An Epiphany During Epiphany

The Adoration of the Magi (1526), a painting by Quinten Metsys.  I turned Quinten over in his grave by applying some Photoshop filters and blurs over it.

I’m having one of those moments when I keep hearing or reading the same theme repeatedly, then at some point I snap out of my stupor and acknowledge the pattern.

On Epiphany Sunday last week, Father Jerry asked a question that has followed me around this week:

“What if you asked a trustworthy friend to follow you around for 24 hours and give you an assessment of your receptiveness to God during an ordinary day?”

I would not be able to pull that off, because I would end up sabotaging the whole thing by putting my best foot forward. However, it has me thinking about these ordinary times and asking myself whether or not I have created more compartments in my life where I may or may not be living the life of a follower of Jesus.

Then, today’s message by Dixon forced us to consider the implications of our bodies as the temple of God. Does it not mean that we are Christ-ones first, before any other label or title? Our identity as Christians is an ultimate stamp of identity. All other titles and labels must be filtered through through that one; it’s not just one of many designations for who we are.

God is at work to remove the disconnect between our “Sunday morning lives” and our “Monday-Saturday” lives. This is his work of creating wholeness in us. Those dividers that we create to compartmentalize our lives work against that divine purpose.

The point where this ceases to be a nice theological theory is in the ways we create daily practice. For without the difficult work of creating an ongoing ordinary-life liturgy, we are actually creating an ongoing cycle of disappointment and internal division.

Epiphany celebrates the revelation of God in the form of his Son, Jesus. What better time to recognize that God is revealing himself, not just in the religious moments of our life, but in the ordinary ones, too.

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