Homily For The First Sunday After Epiphany 2026
Epiphany means manifestation. A light directing toward the truth. What is important to understand is that it isn’t just knowledge or genius. We shouldn’t understand it as merely a sudden realization. Epiphany can be defined as the proper use of light; the proper use of knowledge to gain wisdom. Wisdom is that which leads to spiritual life, for it is the right use of what God has revealed. Last week we made our way on our journey in the Christian year following the wisdom of the Magi - their proper use of the star which beckoned them. The proper use of the light of the Magi was the worship of the Messiah. Epiphany season beckons us to bring the same zeal and commitment to ponder anew and to worship more completely the wonder of Jesus Christ coming in the flesh.
This morning I want us to consider the manifestation of God’s glorious presence in Jesus as the living sacrifice - the eternal son who was always about His heavenly Father’s business as a living sacrifice, being subject to his mother and father in Nazareth. Truly, Jesus was the glorious manifestation of God’s presence by being the epitome of a living sacrifice.
Our Gospel presents unto us the only episode about Christ written in the Gospels of Our Lord between his return to Nazareth and the initiation of his public ministry at age 30. It is instructive for it reveals Jesus on the brink of Jewish manhood - a year shy of taking the fullest of the responsibilities of covenant faithfulness in his barmitzva. As I have said on numerous occasions, in years past, this travel narrative shows us the commitment of the Holy Family, as poor as they were, to the joys and common challenges of the worship of God’s people.
You may recall that men were required to appear before the Lord three times a year for the great festivals of the Old Covenant. Women were not required to come to Jerusalem, but what a testimony of faithfulness that they wanted to come. To make that long journey to be among God’s people.
We read that after the festival, Mary and Joseph made their way back to Nazareth in a communal caravan of the faithful from Nazareth - the men walking with men and the ladies and children in their own group. Jesus was still a child but on the verge of manhood so it was reasonable for Mary to think that Jesus was with Joseph while Joseph wouldn’t be wrong to assume Jesus was walking with Mary. Yet, we read Jesus was with neither group. He was in the temple. He was among the religious elites. He was so fixated on gaining wisdom and understanding - that he stayed behind to ask questions of these men.
I want to direct our attention to the final couple of sentences. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: …. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
Jesus, the sinless eternal Son of God, was subject to relatively uneducated, working class parents. He models for us, even in his youth, St. Paul’s concept of being a living sacrifice, as we read in our Epistle. In describing his formation in Nazareth, we are told he increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. Jesus was fully integrated in his personhood, but that didn’t come by the means we hear from modern self-help gurus. It was not a matter of his expanding self-expression, self-will or seeking self-fulfilment. Jesus grew through his humility and submission. The kind of growth in wisdom Jesus shows us, this divine enlightenment comes to the humble heart that submits itself to being dead to self and alive in Christ.
St. Paul, toward the end of his great Epistle to the Romans, begs the Romans saying, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” St. Paul uses the language of the Temple - calling to mind the placement of one’s whole person - body and soul - on the altar. Complete self-giving to the Lord in response to God’s mercies. Sacrifices yet living. As it has been said, “the Christian’s self-offering is actually all about coming alive with the new life that bursts out in unexpected ways once the evil deeds of the self are put to death…It begins in the glad self-offering of one’s whole self to the God whose mercy has come all the way to meet us in our rebellion, sin and death.” The Christian’s ongoing self-offering will result in a new way of engaging with the world.
St. Paul describes this transformation as a renewing of the mind.
Renewal of mind is a complete reorientation according to God’s plan for His creation. In many ways it is contrary to all the ways of this world which rest in conformity - conformity to our own wills and desires and being pressed into the mold of what the broader culture expects. This renewal of mind leads to a right-mindedness about these things. What I mean is a true estimation of the way things are - which is a mark of true, godly wisdom. Looking at life through the lens of faith noting that God the creator of us all has given different gifts to individuals within the Body. Acknowledging the reality that we are all indeed members together in the Body of Christ - united in our identity in Him, in our belonging in Him. As we are members of one another, as we are parts of Christ’s one Body, we will find our identity in the Lord Jesus and in one another.
On this first Sunday in Epiphany, let us embrace the reality of the submission of Christ in Nazareth, and like Him let us embrace a willingness to trust in God’s good purposes toward us. We know that God works all things together for our good. We know that God has prepared good works for us to walk in that we might grow in wisdom and in the practice of the Faith. Let us meditate on the example of the young Jesus, who knew He was the eternal Father’s Son and yet submitted himself to the common headship of his parents so that all mankind might be saved. Let us marvel that the works of God were accomplished through common obedience in the lowly carpenter’s shop of Joseph for 30 years, that was 90 percent of Christ’s earthly life. Let us join him in the mundane, the common activity of offering our bodies as living sacrifices. Amen.
