The Aphorisms of Epiphany

Wherever you are on your Spiritual Journey, you have a Place at Epiphany

There are two theological presuppositions woven like a double helix into this aphorism:

1. Everyone is on a spiritual journey.  If a person is alive, they are on a spiritual journey. Therefore, the question becomes: Is this spiritual journey accidental, or is it intentional? The journey is taking place one way or the other. Is it ignored or owned? Epiphany exists to help people move with intentionality along on their spiritual journey.

    

2. Everyone is included. No doctrinal affirmation or belief administration is required to be in the Kingdom of God.  To be is to be included in God’s realm. Epiphany exists as a place where full inclusion plays out in all patterns of her communal life.

Belonging Before Believing

To be is to belong. It is a function of the place we take up, bodily, in space and time. Believing is how we understand this place and thus how we engage the world. Belief changes over time. Belonging does not. It is foundational, as it acknowledges that a body belongs, in relationship, to all other bodies that occupy the same space and time. It is because of this interconnection that Epiphany cares for people, housing the unhoused, feeding the hungry, visiting the lonely, and mourning with those who grieve. Because they are, they belong, which means they belong to us; as we belong to them. This theology has broad application, including not only people, but also animals and the environment. Creation care is an offshoot of this aphorism. Epiphany exists as a place where every being always has a home.

The Church is a Spiritual Gym

Doing changes us. The spirit, like the body, is molded and shaped by what it does. Belief is not a prerequisite for spiritual formation. Practicing the spiritual exercises is the requirement for spiritual formation. Epiphany teaches and presents the spiritual exercises. There are many, but the core exercises are the seven practiced by all spiritually impactful religions. These seven are divided into two zones of engagement, sublunary and somatic.

• Sublunary spiritual exercises are those in which time is set aside in a consistent and disciplined way to pay attention to God.
  • Worship – This communal exercise, set in church at a specific time is designed as a liturgy to synthesize the activities of mind and body, in unison as community, so as to reveal and refresh the soul. Liturgy means “the work of the people.” The deep work of Epiphany is to gather community in a way that blesses and renews souls, for invigorated souls lend stability and health to the world.
  • Prayer – There are two broad categories of prayer:
    • Soul connection – These prayers seek to engage the involuntary aspects of the body as an approximation for the soul, which is that into which God pours forth Trinitarian love into all people. These prayers include centering prayer, heart meditation, breath prayer, and others, toward sensate communion with the soul, and thus the satiating love of God. 
    • God attention – These prayers seek intentional conversation with God.  Prayers of intercession, the daily offices, Lectio and Visio Divina, and other active God seeking prayers fall into this category.
  • Calendar – The liturgical calendar is designed to move a person through cycles of time in a pattern of spiritual ascent. This calendar includes seasons of: justice for the world (Advent), reflection on the worldly presences of God (Christmas), activities of temporal transformation (Epiphany), soul consideration (Lent), reflections on the eternal presence of God (Easter), and temporal engagement that promises eternal impact (Pentecost).
  • Sabbath – This day is one choreographed with intention, to mimic an ideal day in one’s life. It includes time with God, time with family, time to play, time to feast, and time to rest. A Sabbath day is planned out, and lived out, in a pattern of three days in preparation, one day of participation, and three days of remembrance.
  • Pilgrimage – This is a vacation with God, taken to holy places, made so by people who have prayed there in the past. Pilgrimages are active, communal, and prayer oriented. 
• Somatic spiritual exercises are those that seek to break the habits of physical and material tyranny.
  • Fasting – This exercise regains hegemony over the habits and desires of the body.  Denying the body food for a period of time is the most conventional and effective type of fast.
  • Tithing – This exercise regains hegemony over the habits of consumption and fear of scarcity. The exercise of giving away 10% of one’s income acknowledges that one manages, not owns, the resources under their control, as temporary stewards, for all comes from and returns to God. It has the secondary effect of supporting the one institution set in place to engage God in worship and teach about God through the person of Jesus Christ, that is the church.

Epiphany is a Learning Church

Christianity is infinitely interesting and intellectually rigorous. To study one’s way into understanding God, and the person of Jesus, is a well trodden path. This requires well-educated teachers ready to engage the inquirer, and committed to teaching theology from the pulpit and in classrooms. Learning venues that cater to people with different intellectual orientations and capacities is a hallmark of Epiphany as a learning church.

The Bad Thing is never the Last Thing

This statement is about the resurrection of Jesus. There are three sides to the equilateral triangle of resurrection theology: love, eternal life, and human freedom. These are braided together and reflected out through this aphorism. The last thing, then, is always good, because it arrives at God, and God is love. Epiphany is designed to be an institutional sonnet of this divine love song. 

