because of these childhood memories.  It wasn’t the Christmas rush, or the pageants, but the calm of the light in the darkness of winter that drew me in.  I loved those other things, but there was something in me that new that this comfort was more than just a gimmick.  This memory was for me the coming of something more, something amidst all the hustle and bustle that changed who I was.  As I look back, it was a time of calm and contemplation in a busy world. 

This for me describes the incarnation, what we celebrate as a people of God.  God’s incarnation is something so true, so bright, so deep that words can’t comprise the feeling.  It’s the feeling of comfort being in the darkness, and knowing I’m not the work of the darkness.  It’s being little, and knowing that there is hope and protection in something more powerful than myself.  It’s feeling the cold winter blast, and knowing there will be a time when bulbs that are resting in the ground are awakened. 

It’s easy in the cold wind to only hear our own voices.  It’s easy to stay in and feel the comfort of our own houses.  It’s nice to sit by the fire with a warm cup of cocoa, but it's also a time when the community around us needs us the most.  In a time of political unrest, of dividing lines and hurtful words, we are called to bring this light and hope into the world. The Epiphany, we are pushed out into a world that needs hope, and a world that needs light.  It’s our call to respond.

Last spring while in the Jerusalem I met a potter.  Her art was simple and clean, whites and greys.  There was beauty in the simplicity.  She is a Jewish woman, living in the midst of great political turmoil.  We started talking and she spoke some to me about what it was like to be a tradeswoman in a land of unrest.  I asked her how she could stay calm and do her work.  At first she laughed it off and said that it was the land of her strong willed people, then when she realized I really wanted to know, she went deeper.  She told me that often in her faith she has found that people try to make time for God, but that with such a broken world they never get anywhere.  She said that to her, Sabbath practice means to search for God in the everyday pauses, because he is already there, we just need to give him the space.

I wonder what this looks like for you.  I wonder how you live out Epiphany in a world of darkness.  How do you bring the love and comfort to the pain and brokenness of this land?  How is your voice different from every other screaming voice grabbing at our attention?  How do we bring pause into the moments when we are moving too quickly to slow down?  How does it change the way you live, that the Magi took time out to see the great incarnation of God?

In wonder of God’s awesomeness,

Rev. Juliet Hampton