Epiphany's gift

Last week I talked about Epiphany being an opportunity to examine our theological assumptions and to put some of them aside so that we can read the gospels afresh. Our theological assumptions act like foggy glasses that blind us to so much of what the gospel writers offer us. It happens to us all. We will never entirely read them without assumption.  But it is important to try. Why? Because the gospel writers knew that God is unknowable, but believed that in the life, actions and teaching of Jesus we are offered a way to know God, a picture of who God is. As we come to know Jesus, we come to know the nature of God. What got Jesus and his early followers in trouble was that this picture was often at odds with what people assumed God was like. Most were looking for an all-powerful God who would vanquish those deemed not of God’s family, and would impose God’s will. Many, including Christians, are still looking for that God today.

We can see this theological struggle in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.  The church he had helped found was ripping itself apart fuelled by a picture of God as all-powerful. They sought to emulate that God using a theology of might and glory. The result was personality cults and division. Instead Paul offers a theology based on God’s love which reaches its dramatic climax in the defeat of the cross. For Paul this was the only way to find resurrection life and the only way to think of God’s power. He invited the Corinthians back to basic values, to emulate a God in whom there is only love, and whose power is expressed as love.

So as we finish Epiphany, let us read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John who wrote their gospels to offer us Jesus to teach us who God is, who we are, and what the rule of God looks like in our world today.