By Marshall Scott
I was listening to the radio as I drove, and heard a report about a new satellite telescope. The purpose of the telescope is to find new planets revolving around other stars. It seems that in its first few weeks of operation, it’s already found several.
“Wow,” I thought. “In this day and age, would anyone follow a star?”
The word “epiphany,” and the season of Epiphany, are about manifestation, making public. It’s “revelation,” but with a strong theme of “publication,” even of “publicity.” It is about reaching out to the world and getting attention.
But, once again, in these “days of miracles and wonders,” as the song says, who would follow the star? To paraphrase another song, “how you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen ‘Pandora?’”
It doesn’t really help, I suppose, that all the really big miracles in Scripture are in the Old Testament. Israel passed through the Red Sea, and the water stood up like walls. Joshua asked on the day of battle and the sun stopped. There’s virtually nothing on that scale in the New Testament, even in the works of Christ.
Yet, for all the attention we give them, perhaps the big, showy events are the least important. After all, quantum mechanics, the physics of the very small, reinforce for us that the universe is not only stranger than we do know, it’s stranger than we can know.
I think it is the tiniest, the most intimate miracles that we find most moving and important. What event is more powerful for us, more filled with awe and hope and fear than the birth of a child? Or, how many events carry more promise for a family than a wedding; or for a community than a baptism? And how many of us have found our lives shaped profoundly by an important conversation with a teacher? These can seem small, personal events; and yet they can be much more meaningful than earthquake, fire, or storm.
These are the miracles of Epiphany, the events we hear in our Gospel lessons as we move from Incarnation to Manifestation: visitors in the nursery, a baptism, a wedding. These are intimate miracles from our God who has come to be intimate with us. These are wonders, so tiny and so personal, from our God who came among us as a person. In the season when we celebrate how Christ was revealed to the whole world, we note it in events the whole world can know: birth and marriage, rite of passage and meaningful conversation.
In this Epiphany season, let’s appreciate these little wonders. These intimate miracles of Epiphany can speak to us most clearly of how God has shown his glory: in Christ entering our world and our lives so that God might become intimate with us.
The Rev. Marshall Scott is a chaplain in the Saint Luke’s Health System, a ministry of the Diocese of West Missouri. A past president of the Assembly of Episcopal Healthcare Chaplains, and an associate of the Order of the Holy Cross, he keeps the blog Episcopal Chaplain at the Bedside.