January 11, 2026 – First Sunday of Epiphany
Isaiah 49.1-6
Luke 2.25-25
A Life Fully Lived
First Sunday of Epiphany
During Coffee Hour last week I enjoyed a conversation with one of you about the meaning of Epiphany, the season of the church between Christmastide and Lent which began on Tuesday. As we have seen in the past, Epiphany represents a number of different Bible stories. It begins on the twelfth day of Christmas, January 6, when tradition has it the magi found their way to the manger of Jesus and presented their gifts. It represents this morning’s story of Jesus’ presentation in the Jerusalem temple which we’ll talk about today. Epiphany celebrates the time when the 12 year old Jesus returned to the temple without his parents’ knowledge and sat with the teachers and elders, amazing them with his understanding. Epiphany is when John the Baptist baptized Jesus. It is the occasion of Jesus’ first public miracle changing water into wine at the wedding feat in Cana. It represents his temptation in the wilderness by Satan. I wrote on Friday about occasions that require some heavy lifting; Epiphany requires quite a lot of it in order to carry these multiple and varied biblical stories and events. In fact you might remember I once did a sermon series on all the Bible stories that comprise Epiphany and I ran out of Sundays before I was finished!
What ties all these stories together is the idea of the manifestation of Jesus to the world – the word epiphany literally means manifestation: it is from the Greek epi – or “upon,” and phainein, “to shine light;” epiphaneia is to shine a light upon Jesus, to make Jesus seen and known.
This morning’s epiphany story is the one of Simeon greeting the infant Jesus in the temple. As Luke tells it, Simeon had been waiting his entire life to see the expected Messiah. In v. 26 we read, “It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” And sure enough, when Mary and Joseph brought the child Jesus to the temple, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon recognized that his lifetime of waiting was over. As he swept the child into his arms, the full knowledge of who this Jesus was and what he would become was manifest to Simeon in a moment. And he offered a prayer, a song of praise: “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”
Yesterday I put one of my best friends to rest. Rolland Harvey, which nobody called him – even his mother called him by his nickname, Boot – Boot Harvey died last month at the age of 93. Boot was an active member of my church in Bridgewater, CT, and from my earliest days as their minister, he and I quickly became close friends. I was still running in those days, and one of the first things he did was invite me to his weekly running club first thing every Saturday morning. He began to introduce me to some of his friends in the community, and since Boot sat on the Select Board and served as the chief of the local volunteer fire department, he had a lot of friends. He was a leader in the church, though he would never admit it. He served as a Trustee for many years and oversaw a variety of projects that maintained and improved the building and its grounds. Probably the best way to describe him though is that he was a little boy in a grown-up’s garb. He loved to have a good time, and the stories I can tell about Boot are numerous, they are hilarious, and only about half of them can properly be told in church.
You may remember the story I shared a few years ago about purchasing and installing a new organ in the church. We bought it from Hartford’s Trinity College Chapel, and in order to save money, we did much of the non-technical work ourselves, which included the careful dismantling, transporting and reassembling the of the instrument. Boot had a pickup truck, and on one of our trips to Hartford and back we loaded up the truck bed with some of the organ pipes, which we were careful to secure for the hour trip west. Well, on the way back to Bridgewater, driving interstate 84 somewhere near New Britain, Boot’s truck started making noises. Just great. Here we were with a truckload of delicate cargo and something is wrong with the truck. Boot pulled over, opened the hood and listened, but the noise had stopped. He started off again, and the same thing happened. It was a deep, bellowing howl, he stopped again, and so did the bellow. It was only after it happened a third time that Boot realized what it was: the organ pipes were sounding as Boot’s truck accelerated, 65 miles an hour worth of winds blowing through every exposed pipe. As I mentioned before church, this wasn’t the first time Boot heard noises!
But one of the things I appreciated most about him was his equanimity. Boot was a rock-ribbed Republican, he was active in local elections, and as I said, he was a selectman, so he had skin in the game. Like Chester, the town held local elections every two years, and in Bridgewater, politics was a contact sport. It got to the point where every two years, around the middle of October, I would need to preach a sermon about being civil to one another, and to leave your politics at the door when you come to church. I once had to admonish a parishioner who was not only campaigning but handing out T shirts and bumper stickers during coffee hour. But Boot never, ever, went negative. He had strong opinions, but he would go out of his way to reach out to the other side and make certain that friendships were not spoiled, that opponents respected one another, and that most major differences were limited to town hall. He led by example, he respected everyone regardless of their party or opinion, and he never lost a friendship over politics. It reminded me of Simeon’s song of praise when he said God’s salvation is intended for both Jews and Gentiles alike. In Simeon’s world, you would be hard-pressed to find two peoples more diametrically opposite, more antagonistic, than Jews and Gentiles. But in that moment in the temple, it was clear God favored both and all.
Boot was a dear friend. We ran together. We went fishing together. As Chair of the Trustees we managed the church’s resources together. We traveled to the deep woods of Maine to scatter a friend’s ashes together. We served the Fire Department together. We worked together at the annual Bridgewater Fair. I married his son Dave; I buried his bride Ann, the love of his life. And I share his story this morning because like Simeon, Boot had lived a full life, an ordinary and faithful and joyous life, and when his time came, he had no regrets. As we read at his service yesterday morning, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation.”
The season of Epiphany is about the manifestation of Jesus to the world. And on this first Sunday of Epiphany, we might ask the question “How do we manifest Jesus to a watching and waiting world? What of his traits, his teachings, his characteristics, his example, does each of us carry in us? What do we do to bring people together? Have we demonstrated ways of disagreeing with others in ways that maintain respect and regard for the other? Have we gone out of our way to make a stranger or newcomer feel welcome? Have we engaged them? I think of these questions a lot in these days when so many of us are taking to the streets with signs and loud slogans and a loud and powerful witness to the need for justice and fairness and democracy and the rule of law in our nation. Have we modeled the love and grace of Jesus in ways that have made a difference for people around us? The answer to all of these I think is Yes, Yes we have. I know we have done these things as a congregation, we have done these things as individuals on our own, I know we continue to do them in the name and for the sake of Jesus. These are some of the ways we manifest Jesus, we epiphanize him, we shine a light on who he is to us, who he is to our sisters and brothers and who he is to the world. When Simeon held the infant in his arms, all of this flooded through him, he cradled the love of the world in his own arms, and knew that his life was complete.
I thought of Simeon earlier this week when I read through a book Marie Ready gave me. It is titled Teal Book of Wisdom, written by her son Rick. The chapter he wrote about his grandmother Ethel, Marie’s mother, carries echoes of what I read in the story of Simeon, only in a sweet twist, the roles are reversed. Grandma Ethel had just been released from the hospital after being treated for breast cancer. Here is how eight year old Rick experienced it: “I remember the excitement when she saw me after she was released from the hospital. I was eight. She literally jumped with joy and hugged me. She had a special, but not overpowering, clean, flowery perfume that I could smell when she gave me a hug. I can smell it now as I think of her.” Where aged Simeon held the infant Jesus in his arms in wonder and joy and love, eight year old Rick rushed into his grandmother’s arms with the same sense of wonder and joy and love. And while the scent of the temple environs filled Simeon with the knowledge of holiness and love of God, in many ways Grandmother Ethel’s perfume did the same for her grandson. Each is a moment of holiness. She passed not long after this, and her joy was complete. As was Boot’s. As was Simeon’s. And with hearts full of the love and justice and grace of that infant Jesus, so are ours.