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Epiphany in Missional Churches
Learn why missional churches are deciding that Epiphany is a lot more than a fuss about wise men.
Two decades ago in downtown Sydney, Australia, members of Pitt Street Uniting Church befriended young people who lived near the church in an abandoned warehouse. The church people asked whether the squatters might like to come to church for tea or conversation or even a worship service.
The young people, many of them runaways, drug addicts, or prostitutes, said they wouldn’t dare. “God might strike us dead!” one explained. They did, however, like having the church members visit “their” warehouse every now and then to pray.
After one of these prayer visits, a youth asked, in an elaborately casual tone, “I don’t suppose you ever have a mass in squats, do you?”
The way Pitt Street answered that question embodies the true spirit of Epiphany. It offers a missional direction for churches to follow on Epiphany and the Sundays from then till Lent.
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We have seen the Christ
One night several Pitt Street members packed up communion linens, robes, fine bread, wine, and their best communion plate. Church people and squatters sat in a candle-lit circle and went through a complete communion liturgy.
A few squatters mumbled along with the responses, remembering “things from past times. As we gave them the elements, they wept with gratitude, and their faces filled with wonder and joy,” recalls Dorothy McRae-McMahon, who pastored Pitt Street then.
The church members shared the story at the next Sunday service. “Brothers and sisters, we have seen the Christ! The Eucharist will never be the same again for us,” they said.
This recognition of Christ’s presence in ordinary life wasn’t limited to that warehouse epiphany. McRae-McMahon and her congregation opened their eyes to how their culture of moderate affluence prevented others from finding Jesus in their midst.
They began interacting more with homeless and low income neighbors. Their debates shifted from how to correctly celebrate the Eucharist—a challenge in a new denomination made up of former Congregationalists, Methodists, and Presbyterians—to how to be more inclusive.
Worshipers who loved historic prayers asked illiterate people to suggest words and phrases for new prayers. Standing in the communion circle, they learned to smile, not shudder, when a smelly person with dirty fingernails offered “Christ’s body, broken for you.”
 The Nativity and Epiphany appear in many
forms throughout the world, including this stamp from Austria. |
Epiphany then and now
Missional churches have a deep well to draw from in celebrating Epiphany.
In Christian tradition, Epiphany marks the miraculous manifestation or shining forth of God in human form, that is, in the person of Jesus.
Early Christians in the Eastern Church celebrated the birth and baptism of Jesus on January 6. They called this feast Epiphany. Early Christians in the West celebrated the birth of Jesus on December 25 as Christmas. They added January 6, Epiphany, to the church calendar, thus creating the Twelve Days of Christmas.
Because the Western Epiphany focused on the Magi presenting their gifts to baby Jesus, many cultures celebrate Epiphany as Three Kings Day or El Día de los Tres Reyes. In parts of Italy, Spain, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, people give gifts on Epiphany, not Christmas.
It’s only in the last 20 or 30 years that many Protestants have become aware of liturgical renewal, lectionary readings, the church year, and other ways of living as part of the worldwide, age-old body of Christ.
By now, many Protestant churches observe Advent or Lent, but fewer observe Epiphany. Some observe it on a single Sunday, others as a season that lasts till Lent. Lent, the season from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, always lasts 40 weekdays and six Sundays. But because the Easter date varies each year, there can be four to nine Sundays after Epiphany.
Learning more about the historical sweep of religious, biblical, and cultural Epiphany practices could paralyze someone new to this liturgical observance. With so many choices, where does a missional church start?
Here are two suggestions. First, look at the lectionary and Epiphany customs as possible starting points, not set rules. Second, consider focusing on Epiphany’s missional themes—giving and receiving, hospitality, baptism, and living as “children of light.”
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Journey with Jesus
“We tend to change the emphasis of feast days each year. Most recently for us, Epiphany has been a time to gain an understanding of the journey set out before us for the whole year,” says Marc Alton-Cooper, an intern at Vineyard Church Sutton, southwest of London, England.
