The word “phenomenon” came into English from the Greek, and technically means a thing or fact perceived, the immediate object of actual perception. Today we are celebrating the Epiphany of the Lord. The word “epiphany” is related to the word “phenomenon” and denotes a manifestation of a supernatural being. We could say then that epiphany happens when something eternal gets turned into a phenomenon, when something divine not only becomes an object graspable by the senses, but actually gets perceived by real people. The Epiphany of the Lord is therefore Christmas made public. The Incarnation of the Word is out there now, in the public sphere, even if the public in question, for the time being, consists only of a few shepherds and three eccentric scientists with mystical leanings, who have come from foreign parts in the East somewhere – probably Arabia, judging by the gifts they bring. John the Baptist will join this “public” later, followed by the disciples present at the wedding feast in Cana, and the whole thing will snowball from there. We could add then that epiphany is when something timeless becomes a fact of our common human history, capable of spreading like gossip by the word of mouth. “And the Word became flesh”, that's Christmas, “and dwelt among us, and we have seen its glory”, that's the Epiphany part. The former unites God with man, the latter theology with history. But if so, then there are naturally two ways of describing the Epiphany of the Lord. You can either move from theology to history or the other way around, establish a fact of history and then surround it with a divine aura. The Gospel according to St John's takes the first approach, the Gospel according to St Matthew takes the second.
The Prologue to St John's Gospel, which we heard on Christmas day, reads almost like an ancient Greek cosmological treatise. These works tended to mix technical language, which would later be taken up by philosophy, with poetic images and mystical speculations. The Prologue is all about the Eternal Logos, light and life and God's glory, about how the universe came to be. It gives us this Cosmic Being, uttered by God himself before the dawn of time. But then suddenly this strange man bursts in, John the Baptist. His presence jars with all that is being said. He is like someone interrupting a brilliant lecture on Neoplatonic philosophy saying: “Oh yes, this Eternal Logos you are talking about, the light that shines in darkness and the life that's in all of us, and all that. I've seen it! It's this man named Jesus who came to me for baptism the other day. It's him! That's all you need to know. Just go to him and he'll sort you out.” In the ensuing silence, the Baptist then proceeds to point all those attending the lecture in the exotic direction of Jewish prophecies. “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, as the prophet Isaiah said.”
St Matthew's gospel, as we have just heard, does it the other way around. Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus, establishing him as a real Jewish man, son of Abraham, God's Anointed One of the royal line of David – very much a historical figure (even if his conception was somewhat mysterious, and even if he is destined to be the Messiah; all of this could simply mean that he would become a great ruler and restore the Davidic kingdom). And then suddenly into this gentle flow of history, wave after wave, generation after generation, into this peaceful domestic scene, with Mary and Joseph and the little baby, out of nowhere, three strange men burst in. They are complete pagans, they know nothing of the prophecies, nothing of the history. They stand out by being richly dressed, cultured and well-educated. They have been following a star, we are told, or at least something that looks like a star, but does not obey any of the rules and laws that govern the movement of celestial bodies. The Three Magi burst into this ethnically limited, very local Jewish world, and worship their supposed Messiah as the Eternal Logos. As if saying: “Guess what, all your beautifully written but somewhat obscure prophecies are, according to our scientific calculations, actually correct, believe it or not. But there is something way bigger here than what you expected. He is yours, yes, but not only yours, he belongs to the whole world, to the whole universe. You have to expand your thinking, while we need to catch up on your Scriptures, the stories, the laws and the prophecies.”
Needless to say, the two approaches complement each other beautifully. The Cosmic Christ is the Jewish Messiah, the Jewish Messiah is the Cosmic Christ. We know, they are one and the same person, true God and true man, Our Lord Jesus. And yet we still need both of these paths in our spiritual life, in our life of faith. We came to believe in the first place following one of them, and as we try to come closer to Jesus, we need to use one or the other, to complement what is currently lacking in our relationship with him.