The 1st Sunday of Epiphany: Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Podcast Message: Are We Related?
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Hello, This is Jade.
Welcome to Yi.kigai
A space for all to explore the intersection between faith and daily life
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Happy Epiphany. It is the 1st Sunday of Epiphany. We have entered the third season of the church calendar. From expecting Jesus’ coming in Advent to celebrating Jesus’ birthday in Christmas, we continue focusing on the life of Jesus as the Son of God for the following seven weeks, which is called the Season of Epiphany .
When I heard the word ‘epiphany’ for the first time, I didn’t have a good grasp of its meaning until I dived deeper into the stories of Jesus in the Bible. The same thing happened to me when I was declared as a child of God by a minister after being baptized at the age of seventeen. “Wow! I’m a child of God now!” I said to myself. Just like that! Immersed in water three times! My understanding of baptism back then was amateur, of course.
What led to my baptism could be one of my childhood experiences. The weekly chapel time during my elementary school years always made me feel weird and curious. It was a Roman Catholic school. Once we entered the sanctuary, believers would sit on the front pews, and people like me, non-believers, would sit on the back pews. I could never see exactly what happened at the front. All I knew was that during the time we were there, believers would receive a meal but not me, a non-believer. Out of curiosity, I asked one of my schoolmates, a believer, “Is the meal delicious?” She smiled and nodded her head. So I asked a nun, “What should I do to become a believer and receive that meal, too?” I remembered she said something but I could neither understand nor remember anything that she told me at the time. My assumption is that she probably told me about baptism, confirmation, affirmation, and communion, which would have not made any sense to me at all since none of my relatives or friends were Christians. A naive me actually wanted a meal more than I wanted to be a believer.
A simple definition of epiphany is: God manifests God-Self and makes God-Self known. A well asked question by Christians, especially ministers, is: where do you see God in your life? Instead of trying to answer this question, it might be a good idea to reflect on this one first: How has God chosen to reveal God-self throughout the Bible? It states in Genesis 1:26 that God created humans through God’s image according to God’s likeness. Based on this, we should see the reflection of God’s image in all humans except God’s divine nature. This means we can’t actually see God fully, right?
After being baptized, I kept wondering, “Is our baptism like an adoption, or are we, between me and God or among all believers along with Jesus our Lord, actually related somehow? St. Paul explained in Romans 6:3-6 that our baptism is the way to partake in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Going under the water represents our death in Jesus, and rising out of the water gives us a new life through Christ.
The existence of Jesus Christ not only offers us a glimpse of what God is but also changes how we should see and treat not only ourselves but others. It gives us hope to know it is going to only get better and better because of God’s affirmation at Jesus' baptism in Luke 3:22. God said, “You are my son.” And because of this fact, we belong to God. I would like to invite you to venture into the season of Epiphany for the following seven weeks. It is my prayer that you may love not only God and yourself more but also love others even more, for we are all related--from the beginning of human history and through the life of Jesus Christ.
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May your coming week be blessed by God’s grace
As together we explore the intersection between faith and daily life
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