Epiphany: Meanings of Manifestation

2 Epiphany A January 18, 2026
Isaiah 49:1-7 Psalm 40:1-12
1 Corinthians 1:1-9 John 1:29-42

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Epiphany means manifestation.  It is the season to ponder the manifestation of Christ to the world.  It is the season of pondering the manifestation of God in Christ.  We are used to the religious words and they can become so banal in their use that we think we know what they mean.  But what does Epiphany as manifestation actually mean?

We must admit that our faith lives, our biblical lives, our church lives are lived out within the public ground of human language.  To come to language in body language deeds or acts, in speech, or word is to have converted the silent inner world where language derives and to have the mystery of language itself "float" to the known public surface in some language product of speech sound, writing, or body language deed.

Epiphany is based upon some assumptions, namely, that humans have some inner access to an unknown which comes into the inner language sphere and is spoken or written as God.  And this God is so inward, and so beyond language, we can only say we know the emanations or energies which proceed from this great Unknown.  And this coming to language in its many forms is a revelation, an unveiling of the unknown, or an Epiphany.  An Epiphany about God is a Theophany.  Rudolph Otto called these experiences the idea of the Holy.  Epiphany or manifestation is giving specific event context to the holy sublime.

What the Gospel writers and New Testament writers believed is that Jesus Christ gave a positive, public, linguistic manifestation of God for humanity in a most exemplary way.

Imagine God as the Sun and Christ as a mirror bearing the image of the sunlight on earth.  And the reflection of this light is the manifestation.  Jesus, himself as presented within the Gospels is seen first as a reforming reflection of God's light to the people of Israel.  But the Gospels also hint that the direction of reflection of the light on and though Jesus as a mirror of God's light comes to shine beyond the land and people of Israel; he becomes known as the light to world beyond the Jews and Judaism. 

St. Paul believed that his churches were comprised by people who had "revealings" of Jesus Christ.  We can safely say that Epiphany, Revelation, and Theophany  are synonyms for the manifestations of the divine to human beings.  The New Testament is about events of the Holy Sublime which occurred in the lives of people, and these events occurred within the interpretative context of attribution of meaning as being Christ events, or Holy Spirit events.

The Epiphany of Christ is really about how Jesus Christ became publicly manifested as a determining interpretive reason for the experience of the Holy Sublime within community.  Interpretation gives identity to experience.

To explain this, the early church understood this, through the words of John the Baptist, as Jesus being one who baptized people with the Holy Spirit.  Speaking in analogy, God as the Sun, emits rays upon a Mirror, Jesus, who in turn shines on other people who have activated within themselves their God-image and who further become mirrors of the Christ light to others.  Epiphany is about the transmission of the manifestation of the light of God through human history.

The church in history represents people who continue to know this reflected light which derived from Jesus as a founding Word of God event for people, through whom they could begin to interpret their lives differently, as God touched, as holy, as knowing the power of transformation from within because they had received a new power of agency in their lives.

Epiphany or manifestation simply put means ours lives have been made different because the interpretation about the meaning of our lives because of the appearance of Jesus Christ, first in his historic person, and then in the succeeding transmission from person to person of the interpretive framework to give a positive content to the holy sublime event of knowing the mystery of God within us.

Let us be thankful for the emanations, the risings from the holy mystery within us to the Eternal Word of Christ who has given us the language for interpreting our lives as touched by God, loved by God, gifted by God, and then given us freedom to be meaningful servants for the benefit of the good of the world.  Amen.