The Baby Jesus Whose birth was celebrated at Christmas grew up to become the Man Jesus, strong and filled with wisdom and in favor with God and people (Luke 2:40, 52). Initially shepherds and magi may have known that He was the Son of God, but Jesus’s Divinity personally united with His humanity otherwise had to be revealed. The season of Epiphany is all about the revealing of God in the human flesh of Jesus for us, in one sense, from His Baptism to His Transfiguration. All people had to be told that, in the words of one of our hymns, “Jesus has come and brings pleasure eternal” (Lutheran Service Book 533). As the hymn goes on to say, the great Redeemer comes as our friend and sets us free from our guilt and our fear. The hymn goes back to Johann Ludwig Conrad Allendorf (1693-1773), first published in 1735 in 23 stanzas, four of which stanzas more than 200 years later were translated into English by Oliver C. Rupprecht, who offered the translated stanzas for inclusion in the 1982 Lutheran Worship, where they were first published (#78). The hymn is said to be based largely on Luke 1:68-79; 1 John 1:1-2; and Isaiah 12, but dozens of other passages are said to be related to its four stanzas. Notable is what has been called “prison-break imagery” in stanza 2 and stanza 3 that dramatically depicts Jesus as the One stronger than the devil, whom He defeats to rescue all people, part of Jesus’s own teaching about Himself (Matthew 12:29; Luke 11:21-22), which came up after He had cast out a demon and was wrongly accused of being in league with Satan. Another such exorcism is the focus of one of the Gospel Readings heard at Pilgrim this Epiphany season.
The season of Epiphany begins by the day of Epiphany’s marking the magi’s coming as a revelation of Jesus as Lord resulting in their worship, continues with other such showings forth, and ends with the greatest example of Jesus revealing His divine nature, the Transfiguration. In the case of each observance during the Epiphany season, the Gospel Readings enable and call for a response from us to whom Jesus is thereby revealed.
The day of Epiphany itself, January 6th, is sometimes called “Gentiles’ Christmas”, as the magi brought three gifts to the boy Jesus. Pilgrim again this year offers a special Divine Service, planned for 10:00 a.m. on the day of Epiphany, when we worship the crucified and resurrected man Jesus by seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sins He won for us on the cross.
The First Sunday after Epiphany (January 7th, this year) commemorates The Baptism of Our Lord (Mark 1:4-11). That event is one of the clearest revelations of our Triune God as Father (the voice from heaven), Son (the man Jesus standing in the Jordan River), and Holy Spirit (the dove). And, in being baptized, Jesus sets apart as holy such a washing for our forgiveness of sins. We do not witness the epiphany of the Trinity as did those present there that day, but we have our own epiphanies, as it were, in our baptisms, which connect us to Jesus’s death and resurrection (Romans 6:1-14), and thereby give those who believe the forgiveness of sins and so also eternal life.
The Epiphany season begins and ends with the church using the color white, appropriate for baptism and the light and purity of our Lord, but for the Sundays in between the church uses green, the color of growth, leaves, foliage, fruit, and life, suggesting spiritual growth. Such spiritual growth comes about by the pure preaching of the Gospel and right administration of the Sacraments. As God wills, such spiritual growth also can be accompanied by numerical growth, as He creates faith when and where He pleases in those who hear the Gospel.
The following are the “green” Sundays in Epiphany 2024 and their Gospel Readings (appointed by Lutheran Service Book’s three-year lectionary series B, which largely uses the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark).
- Second Sunday after the Epiphany (1/14): Jesus calls two disciples (John 1:43-51)
- Third Sunday after the Epiphany (1/21): Jesus preaches and calls more disciples (Mark 1:14-20)
- Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (1/28): Jesus teaches with authority (Mark 1:21-28)
- Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (2/4): Jesus heals and casts out demons (Mark 1:29-39)
No matter how many Sundays there are in Epiphany, in Lutheran practice dating back to the Reformation, the last Sunday is always The Transfiguration of our Lord (February 11th, this year). The Transfiguration is the greatest revelation of Jesus as Lord, right before He sets out in earnest to die on the cross for all people’s sins (Mark 9:2-9).
During the Season of Epiphany this year, we also observe the Feast of the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of Our Lord, a principle feast of Christ, with a 7:00 p.m. Divine Service on Friday, February 2nd, recalling the holy family’s going up to Jerusalem to do as the law required forty days after Jesus’s birth and their receiving more than they might have imagined (Luke 2:22-40).
You are always welcome at Pilgrim in person, but even here online you can read and hear the sermons at Pilgrim from the Season of Epiphany and from every season of the Church Year. (An audio file and a video file of the most recent service, when available, and a follow-along PDF are available near the top of the grey area to the right.)
The banner graphic at the top of this page and the corresponding slider graphic on the front page were composed by Katy Myer, whom we hereby thank, using Rudolf Lehr’s public-domain image of an eleventh-century Romanesque fresco from the Lambach Abbey in Austria found on Wikimedia and the image of the music for the tune JESUS IST KOMMEN, GRUND WEIGER FREUDE generated by Lutheran Service Builder (copyright 2023 Concordia Publishing House, used by permission under license number 110005153).
