Epiphany
READING: Ephesians 3:1–12

A Reflection for the Feast of the Epiphany

Just when we think the Christmas story is complete, the Church quietly reopens it. The stable scene we thought we knew is not finished after all. Today, figures who have been missing begin to appear at the edge of the story: the Magi, the wise ones, the travellers who arrive late, as if the mystery itself has taken its time. In many churches this is the day the kings are finally placed beside the crib, not because Christmas has been delayed, but because revelation unfolds slowly. In Spain, children receive their gifts today, as if to remind us that wonder cannot be hurried. And somewhere deep in our shared memory, a familiar melody stirs — “We three kings of orient are…” Epiphany does not explain Christmas; it deepens it, reminding us that God’s light keeps revealing itself long after we think the story is over.

So Epiphany begins not with answers, but with a star.
Not with certainty, but with movement.
Not with explanation, but with wonder.

The wise ones, the Kings, do not set out because they have solved a problem. They set out because something has caught their attention. A light has disturbed the ordinary pattern of the night sky. A question has been placed in their hearts that will not let them stay where they are. Epiphany is the feast of people who follow what they do not yet understand.

That matters, because so much of modern life encourages us to believe that everything is either a problem to be fixed or a puzzle to be solved. If we are confused, we Google the answer. When we feel anxious, we try to manage, streamline, and control. If we are uncertain, we demand clarity. Mystery, in this world, is often treated as failure – a gap in knowledge that must be closed as quickly as possible.

But St Paul, in the reading we heard this morning from Ephesians, speaks again and again not of problems, but of mystery. And not mystery as something frustrating or obscure, but mystery as something revealed, inhabited, and lived into.

“This is the reason,” Paul writes, “that I am a prisoner for Christ Jesus… because the mystery was made known to me by revelation.” Not by research. Not by deduction. Not by control. By revelation.

A mystery is not something you solve and leave behind. A mystery is something you enter — and that keeps opening as you walk further in.

That is true in human life. Love is not a problem to be solved. You can analyse it, measure it, define it — but if you try to control it, it withers. Parenthood is not a problem. Grief is not a problem. Faithfulness over decades is not a problem. These are mysteries: realities that only make sense as we stay with them, attend to them, and allow them to change us.

So too with God.

Paul’s great Epiphany claim is not that God has finally explained everything, but that God has revealed a mystery that was always larger than anyone imagined. A mystery hidden “for ages,” now disclosed not to a few insiders, but widened beyond every boundary people assumed was fixed.

The mystery, Paul says, is this: the Gentiles have become fellow-heirs, members of the same body, sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus.

In other words, the surprise is not simply that God has acted, but who God has included. The light does not stop where people thought it would stop. The star does not hover over the familiar centre of power. It draws outsiders in. It rearranges the map.

“We three kings of orient are…,” the carol tells us — except they probably were not kings. And they certainly were not insiders.They are foreigners, astrologers, readers of the night sky — people working with half-light, fragments, intuition. And yet they are the ones who notice the star. They are the ones who move. They are the ones who kneel.

Epiphany is not the feast of having the right theology or the correct beliefs neatly in place. It is the feast of being willing to follow a glimmer of light across field and fountain, moor and mountain, even when the road makes little sense.

Paul understands this deeply. He calls himself “the very least of all the saints,” and yet he is entrusted with proclaiming “the boundless riches of Christ.” Not because he is strong, but because God’s love works through weakness. Not because he stands above the mystery, but because he has been caught up within it.

And then Paul says something extraordinary: that this mystery is not revealed despite the Church, but through it. “So that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known.”

Not through perfection.
Not through certainty.
But through a community willing to live inside the mystery.

At Epiphany, the Church is not meant to be a place where everything is explained. It is meant to be a place where people learn how to live with holy questions; where strangers find themselves included; where light is followed even when it leads somewhere unexpected.

We do not gather because we have solved God. We gather because we have glimpsed something luminous, and we cannot unsee it.

“We three kings… following yonder star.”, the songs unfolds.
And that star still moves today. It still unsettles us. It still draws people beyond the edges of what feels safe or familiar.

Epiphany asks us not, Have you understood?
But, Are you willing to follow?

To follow the mystery of a God who becomes visible in a child.
To follow the widening of grace beyond our assumptions.

To follow a light that does not eliminate darkness, but shines within it.
Faith is not about mastering the mystery.

It is about trusting that the mystery is generous.

And like the wise ones, the Magi, we discover that when we finally arrive — when we kneel, when we offer what we have — the mystery does not end. It deepens. We go home by another road, changed not because everything is clear, but because wonder has done its quiet work.

For Epiphany is not the day the answers arrive. It is the day we learn again how to wonder.

Photo Credit: Mishal Ibrahim (Unsplash.com)