• Love – This represents what God is and what God does, and how humans are to engage one another. There are four types of love: storge, philia, eros, and agape, but only agape love represents the love in God and of God. Agape is the kind of love that binds the Trinity and is produced by the Trinity. It is the love that initiated creation, resulting in the presence of humanity. It is a love received by humanity in their souls, and which cannot be reciprocated in-kind back to God, and so, at best finds recourse through love of neighbor. It is a love that transcends feelings and thoughts. It is bigger than how one is doing, or what one wishes to have happen. Agape is the love of equanimity, undergirded by a steady sense of joy, irrespective of what’s happening in the world around. It is the love that inspired the quote taken from the Gospel of John: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that all who believe in him may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
• Eternal life – This concept is predicated on the idea that what God starts continues on ad infinitum. Love for humanity, once started, lasts eternally, which is why we are, and must be, eternal beings. In other words, God Never Puts an End To Anything That God Loves.
• Human freedom – There is no love if there is no freedom. For regularly functioning human beings, freedom of choice, in matters of God, is a critical necessity if God’s agape love is to be received. This is why the resurrection of Jesus, even at the time scripture was canonized, acknowledges that some who met the risen Jesus, did not believe it was so. For love to be agape love, it must be chosen without any coercion.

Relationship is Primary

This aphorism honors the interconnectedness of creation as a reflection of the interconnectedness of the Trinity, that plays out in the valuing of human relationships as lived out through person to person expression of agape love.

The Kingdom of God is Right Here, Right Now

The Kingdom of God (also referred to as the kingdom of heaven) is where God lives. It is the place where what God wants to have happens always happens the way God wants it to happen. It is in the past. It is in the future. It is in dimensions beyond our imagination. It includes all places and all people, always. And it is right now. The claim of God’s permanent presence in all places, when made in parallel with the claim that God is love, often provokes the theodicy cry: “then why does God let bad things happen (to good people)?” Epiphany exists to teach about the Kingdom of God by orienting people away from their particular perspective, towards God’s broader point of view. There are three main points here: one, to differentiate God’s perspective from human perspective; two, to understand the guardrails God built for humanity; and three, to glean human freedom as a fundamental necessity for the love of God to be realized.

• God’s perspective: The prophet Isaiah captures this best when he writes of God: “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor my ways your ways,’ says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and snow fall from heaven, and do not return but water the earth, bring you forth life and giving growth, seed for sowing and bread for eating; so, my word shall go forth from my mouth, and it shall not return to me empty, but accomplish that for which I purposed, and succeed in that for which I have sent it” (Isa 55:58-60). Human perspective is bound by death, God’s is not. When a person dies, mortal separation occurs. They are gone to their neighbors, but not gone to God; for the soul comes from God, goes to God, is hewn from the love of God, so love can be known; and if loved and made in love, then never to be extinguished by God. For God never puts an end to anything that God loves, and God loves people, every single soul.
• God’s guardrails: The patterns of God’s kingdom provide boundaries for human life. Within these guardrails human freedom can be expressed, with the hope of experiencing and even knowing God’s agape love. Guardrails are those things that create stability and consistency in the patterns of human life: the sun, moon and stars in their courses; the gravity of the ground; the cycles of the seasons; and the patterns of birth and death.  These are performative within God’s kingdom, against which no human agency can alter. Science is the study of the guardrails of God.
• True love necessitates human freedom. Within the Kingdom of God, then, there are a multitude of smaller kingdoms, made also by God, then given away by God, as the residence of individual, human will. The theological term for these little human fiefdoms is earth. Here, resides human freedom, where choice plays out within the human heart, in the dynamic of human dyads, and in the midst of human community.  Within these venues human choice is carried out. While God has a preference for which choices are made, God refrains from tactical interference, for to interfere in human freedom is to deny access to divine love, for there is no love if there isn’t true freedom.

  The message then, from Epiphany, is toward an understanding that God has organized creation for our eternal best interest because God loves us. It is also important to remember that much of “the bad things of life” are generated by people, radiating from choices made for earth preservation, not heavenly integration. Epiphany exists to teach and train individual choice to align with God’s desire for each choice made. This preference is captured within the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught: “On earth as it is in heaven.” The deep joy that radiates from a life lived within the flow of heaven exists and is sustained irrespective of the ups and downs of life when habits of the heart, and patterns of personal engagement, and participation in communal justice look like a regular day in a person’s life. Life in this flow is the realization of the presence of God right here, right now.

Humanity is a Royal Priesthood

This is the title for a human being because it speaks to our complex nature, as well as, our providential responsibility. For we are temporal and eternal; mortal and immortal; physical and spiritual… simultaneously, fully and completely, indivisibly as singular, unique, human beings. The title represents our two responsibilities: Kings and Queens who care for creation and for one another. That is our royal obligation. And Priests to connect and commune with God. That is our sacred duty. These responsibilities are as applicable today, as they were 1,000 years ago, or 10,000 years ago, and as they will be in 2070. The Royal Priesthood is our cruciform identity, symbolized by the cross: with the vertical stroke representing our connection to God, the Priesthood. And the horizontal stroke represents our connection to one another and the world, our Royalty.