Sign Posts on the Way

We just celebrated the Incarnation at Christmas, the audacious claim that God took on our fleshy existence and dwelt among us, deeming equality with deity something worth letting go of (cf Phil 2:5-11). Today’s commemoration of Epiphany (celebrated in Sunday’s liturgy) is a dependent feast. Without the Incarnation, there would be no Epiphany. In a way, it’s the Incarnation as perceived from the human side, our side, the side from which it commands a response, simply because in the face of the Incarnation, we cannot fail to respond. Like the 3 Magi, once we perceive the Light, we can never return the same way.

These two luminous points of orientation for the Christian community stand in absolute contrast to the dark tragedy that took place in New Orleans between these two feast days. In a significant way, that violent act of terrorism stands out by its extreme display of disregard and contempt for the value of human life. In another way, it stands as a mournful reminder of the capacity we all have as humans to act inhumanely—sometimes directly, but more often indirectly, allowing others to carry out inhumanity in our name while we turn our eye toward the innumerable false lights our culture affords us. We have safe words that offer a comfortable distance to these indirect inhumanities, yet we can rattle them off with ease because they are happening all around us: the homeless, the undocumented, the Middle East, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, death row….

To see the light of the Incarnation and to respond to that light is to understand that for the God of Jesus Christ, what makes equality with deity worth letting go of, is love. The gifts that the magi offer the Christ child in the light of the star all foreshadow the consequences of that love—death, but a death that is transformed through resurrection, the fulness of life—another audacious and luminous point orienting the Christian Way. Love connects us to all of humanity and to God, who loved us into being. Seeing with clear eyes the light of God’s love, even a refusal to respond, is a response. We are children of the light.