Tomorrow my pal Lynn and I’ll break open a field of chalk and take a strolling, chalking tour of our neighborhood. On doorways of oldsters we all know and love, we’ll inscribe the next message: 20+C+M+B+25.
What does this unusual equation imply? Merely that the three sensible males — Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar — adopted a particular star to Jesus, the Son who grew to become man 2025 years in the past. The CMB conveniently additionally stands for the Latin prayer Christus mansionem benedicat, could Christ bless this home.
Lynn and I didn’t make this up. For the reason that Center Ages, folks have been marking up doorposts and lintels like this throughout Epiphany. The celebration of Epiphany begins on Jan. 6, and the season ends simply earlier than Lent. And, for my part, Epiphany is without doubt one of the most vital and sadly under-celebrated seasons of the church yr.
What’s Epiphany?
Epiphany — the phrase comes from the Greek for manifestation, or to look or to indicate forth — is the season the church devotes to seeing who Jesus is. Many church buildings start their observance of Epiphany with a recitation and even reenactment of the three sensible males bringing their presents to the infant Jesus. The presents assist us to see who Jesus is: gold is a present one offers a king; frankincense, a particular incense with healing powers that was utilized by the Israelites in entrance of the Tent of Assembly, reveals us that Jesus is the true tent of assembly, the place we go to fulfill God; and myrrh, an embalming resin used to arrange our bodies for burial, reveals us that Jesus was born to die. The sensible males’s presents, in different phrases, make one thing about Jesus manifest — and the sensible males themselves, as the primary individuals who will take phrase of Jesus to a bigger viewers, present forth the toddler king to their nook of the world.
Throughout Epiphany, church buildings additionally examine Jesus’ baptism, a dramatic occasion at which God “confirmed forth” one thing of Jesus’ uniqueness. This time of yr, I’m typically reminded of a minor character within the film “Amistad,” a slave who turns into a Christian; after coming to religion, he sees crosses in every single place he appears to be like. That’s what Epiphany invitations us into: a brand new form of seeing.
Epiphany is a season of Mild. After now we have packed away the Christmas lights with which we strung our timber, we discover the church calendar giving us nonetheless extra time and area to think about Jesus, the Mild of the World, and to think about the way in which that we’d get our personal lights out from underneath all these bushels, and manifest Jesus to the world. When you consider it, it’s a little odd that evangelical church buildings, on the entire, accomplish that little with Epiphany, as a result of the season is a good time to introduce ourselves and the world to who Jesus is!
Lesser epiphanies
It’s ironic, and but unsurprising, that although in church- converse the phrase “epiphany” directs our consideration to Jesus, in widespread parlance the phrase is used to indicate one thing very completely different. To wit, a snippet I learn in a scholar newspaper in Toronto: “That’s once I had an epiphany: my make-up is my most vital style accent.”
Or contemplate an artwork exhibit mounted at Georgetown in 2004. The exhibit, which was created by artist Lisa Austin and which engaged all types of inventive media: material, furnishings, pictures, was referred to as “Epiphany.” The artist hoped that the exhibit would invite faculty college students, who’re often captive to their very own myopic social and tutorial issues, to “have epiphanies … to make international connections that [he] can’t as a young person or adolescent.”
In November 2005, Secretary of Protection Donald Rumsfeld stated that he had “an epiphany” in regards to the violence in Iraq: “This can be a group of people that don’t benefit the phrase ‘insurgency,’ I believe…. I believe that you could have a legit insurgency in a rustic that has standard help and has a cohesiveness and has a legit gripe.”
We now use “epiphany” to imply one thing individualistic, as in “I had this epiphany the opposite day, and, , realized it was time to interrupt up with Bob.” It’s becoming, I suppose, that in our individualistic age, a phrase that classically directs us to look not at ourselves, however at Jesus, is now used to underscore and lend authority to our supposedly authentic and vital particular person revelations.
An open door to us — and Christ
I first went Epiphany chalking 4 years in the past. On a tremendous January afternoon, Samantha, a young person in my church, and I waltzed all by way of our neighborhood, fats yellow field of Crayola chalk in hand. (I instructed myself that I used to be doing one thing noble by spending my afternoon with a church teen, however I believe that in actuality I invited Samantha on my chalking expedition largely in order that I might have an excuse for doing one thing that may, at first blush, appear rather less than grownup.)
