Have you ever thought about how you came to know things; to understand how things work; what relates to what; what causes what?
I think that if this kind of inquiry were somehow removed from our language, we’d suffer one of the greatest losses of our human spirit. Inquiry intrigues us and drives us to learn, to evolve, to flex our brains, and to do better as a human species.
In fact, one of our first words as human toddlers is usually, “Why”? Okay, here’s WHY…
Because “inquiring humans” want to know! We want to know everything!
Kids are even more inquisitive. Studies show that kids ask anywhere from 300-400 questions per day. The number declines somewhat as we age. (Or does it?) Perhaps we are just less vocal with our internal questioning. But no matter how you look at it, even if the kind of learning varies from one person to another, we essentially crave knowledge like we crave strawberry ice cream. We are, in a sense, natural-born detectives. Always searching for answers to questions that taunt us and won’t let us go until we find them out!
Admit it! Who here isn’t waking in the middle of the night with the burning need to look up how penguins sleep or what a capybara likes to eat? Or some other secrets of nature or the world that grab onto our minds and won’t let go until we find out!
Talk about ear worms (that musical piece that plays over and over in your head)! Mind worms are just as stubborn and even more tenacious!
Now with the prevalence of the internet, we don’t have to wait! Google is there night and day just to answer our most ardent and often ridiculous questions! The amount of trivial knowledge that we can gobble has increased to seismic proportions.
But more seriously…. Not all knowledge comes in tidbit form.
Think for a moment about some of the greatest mysteries of our time that continue to haunt us and plague our brains – especially in the middle of the night when we cannot sleep!
Everyone has probably heard of the great mystery of Amelia Earhart. What about the Voynich Manuscript, UFO’s, the Paranormal, the Big Bang Theory and Dark Energy, the nature of Consciousness, the Great Pyramids, lost cities, strange crimes, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, the Ark of the Covenant, and the origin of life itself.
And then we have the Incarnation! One of our most intriguing mysteries, because it’s so hard to wrap our heads around! In our scripture for today, disciple and gospel writer John takes a stab at it.
Meanwhile, at the same time this Sunday, we celebrate the miracle and mystery of the Epiphany!
The Greek word “epiphany” means to “reveal” or to “make manifest.” When we suddenly come up with an answer to a difficult-to-understand question, we say we have an “epiphany.” What we mean is that our inquiring minds can be, for the moment, at rest.
But an Epiphany can also be a Mystery Revealed! Like the many timeless mysteries mentioned above, the one involving Jesus’ arrival on Earth in human form is one that will never be “solved” but will continue to intrigue us through the annals of time!
The Christian Church describes the Epiphany as the moment that the Christ was revealed to the entire world through the visit of the Magi, led by a guiding, divine light.
No one knows exactly how the Magi, gentiles from eastern countries, who had been studying signs and the Jewish histories and prophecies, recognized the sign of Light coming into the world. No one knows exactly what prompted them to mount their camels and beeline toward Jerusalem, and then Bethlehem bringing royal gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. No one knows exactly why Joseph trusted his God-directed dreams, marrying Mary, saving Jesus’ life, and then keeping him safe for all of those years!
Folks, nobody knows exactly why and how this amazing Epiphany of God came to save us from ourselves and change the world as we know it! And definitely no one knows how a baby born could be the “incarnation” of God, the creator of the universe, present before the advent of time.
We will never really “know”! But our minds will keep on wondering and wandering, because those kinds of mysteries and miracles of God remind us that part of being human means “trusting the mystery.”
When we look to the scriptures, we find that a kind of “preface” sets the tone for the gospel of John. Before we ever learn anything about the human Jesus, his teachings, or the mission he set for us, we learn first that his life, his presence, his very being on this earth, was a great Epiphany – an incarnational miracle of God, Divine Light manifested in flesh, an incarnational act of God’s grace that went largely unrecognized and misunderstood in its time and yet changed the world for all time!
We live in a world surrounded by a vastness that we will never really know. Each and every day we accept certain things about our lives and our world that we will never entirely comprehend. So we find a level of contentment knowing just enough of what we need to so that we can function with confidence, and just the amount of what we don’t,….which keeps us striving, growing, learning, and evolving as human beings. This keeps us humble in the presence of God.
It seems pretty clear that no matter what we understand or don’t about what Jesus told us, John wants to make sure that we at least acknowledge; what the Magi understood those many years ago – that when Jesus was born, an epiphany, so huge, so great, so vast, that we can’t possibly truly understand it, occurred.
To know this child in the flesh was to see God face to face! To be in the presence of Jesus was to experience God’s grace, love, and truth in the flesh!
Jesus made God known in a new and accessible way. And yet, as John tells us right at the start, few understood what they were experiencing, even as they stood in the midst of it all.
Today, we continue to celebrate the Epiphany of our Lord, the time that God broke through into our world in a tangible and touchable way, that we will never truly understand. And that’s ok. We don’t have to have all of the answers packed up neatly in a box and bow. In a way, the mystery keeps us connected to a God with whom our minds and hearts continue to seek and inquire.
It’s what John is trying to tell us! And what the Magi already knew!
This is the mystery of faith!
Faith for us simply requires of us an active commitment to inquiring and knowing something bigger and greater than ourselves. To know God is to embrace mystery, to live in that twilight place where we discern but cannot touch, and feel but cannot nail down. And Epiphany, most of all, is a time in which we revel in our own humility, even as we celebrate the Mystery of Christ.
For God cannot be nailed down. So whether you come to His table or you kneel before his feet, the knowledge that He is here for YOU is enough to knock you off of your feet and onto your knees! Mystery solved! AMEN