What Do We See?

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Epiphany 1
January 9, 2022
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
​
Please turn to the mysterious illustration in your service bulletin.  You see a duck, right?  That is a picture of a duck.  No?  Perhaps you see a rabbit.  Thus, this is a picture of a rabbit.  Whatever you see first, is what you see.  If someone tells you they see something different, then you can go looking for it, or just argue with them.  Perhaps you have seen this illustration before, so the illusion of the first time is lost on you.  What we have here is a picture in which you we may find a rabbit and a duck.  Of course, it is just a picture, and not an actual rabbit or duck, but what we see depends on our frame of reference.  If you had never seen a duck or a rabbit, it would take no form at all.  Experience gives us the imagination to see things.
 
When I was a kid, my best friend, Elizabeth, and I had two major passions: climbing trees and imagining we were something or someone else.  Elizabeth lived in the oldest surviving house in continuous use in Athens, Georgia.  To this day, the house is known as Pink Chimneys.  Other homes claim the moniker of oldest because, while built in 1788 Pink Chimneys was moved from a neighboring county to downtown Athens in 1840, then to its current location in 1856.  There were numbers on the heart pine floor planks so they would reassemble them in the right places.  I will let the preservationists argue the facts, but for us, the house super old, creaky, drafty, haunted, and purely magical.  It was a perfect palate for our imaginatively created worlds.  Being that old, it was surrounded ancient trees.  The magnolias were gargantuan, and perfect for climbing. 
 
On Sunday’s after church, while the grownups shared sandwiches and a more liquid lunch on the generous front porch, Elizabeth and I would gobble down a peanut butter and honey sandwiches, change into our play clothes, and begin scaling the magnolias, quietly.  We climbed as high as we could go (like 80 feet high!), then hide in the canopy, and eavesdrop on our parents as they critiqued the sermon and shared juicy town gossip.  We played like we were birds, chirping, and signaling one another.  These days, such adventures would require ropes, helmets, and safety harnesses.  Clearly, we survived. 
 
Elizabeth and I are still friends, and when we get together, we recount our adventures.  My memories and her memories match exactly.  While many of the trees fell victim to ice storms and the progress of intown development, a few of those immense scions of deep time remain, reminding us that we were once more fearless and imaginative.  I will never forget seeing my grounded world from 80 feet in the air, hiding out above the parental sight line, and hearing the things grownups talked about when they did not know we were listening.  I promise this is going somewhere.
 
Embedded in this past week was the actual day of Epiphany, January 6th.  It is a day to match experience with imagination.  It is the last of the 12 days of Christmas and is remembered as the day the Wise Men from the east visited the Christ Child.  In many cultures, Epiphany is the gift giving day.  It is the day we hold up the belief that Jesus comes for everybody, not just the stable attending originals.  And the word, Epiphany, is loaded.  It implies an “aha” moment, a happening, or observation of something that changes how and what we see, feel, or experience the world.  It is like seeing a place you have always known for the first time, like from the top of a tree, or being given a second chance to stare at a picture.
 
Wasting no time, the next story we tell is the story of Jesus’ Baptism.  Between baby and God man, we get very little detail.  What we do know is that two of the Gospels skip the birth narrative altogether and start where we are today.  Whether it is an Epiphany to the shepherds, the wise men, or onlookers by the Jordan River, the stories are packed with big special effects: signs of wonder, a voice from heaven, and awestruck people who know this child/man is big news.
 
Maybe, we are so accustomed to the stories that we miss their outright shock value and implications.  Christmas has been mass marketed, and Jesus’ Baptism story is repeated three or four times each year.  If we have lots of babies, we go there even more.
 
I am convinced that like we do with creation, sacraments, and the stories of God’s incarnation, God’s insistent and persistent epiphany among us gets relegated to a shelf in our minds; reserved as mythic legend or fodder for Sunday school felt boards. 
 
Wake up.  That is what Epiphany says.  Wake up not to a God with a beard and white robes hurling lightning bolts from the sky, rather wake up to the God who decides to love us, to love with us, and to act in and through us, despite our dulled or limited vision.  Wake up to the knee shaking wonder and miracle that is life and love.  Life and love eclipse everything with their power and presence.  This is the God we are here to meet.  This is the God who, when met, gets our attention. 
 
Is it a duck or a rabbit?  The answer is yes.  What we see depends on what we seek.  Get that imagination working.  We were created with that too.  Get into a new head and heart space and expect Epiphany.  If all else fails, climb a tree.  Climb a mountain.  Look out a forgotten window.  Be amazed.  Tell us about it.  Shock us.  Shock yourself.  It is all Epiphany.  Amen.