Peter Espeut | Epiphany to the Gentiles

Christmas is not only a day; it is a season of 12 - the 12 days of Christmas. Shakespeare fans will know that his play Twelfth Night was a comedy he wrote as Twelfth Night entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. And so it is still appropriate for me to wish my readers a merry and joyous Christmas.

Infancy narratives concerning Jesus occur in the gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke, but they are quite different. Luke, the Gentile (Greek) physician, tells the story of the manifestation (epiphany) of Jesus to lowly Jewish shepherds, and their visitation to the stable. Matthew, the Jewish tax collector, tells of the epiphany of Jesus to the (Gentile) wise men who came "from the East"; some of the nations to the east were Babylon, Persia, India, and China; and we can extend it to Africa. At the time these gospel accounts were written, the gospel message was spreading to the East and elsewhere, carried by Jesus' apostles. Matthew, who wrote for a Jewish audience, emphasised that Jesus was also manifest to Gentiles (like us here in Jamaica), while Luke, writing to Gentiles, emphasised that he was first manifest to the Jewish people.

In Matthew's account, the wise men were looking for the "newborn King of the Jews", and the star they were following "stopped over the place where the child was"; "and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother"; immediately, they went into their luggage and offered expensive gifts (see Matthew 2). Matthew is writing to a more middle-class audience.

In Luke's account, Joseph and Mary were not yet married, and they were strangers in an unfamiliar land when Jesus was born; the shepherds, smelling of sheep after nights sleeping in their pasture in the hills, found Jesus in a stable, lying in a manger (a feeding box for cattle), wearing swaddling (ill-fitting - obviously borrowed) clothes; hardly a setting for the birth of a king.

Humble origin

Luke emphasises the humble origins of Jesus; no doubt at the time, the gospel was being preached to the poor, to refugees, and to persons of humble origin, and this account would resonate with them.

The Bible is not primarily a book of history, or of science, although it contains elements of both; it is primarily a work of theology, written to convey a particular message to a particular audience. Those who satisfy themselves with the literal surface meaning of the scriptures lose out on the deeper, more important message.

In some Eastern countries, January 6 (Epiphany Day) is celebrated as their Christmas, since the coming of the Magi is the manifestation of Jesus to the people of the East. In the West, that celebration is transferred to the nearest Sunday, which is this coming Sunday (called Epiphany Sunday). Those who use the symbolism of the Christmas Crib (started by St Francis of Assisi), will add the figurines of the wise men to the manger scene at this time. It is symbols like these that assist us to visualise the events of long ago, and to internalise their significance.

Evangelical atheists love Christmas; for them, it is a time to attack what fundamentalist Christians hold dear; but they can't touch the deeper significance of these mysteries, which miss them entirely.

As we enter the cycle of a new year, let us appreciate how time is made holy by the regular celebration of feasts and seasons. As the days get lighter, we look towards Easter, when the hours of daylight equal and then exceed the hours of darkness; light finally conquers the darkness, when death is nailed to a cross, to be followed by resurrection. It is towards that more important season that we look forward.

- Peter Espeut is a sociologist and theologian.