My parents hosted a yearly Epiphany Feast to celebrate the outshining of God’s rescuing love to every single nation on earth. To the familiar and the unfamiliar. To people like us and to people unlike us. All people can be Abraham’s children; all foods are declared clean. Sooooo…. my Dad would let his flair for creative gastronomy go nuts and create these crazy 7-course meals of things like jellyfish soup, stuffed boar’s head and, yes, a large platter of roast eels. Totally different, totally unpredictable every time.

Epiphany is where the Gospel goes a little wild, a little unpredictable - not tame, not kosher! On Epiphany, it was pagan diviners who worshipped the child Jesus as “King and God and Sacrifice” (as the words of the carol say) with their gold, incense and embalming spices. Pagans, who ate weird stuff, spoke a strange language, and weren’t children of Abraham, were right there, in the heart of God’s holy family. And that bugs me!

I want the Gospel to mean “God’s approval of me because I’m doing it right. I’m the right sort.” I want 2 plus 2 to equal 4. Nice and tidy. Kosher. But Epiphany is not the tidy result of a stingy little equation. It’s an explosion of grace, redemption, inclusion, enlightenment into all the dark corners of the earth! It’s for the “wrong people”. And if I’m honest, that’s me too. After all, when Jesus was born, my ancestors were hunkering in frozen hovels up in Norway, eating cod livers!

Celebrate Epiphany this sixth! None of us are the right sort, but we’re exactly the sort our King, and God, and Sacrifice came for! Personally, though, I’m skipping the roast eels.

Song of Simeon

TLH p.29 “The Nunc Dimittis” from Luke 2:29 ff.

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy Salvation: which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a Light to enlighten the Gentiles and the Glory of Thy people Israel.

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