Love Changes Everything

“Christianity is not about maintaining the status quo.” This was one of my favorite messages we put on the church’s sign this year; and it resonates with the message of Epiphany.

Observed on January 6th, Epiphany celebrates those magi from the East who followed a star to where the Christ Child had been born in Bethlehem. But the imagination of Western Christianity tends to mold the Epiphany story into a starry-eyed tale of three kings on camelback presenting gift-wrapped presents to a baby. (Nothing in the Gospel of Matthew’s telling of the Epiphany story mentions camels or kings or even the gender of the magi, but that’s beside the point.) If we look closely at the story, we find some unlikely characters—wise Gentile astrologers—defying empirical norms, traveling through unfamiliar territory to reach the very light of God in Christ, and changing the path of their life by taking an alternative road to their own country from the one they had been traveling on, thus eluding the fear-based powers that be: the status quo—and we find an invitation to follow their example.

As The Rev. Dr. Buyong Lee writes in her commentary on Matthew 2, sometimes epiphanies “are disruptive, even dangerous. Sometimes they lead to confrontation with empire. Sometimes they ask us to cross borders. Sometimes they send us home by another way. And always, they ask something of us: Will we move the way fear makes us move? Or will we move the way love calls us to?” As we make our way into a new year and inch closer to Epiphany, I believe that moving the way love calls us to changes everything.

In his book How to Know a Person, the cultural commentator David Brooks writes, “We live in an environment in which political animosities, technological dehumanization, and social breakdown undermine connection, strain friendships, erase intimacy, and foster distrust. We’re living in the middle of some sort of vast emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis. It is as if people across society have lost the ability to see and understand one another, thus producing a culture that can be brutalizing and isolating.” In these post-isolation days of a traumatizing pandemic, where apathetic misunderstandings of our neighbors exacerbate our social divides, and the powers that be maintain their position by manipulating this absurd and somehow normalized state of things, following the example of the magi and moving the way loves calls us to can disrupt the status quo. And that kind of disruption, that gives witness to the love of God we find shining forth in Christ Jesus, can be an epiphany in our time and context.

Taking the time to listen to someone we see often but know nothing about is an epiphany.

Responding to an anxious exchange with a stranger with patience and grace is an epiphany.

Noticing someone that we might disregard because they look frightening to us in some way, and seeing them as a child of God is an epiphany.

Loving your enemies outwardly as well as privately is an epiphany.

Praying daily for people who persecute you is an epiphany.

Serving someone overlooked by society with tangible kindness is an epiphany.

And epiphanies do more than shine light in dark times. Epiphanies shed light on new paths, guided by transformative love, and carrying us out of our present emotional, relational, and spiritual crises.

Epiphanies can be transformational, and the faith we practice is only as powerful as its ability to change things. In his book, Jesus Changes Everything, Stanley Hauerwas writes that “Christians are revolutionaries, but we believe the revolution has happened and we are it.” Indeed, the birth of Christ, the Word made flesh, the love of God incarnate changed everything, and that love dwells within you. So, let it shine, and watch it change everything.