Have
you ever experienced a sudden revelation?
In a flash, an answer or an insight comes to you that makes all the
difference and sets you off on a new path of discovery, or a new way of being. You feel as if you have just received the
answer to something that has been troubling or puzzling you. Now you can move forward!
Today we
pay homage to those moments of sudden insight.
It is after all Epiphany Sunday.
Today, January 6th, is the day some Christian traditions
celebrate and have been celebrating for over 2000 years. The Epiphany.
What they are focused on is the time told of in the Gospel of Matthew when
non-Jews recognized the significance of the baby Jesus...
Perhaps
you know the story, which is told only in the Gospel of Matthew. Wise men, known as “the magi”, come from the east
following a star. On their journey they stop
to ask the ruler of the region (that would be the evil King Herod) where the
star had led them, what he knows about it.
He knows nothing, but suspecting something must be amiss, he asks them
to come back and tell them what they find.
Some Biblical scholars are sure that Matthew’s
point in telling this story is to say that not only did the WISE men have the
skill to follow a star, but even though they were not Hebrew, when they found
what the star led them to, they had an epiphany! The star they had been following shown down
on a future king. They had been wise
enough to follow the star to where it led.
Yet, they were ignorant of Jewish prophecy. But even they could see why it was important
to the whole world not to go back and tell King Herod that this child had been
born.
So, after they left their gifts of gold,
frankincense and myrrh, they quickly moved on…
It was later legends that would make these wise men
out to also be kings, maybe as a way to explain why wandering astrologers would
have such precious gifts as gold, frankincense, and myrrh packed away in their
side saddles.
It doesn’t matter how wise they were, or if they
were of royal lineage. The point that Matthew
seems to have been making, stands. They
weren’t Jews. Yet, when they got to
where the star had been leading them, they had an “a-ha” moment. Everything about their training as magi had
enabled them to follow an unusually bright star, but seeing, really seeing what
the star illuminated was an epiphany!
They had a sudden flash of insight that they hadn’t been trained for,
hadn’t anticipated.
OH, MY GOD, they exclaimed! No
wonder King Herod acted so funny!
Now, let me assure you that even though I studied
the Bible as a child, then in a very secular state university, then in divinity
school and am now over ten years a religious professional…. I don’t call myself
a Christian. I don’t even usually think
of myself as a theist. I am not any
longer uncomfortable with those terms. I
just don’t use them to describe myself.
So, the usual Christian interpretation that the
wise men suddenly recognized that the baby they found in a manger was to be the
savior of the world or the king of the jews isn’t what I hear in this story…or
why I bring it to you, this day…
What I hear, what I hope you hear, is that these
trained, experienced wise men found something that wasn’t necessarily what they
were looking for. Yet, they felt a
sudden recognition. And they knew that
the “revelation” they experienced could be dangerous. They changed course…
Like many people I know…I have had my moments, too…when
I have exclaimed OH, MY GOD!
Oh my God, it all makes sense now! I see.
I get it!
Maybe you know the famous tale about Archimedes,
the classical mathematician who shouted “Eureka” when he suddenly discovered
how to estimate the volume of a given mass.
He also had a feeling of sudden insight, like the wise men must have had. The answer to a vexing mathematical problem had
come him in a flash! It was an epiphany.
Holy Cow!
Here finally was the sudden revelation…the answer
to a nagging problem. Was it from the
gods?
Does it matter?
Those astrologers from the east where moving along their
normal path of discovery, like we all do.
Archimedes and countless other scientists and all manner of ordinary
folk are moving along their normal paths every day, day in and day out, like we
all do.
Maybe some are following a fascinatingly bright
star. Maybe others are just turning on
the tap water. Maybe some are at the
beach watching the sun rise.
Then suddenly, in a flash of insight, the key to
much greater understanding is plopped at our feet.
Do all epiphanies come from God? Does “the universe” suddenly reveal a
mathematical formula? Or was it there
all along for a trained and searching mathematician to see?
Maybe? Maybe
not.
Does it really matter where it comes from?
It seems to me that what does matter is that suddenly
something makes sense in a way that something has not made sense before.
This flash of insight can change everything…about
our normal course of affairs…
It doesn’t matter if the flash of insight is about
something that has been puzzling the mind, or tickling the soul. When an answer, …a kind of “two plus two”, instantly dawns on
us, when we are “given” an insight that propels us forward in either solving a
problem or in gaining a much deeper perspective concerning some conundrum, or maybe
we suddenly have the ability to hold a disturbing paradox in a life-giving
balance….maybe we do shout Eureka, or Oh, My God, or …we might say “No DUH!, as
I often do wanting to deny how overwhelmed I am with my previous state of
ignorance, ….of course I knew that all along!
Whatever!
Suddenly what didn’t connect does. What didn’t make any sense does. What wasn’t meaningful, what was painful,
difficult, made us feel remote from any truth, suddenly we are full of purpose,
we have been brought a message that it’s all going to be alright, or we have
been suddenly been made privy to a great secret that calls us in close to the
center of existence… when we have been
living so far outside the core…now in a flash we are in…
Eureka!
In a flash we are close, very close to the truth,
to a truth that REALLY matters!
We have all had these moments. Remember the solution to a math problem you
finally got? Remember the significance
of some spiritual truth that finally made your pain make some sense?
We have these moments when we get it, really get
it.
Then what?
In religion, in stories and legends trying again
and again to teach us about living with deep purpose, living with deep security
in this chaotic universe, you find encounters with the divine described as
epiphanies... Suddenly God, or what we
call god, appears. Suddenly God is
responsible for revealing the meaning of life, or if not the meaning, then delivering
a sudden feeling of security…everything is ultimately going to be alright…we can
have faith again that our lives make some sense, have some purpose, that
someone or something is in charge…is holding us still…
Maybe we are lonely, or sad, or poor in spirit…or
maybe we don’t even know we are, yet somehow suddenly we are with the companion
that never leaves our side, we see that our long lost love ones will be with us
again, we feel suddenly rich…with insight and safety…
Maybe we want to keep our particular epiphany to
ourselves, hide it from those who would destroy it, or belittle it. Maybe we want to shout it from the roof tops.
Maybe we want to make our sudden flash of knowing
what we did not know a TRUTH for everybody.
Maybe we want to pretend we don’t know what we do now
know.
These moments of deep insight, of the purpose of it
all revealed, come to us. Part of the
feeling we have when we know now, what we did not know before, is that we must
not go back to the way things were. It
would be dangerous to go back knowing what we know now…just as dangerous as it
feels to go forward.
What made the wise men wise? Not their training as magi. Not their following a bright star. Not their deciding not to return to King
Herod.
What made them wise was their ability to see what
the light pointed to, what it shone over, then to move on in a different way
from the way they had come.
Epiphanies always include that invitation that we
can respond to if we choose. We can leap
into the new, move from what was to what will be. There is risk either way, whether we go back
to the way things were, or go forward into the new.
Experiencing an epiphany can change the course of
your life. If you let it.
Paying attention to revelation is not restricted to
wise men traveling from the east. Epiphanies
are not frozen in grand cathedrals. The
insight, the answer, the security revealed to you, may not fit what has been
guiding you. But it can guide you now,
if you let it.
Sometimes you can only see, or hear, or taste, or
feel, a sudden revelations’ power to change your life after days, weeks, years,
decades of preparation so that you stand in the right place at the right time able
to recognize the answer when you see it.
To know the flash of insight for what it is, a key that unlocks the
answer to whatever the riddle is for you….that causes you to exclaim OH MY GOD….
An epiphany makes one “wise” in a way one wasn’t
before…
What you do then is up to you.
