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Epiphany - pray for church unity

Dear Friends,

The excitement and joy of Christmas has now passed and as this magazine is published we
begin a new year. I pray you have all had a peaceful and happy Christmas wherever, and
with whom, you spent it.
The season of Christmas quickly gives way to Epiphany which begins properly on January
6th and extends to the 2nd of February. Epiphany means ‘manifestation’ and during the
season the readings in Church lead us through a series of events in Jesus’ life in which he
reveals himself to be the Son of God. The first of these events occurs with the coming of the
wise men bearing their gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. These men become the first
outsiders to recognise the significance of the birth of this child.
We know little of the childhood of Jesus. At some point he, with Mary and Joseph, seems to
have left Bethlehem and gone into exile in Egypt before settling finally in Nazareth in Galilee.
So the second manifestation occurs many years after the nativity when Jesus, by then aged
about thirty, seeks to be baptised by John in the River Jordan. John the Baptist recognises
Jesus and proclaims him to be the ‘Lamb of God’.
The next revealing of Jesus, at least in this year’s cycle of readings, occurs as He walks along
the lakeside and calls the first of his apostles to follow him. So Peter and his brother Andrew,
together with James and his brother John, accept the call of Jesus and proclaim that he is
the Messiah.
Finally, in this year’s readings we have the Wedding at Cana. Those same apostles were
present, together with Jesus’ mother Mary, at this wedding feast. The wine ran out and
Jesus, encouraged by Mary, turned a large quantity of water into the finest wine. So it was
that in these events Jesus was revealed to be the Son of God.
The season ends forty days after Christmas with the Feast of the Presentation, or Candlemas
on the 2nd of February. It was on this day that Jesus, the Light of the World, was presented
in the temple and recognised as the promised Messiah by Simeon and Anna.
The people of the land of Israel had been waiting for the promised Messiah for many years.
Somehow to them the time seemed to be right for the coming of Jesus. So it was that when
he manifested himself many seemed to accept immediately that Jesus was indeed the
promised one, God’s anointed. For John the Baptist, Peter, Andrew, James and John this
does not appear to have been difficult. But what about us: and indeed what about the rest
of our world today.
Since the end of the second world war church-going in England seems to have declined.
Whereas many British people would nominally identify themselves as Christian and even give
their religion as ‘C of E’ only a minority regularly attend church services. Yet I sense among
the people I talk with that there is a yearning for something of the other, something spiritual
which seems to be missing in many people’s lives.
If you speak to many people about ‘sin’ they will be turned off. Many do not recognise ‘sin’
in the way that perhaps Christians do. What people are looking for though, is hope. And hope
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