In honor of the idea that Christmas continues until the
Feast of the Epiphany, we haven’t undecorated yet. It’s been all I could do to
keep the tree and the Advent calendar, the festive dishtowels and holiday
pillows, in their place. I’ve been ready to move on. But the church calendar
tells me to wait until tomorrow, until the end of the Christmas Season. To
revel in the birth of this Christ child, this baby who would save the world.

Epiphany. It’s one of my favorite words. Just say it out
loud a few times. Epiphany. Epiphany. My favorite Advent/Christmas book (God
With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas) tells me, “Epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphaneia, which is translated both as ‘coming’
and as ‘manifestation’ or ‘appearing.’ While Christmas celebrates Christ’s
coming in the Incarnation event, Epiphany celebrates manifestation–the ways in which the Incarnation is revealed to us.”

What’s fascinating to me about these twelve days of
Christmas, however, is the diversity of their content. They include
celebrations of Mary as Jesus’ mother and reminders of Jesus’ baptism and
public ministry. But they also include Herod’s murder of the innocents and the
Holy Family’s flight to Egypt. The manifestation of God, the Word made flesh,
involves joy, but it also provokes terror. It is good, and it provokes evil.

What does the coming of Jesus mean for my life? What difference
does this epiphany, this manifestation of God among us, God with us, make?

Tomorrow, we will begin the process of packing up the
Christmas napkins, clearing the refrigerator of the kids’ holiday art projects,
removing the stockings from the mantel, tucking away the Christmas books. But I
hope that the spirit of Epiphany will stay with us . I hope we will carry into the
new year this truth that God is made manifest through Jesus, that God is with
us–in times of wonder and moments of fear, in private and public, in the places
we least expect it, from a manger to a cross.