Today we’re celebrating the feast of Epiphany. Together with the Baptism and the wedding at Cana it’s part of a trio of epiphanies that recognise Jesus as the promised Messiah, the Son of God. It’s full of awe, wonder and joy. Yet there’s another side to it. There’s challenge, threat and uncertainty there too. The magi find the Christ after a hard, and sometimes dangerous journey that’s summed up by these words from T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The journey of the Magi”:
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
Their journey brings them joy and delight as the gospel makes clear:
“The sight of the star filled them with delight, and going into the house they saw the child and his mother Mary, and falling to their knees did him homage.”
Yet it’s a joy that doesn’t cancel out difficulty, challenge, suffering and hardship, but manifests in the midst of all those hard realities of life. Instead it appears alongside them never dismissing them or cancelling them out.
Generally, I think we’d prefer that joy and delight would cancel the hardship, but it is just possible that, by not doing so, the gospel offers us a greater hope and a greater joy. This way it takes account of the hardships and suffering we all live with, and tells us that it’s in the midst of those that we’ll discover the joy the Magi followed the star to discover.
In our challenging and uncertain times that seems to me to increase the hope by acknowledging the hardship and telling us that however hard our journey we can discover and delight in the presence of Christ who chooses to dwell in our midst.
Where is Christ inviting you to delight in his presence in your life this Epiphany?