We chalked the doorways to my condominium, and we chalked the doorways to Samantha’s home and her mother’s workplace, and the doorways to the homes of some pals and neighbors. After which we obtained just a little carried away. We began knocking on the doorways of folks we didn’t know and providing to chalk their homes. It felt just a little like we have been promoting Lady Scout cookies — besides, in fact, people neither needed to pay us, nor did they get any Skinny Mints out of the deal.
The general public on whose doorways we knocked had by no means heard of the customized, and Samantha and I made a decision that despite the fact that most of them turned down our provide, simply having the chance to elucidate the Epiphany custom was a second of mini-witness.
After being turned down six instances in a row, we have been about to surrender. (Truly to be completely trustworthy, we have been about to surrender and head to Ben and Jerry’s for a refreshing Epiphany milkshake.) However we knocked on one final door, the door of a tiny inexperienced cottage that appeared large enough to accommodate a cat and a few mice, however no folks.
The small, stooped girl who got here to the door was not a lot greater than a mouse. Samantha and I checked out one another when she answered our knock — I believe we have been each questioning if we should always even trouble her. She appeared like she was too frail to even stand by way of our Caspar-Melchior-Balthasar tune and dance. However we proceeded. And we have been richly rewarded.
“Ohweee!” squealed the girl, whose identify, it seems, was Mrs. Dogan. (And I do imply squealed — I’d assign Mrs. Dogan a extra dignified verb if I might, however actually, what she did was squeal.) “I haven’t considered adorning my home for Epiphany since I used to be a baby.” It seems that, although Mrs. Dogan didn’t develop up chalking lintels, she was raised in a household that set all types of Epiphany candles within the home windows, and lit them every evening of the season as a sworn statement to the sunshine of the world. “You women go proper on forward,” she stated, and we chalked away, and even stated a particular prayer that God would bless her home and make it a lightweight to the world, after which she invited us in for shortbread, and over shortbread she instructed us all in regards to the little Episcopal church in rural Virginia the place she had spent her childhood.
I had all the time puzzled what the connection was, precisely, between Epiphany and doorways — I imply, why chalk doorways throughout epiphany? Why not simply put up crocheted Epiphany decorations or one thing? Or chalk sidewalks?
Mrs. Dogan helped me make see the symbolism of doorways. In extending hospitality to me and Samantha and our chalk, Mrs. Dogan was in some way marking her dwelling as locations of hospitality to Christ — in sharp distinction to these properties we simply examine at Christmas, all these properties who turned the Holy Household away and left Jesus to be born in a barn.
The subsequent Wednesday, round nightfall, I walked by Mrs. Dogan’s home. The chalking had pale a great bit, but it surely was nonetheless there — I might see it by the sunshine of the candles she’d lit in her home windows.
Methods — along with chalk events — to have a good time Epiphany:
1. Epiphany is, partially, an important capstone to Christmas — realizing that we have a good time Epiphany starting Jan. 6 will help us really have a good time Christmas for all 12 days. We will set Epiphany (not, say, Dec. 27) because the day to take down our Christmas decorations.
2. Within the seventeenth and 18th centuries, an Epiphany Cake, or Twelfth Night time cake, was standard. The cake — which was principally a elaborate spice cake — was baked with a bean inside. Whoever obtained the piece of cake with the bean grew to become king for a day. (That particular person additionally needed to foot the invoice for subsequent yr’s Epiphany cake and festivities.)
3. Epiphany is an efficient time to sing “What Little one Is This?”
So convey Him incense, gold and myrrh,
Come peasant, king to personal Him;
The King of kings salvation brings,
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.
Elevate, elevate a tune on excessive,
The virgin sings her lullaby.
Pleasure, pleasure for Christ is born,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.
4. Epiphany can also be an important likelihood to do one thing, with pals or household, an exercise by which you present forth Christ’s mild — this is perhaps working at a soup kitchen; it is perhaps constructing a Habitat for Humanity home; it is perhaps volunteering at a neighborhood faculty, or happening a particular Epiphany missions journey.
Copyright 2006 Lauren F. Winner. All rights reserved.
