Epiphany—Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6

On this Feast of Epiphany, Saint Paul reminds us of his own epiphany: that Jesus Christ is Messiah and Lord and that his promises are for everyone. This universal scope of Jesus’s mission is often lost on us. We would find it appalling if Jesus came only for one ethnicity. But we also can’t entirely fault the Chosen People of the Bible. There are two parallel strands of thought running throughout the Old Testament that finally converge with Jesus.

On the one hand, God’s promises are for everyone. The first implicit covenant in the Bible is with Adam and Eve, who at the time were everyone. The first explicit covenant, mediated by Noah, was also with everyone left after the Flood. A few generations later, God promises Abraham that “All communities of the earth shall find blessing in you” (Genesis 12:3). At the time of the Exodus, God makes clear that his purpose in singling out Israel is to make them “a kingdom of priests, a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). God singles out Israel to form them so that they can help all other nations know the One True God. The prophets often reminded Israel and Judah that the nations eventually would worship God along with them.

On the other hand, God does require his Chosen People to separate themselves for the nations around them. This was due in large part to the fact that Israel kept acting like the nations around them by worshipping false gods and ignoring God’s commands. By the time of the Maccabean Revolt just over a century before Jesus, we finally see God’s people fighting to be the Chosen People, to be different from the nations, and to die rather than violate God’s laws. It was in this spirit that the Pharisees stressed ritual cleanliness and following the letter of the law. Prior to his conversion during an epiphany—a sudden appearance of Jesus—Saint Paul was a Pharisee (Acts 23:6).

With Jesus’ commission to the Church to go out to all nations, these two strands finally come together. The Lord calls us to be different from the world so that we can bring the world to him. Jesus himself put it this way, “Can the blind lead the blind?” (Luke 6:39). The blind need someone different, someone with sight, to lead them. We who can be so spiritually blind sometimes need to have an epiphany, to become different, so that we can lead others to Jesus.

All the pieces fit together in the figures of the Magi. These eastern MAGIcians didn’t belong to God’s People, and yet they are among the first to welcome Jesus. Their friends and neighbors must have known about their long journey to meet a baby king, and so it seems likely that they went home and told others about Jesus. By the time Christian missionaries reached the old Persian empire, they found many people ready and willing to hear about Jesus. If these Magi, with no theological training and very limited exposure to Jesus, could prepare the way for Jesus in their own nation, how can we do the same in our own nation?