Scripture – Genesis 1:1-5 (NRSV)
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
We must be shown God’s glory again: we must encounter it anew and afresh in the face of Jesus Christ; we must repent of our sin and turn and follow him. This season after Epiphany is about helping us see that glory anew.
Christmas Day is over. The Christmas season, all twelve days of it, has passed. On Wednesday, January 6, the church celebrated Epiphany—a day now mainly associated with singing “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” but historically the occasion on which Christmas gifts were exchanged (because of the obvious connection with the Magi’s gifts) and great Christmas celebrations and festivities occurred. (You can read more about that here.) At any rate, however you consider it, Christmas is finally over.
In my tradition, we celebrate the Sundays after Epiphany and before Lent as a liturgical season of their own. The readings from the Scriptures that are directed for us to read in the church between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday focus on the theme that Epiphany began: Christ’s coming is for everybody, God’s glory is now made manifest, and the Good News includes not only Jews but Gentiles.
And so, in this first weekend after Epiphany, the Old Testament lesson from Genesis directs us to the beginning of God’s grace is extended to all. When did that begin to happen? Genesis 1 answers that question: at the very beginning of creation. We are led to consider the Triune God’s almighty power in bringing the world into being and creating everything that lives within it—from bugs and trees to lions and camels, to human beings made in God’s image. Tomorrow we’ll begin to look at how the life of Jesus manifests the glory of his Father and spreads the gospel of grace, as we focus on Jesus’s baptism in Mark 1. But it’s important to remember that Jesus’s earthly life plays out on a stage set all the way back here in Genesis—a world created by a loving Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for God’s creatures to live in and flourish.
Of course, there’s something rather large that happens between Genesis 1 and Mark 1 that I have not yet mentioned. That rather large thing is human sin, introduced in Genesis 3. Because of it, God’s creation ceases to flourish at its fullest and God’s glory becomes, for us humans, shadowed and difficult to discern. Because of Genesis 3, Mark 1 is necessary. We must be shown the glory again: we must encounter it anew and afresh in the face of Jesus Christ; we must repent of our sin and turn and follow him. This season after Epiphany is about helping us see that glory anew.
There is much on our individual and collective hearts right now that obscures that glory. We are weary and confused as we struggle with the continuing impact of COVID-19 and with political and social turmoil. The way to peace—the way back to that good creation in Genesis 1, and onward to the coming Kingdom that Jesus brings in Mark—lies through repentance and trust. Let us seek the Light of Christ.
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