One of the sillier ideas to emerge from the scientific revolution is the belief that humans could be neutral observers. That is, that humans could survey a scene and coolly observe all that is actually there without distortion. There would be no bias, no preconceived notions and no laziness. But we all know people tend to see what it is they want to see and often block out that which they do not. For example on Saturday, December 29th The University of Notre Dame played Clemson University in a football game. Clemson won the game 30 to 3. In mathematical terms this means that Clemson scored ten times as many points as Notre Dame. By the fourth quarter much of Clemson’s second string was playing. Or put another way Notre Dame only scored three more points than I did and I spent the entirety of the game sitting on my sofa. Afterward a Notre Dame player said this of the game, “I still don’t believe it, honestly, that they’re four touchdowns better, I think we could have definitely competed, we definitely could have won this game.” Somehow this player saw a different game than I did – so much for the neutral observer. The fact is we often see what we want to see and often miss things that we are not even aware that we are missing. To those of us who are Christian some of the explanation for this is less self-interested and more theological in nature. That is we believe that God only chooses to reveal certain things to us at certain times. So the things we miss may not be because of bias, but simply because God has not allowed for us to see it.
St. Paul discusses this in 1st Corinthians when he says that the Lord, “will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness.” We have blind spots built both of our own making and about things that God has not yet revealed. Which may or may not be interesting to you, so let me get to the point I want to make. Today is the Feast of the Epiphany. The name Epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphainein, which means to reveal. Meaning that today is a day, which commemorates a time where God brought to light something that was once hidden in darkness. Something that was there all along but only became understood when God chose for it to be understood.
So I assume most of you know what that is, but if not let’s look to our readings. The Gospel contains the story of the wise men from the East. They have seen a star, which has revealed to them that the King of the Jews has been born. Why this is an epiphany is because of who these wise men are or more properly who they are not. They are not Jewish. If you remember history as comes to us from the Old Testament the Jewish people were the ones that God had set apart to reveal his special plan to. They were chosen and the rest of us were not. There were some possibilities of conversion but it was in many ways a closed system. The revelations before the wise men spotted the star would have been to this specific people. But now with this astronomical revelation to the wise men from the east, God has done something new and has revealed who he is to an entirely new audience. Or as St. Paul puts it, “In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” The Gentiles that Paul mentions are us. So in many ways the epiphany that we remember today is our epiphany.
And so not just to dust off last weeks sermon, but the Epiphany asks a similar question that the birth of Jesus asks which is now that God has revealed himself to not just the chosen people, but to we gentiles, what are we going to do about it? How will we use this new knowledge? Will we act like nothing has happened or will seek out to live into this new reality? And while there are plenty of reactions we can have to the Epiphany, the reaction that I believe it guides us most strongly towards is to be grateful. That is to be thankful to God for what he has revealed to us in Jesus Christ, because in all honesty God did not need to do it. He did it out of love and we should be thankful for that love which to paraphrase the hymn Amazing Grace let those of us who were blind now see.
I discovered something interesting when I was researching this sermon or at least it was to me. There is a feature within Google that shows you the amount a word has been used in writings of a given year going back a few hundred years. And for someone who can often poo-poo new technology I have to say that this is a pretty neat feature. Anyway I looked up the word gratitude and its usage and found that since 1820 to the present time the word gratitude has been in a steady decline. In fact it is now used 78% less than it was in 1820. Interestingly this also corresponds with the greatest rise in living standards in the history of the world. I will leave it for you to contemplate why the better things have gotten the less grateful we have become, but rather I simply want to make the point that it should not be so. Gratitude toward the world and toward God is not just something nice we can do, it is rather a way that we should live in all things. It is the only proper reaction to the God who has created us and sent his Son to save us. But just in case you don’t want to take my word for it or listen to what the Bible says let me give you some other reasons why we should be grateful.
A fair amount of research has been done on gratitude and this research has shown a number of benefits in the lives of grateful people. I don’t want to get into all of them but since I never preach a three-point sermon let me live a little and give you three benefits of being grateful people. And very quickly before I go on let me define gratitude: It is he quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. Okay now onto the benefits:
First: Physical health. A study by Patrick L. Hill, Mathias Allemand and Brent W. Roberts published in January of 2013 found that there was a positive correlation between dispositional gratitude and people’s self-reported physical health. In other words people who were grateful said that they felt better than those who were not. Now you can argue that this is self-reported and so their physical health may not be better in reality, but I would still say that it beats the alternative. Would you rather be in mediocre condition and feel physically healthy or in mediocre condition and feel terrible?
Second: Psychological Health. Robert Emmons, a professor at the University of California at Davis has studied gratitude extensively and found that grateful people are both happier and show lower rates of depression. In addition he finds that being grateful also reduces toxic emotions like envy, resentment and regret.
Third: Better Sleep. So if having better physical and psychological health are not your thing I would imagine that you would at least want a good nights sleep. A 2011 study published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being found that people who keep a gratitude journal, that is people who spend time daily writing down things for which they are grateful, sleep better and longer. So maybe our grandmothers were onto something when they told us to count our blessings.
On this day of the Epiphany we commemorate the moment where God’s promise of salvation was opened to all the people of the earth.This was not something we earned nor that we deserved, but something that God gave freely and generously.Our job is to be grateful for that wonderful gift and to thank God for all of his blessings both now and forevermore.