“We don’t celebrate Epiphany as a whole season but more as a reflective starting point for the journey ahead. This year we are also reflecting on the time it took for the Magi to find Jesus,” he adds. This emphasis fits well with the congregation’s identity as a community where people are allowed to belong before they believe.
Alton-Cooper maintains an emergent church media arts blog and media arts gateway site that help worship leaders find resources from the early church to the emergent church.
In planning creative worship services, he tries to “open up another arena that allows people to connect to God, tying in images and words that will stimulate thought and action.”
To plan creative Epiphany services, he recommends exploring other Christian traditions, whether Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Celtic Christian. “Go to their services and experience how other parts of the body of Christ work. This is God’s creativity in action,” Alton-Cooper says.
 For Epiphany, the Campus Chapel in Ann Arbor, Michigan, focused on the theme “Arise, shine, for your light has come.” Photo courtesy of Campus Chapel. |
The story continues ... How Missional Churches Celebrate Epiphany
Explore the concept of missional church as a shift in thinking.
Buy books of liturgies by Dorothy McRae-McMahon to see what it can mean to worship God at all times and in all places. See several of her liturgies, including a service on remembering refugees (pp. 18-20). Use worship resources and songs from the Uniting Church of Australia.
This handy spreadsheet shows you when (or whether) a Bible passage appears in the weekly lectionary cycles; ignore the password box. Read William Willimon’s Theology Today article on the advantages and disadvantages of lectionary based preaching.
Use or adapt Epiphany worship service plans from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, including tying Epiphany to new and remembered baptisms or missions. Read a long but fascinating account of why Mahatma K. Gandhi said Christians should reveal Christ by the way they live, not by preaching. Scroll down below listings to “Dialogue and Culture: Mahatma Gandhi’s Attitude to Mission.”
Glean Epiphany sermon, art, movie clip, and liturgical insights from The Text This Week.
Along with remembering Christ’s baptism, Epiphany in the Orthodox tradition often includes a blessing of the waters. Watch a 2-minute video clip of an Epiphany blessing of the waters in Idaho. See and read extensive coverage of the 100th Greek Orthodox Epiphany celebration in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Listen to Greek Orthodox Epiphany hymns.
The Three Wise Men have inspired reams of songs, books, and speculation, including Henry Van Dyke’s classic little book The Story of the Other Wise Man, also known The Fourth Wise Man and made into a movie of the same name.
Read Reformed Worship stories on a dramatic Epiphany reading about Jesus as the Light of Life, a liturgical drama, making an Epiphany banner with kids, praying a litany for worldwide evangelism, worship element ideas for Sundays after Epiphany, and Epiphany hymn selections and calls to worship.
Browse related stories about disability and worship, including more Bible reading in worship, recognizing Christ in the Eucharist, The Worship Sourcebook, and worshiping as the people of God.
Feel free to print and distribute these stories at your council, worship, education, or outreach committee meeting. These questions will get members talking about how to observe Epiphany in your church.
- In what ways and for how long does your congregation observe Epiphany? Which Epiphany themes or practices best fit your church’s mission and vision?
- How many minutes or what percent of the total worship service time does your congregation spend on reading Scripture? What advantages and disadvantages do you see in basing sermons and worship services on the lectionary?
- Which elements of your worship and congregational life work best in an epiphanal mission sense, in other words, by revealing Christ’s light and love so others ask to know more?
What is the best way you’ve found to address and talk about applying Epiphany insights to your church mission? Please write to us so we can identify trends and share your great ideas. Whether you do these or any other things, we’d love to learn what works for you:
- Did you find a way to assess your congregational culture, see how it might prevent others from joining your worship, and make changes that resulted in more inclusive and participative worship? If so, will you share your methods with us?
- Which book, drama resource, visual art, or other idea helped you create more meaningful Epiphany worship?
- If you visited churches from other cultures or traditions, did you notice and adapt any ideas that improved your Epiphany services?
Text by Joan Huyser-Honig
Photography by Steve Huyser-Honig
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This story was originally posted on December 22, 2006. External links were operative at the time the story was posted, but may have expired since then.
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This article was first published by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/.