It’s a weird calendar this year for us church folk. Christmas Eve was on the Fourth Sunday in Advent, and Ash Wednesday will be on Valentine’s Day again. This past Saturday, January 6, was the Feast of the Epiphany—a feast you would think would be transferred to the nearest Sunday, but flanked by the First Sunday After Christmas and The Baptism of Our Lord, it wasn’t.

In my church, we marked all of the themes in the coming weeks post-Epiphany before focusing on the Baptism of Our Lord. Our Dean, the Very Rev. Dr. S. Scott Hunter, shared with us his own realization that epiphany is not a moment, but a movement.

These Sundays between Epiphany and Lent have traditionally been considered “Ordinary Time,” which begins now, is interrupted by Lent and Easter (interrupting is kind of what Easter does), and continues as the Sundays after Pentecost. All of those Sundays—after the Epiphany and after Pentecost—follow a sequence of numbered “propers” (appointed prayers and readings) in the Prayer Book and lectionary, adjusted to fit the number of weeks so that they land in the right place at the end of the Church year.

They are “ordinary” in the sense that they are numbered.

And so once upon a time, green was the liturgical color used this time of year (and still is in some places). However, many churches have moved to using white throughout this ordinary time, making a season of Epiphanytide. Which seems like a natural move, given the propers that mark the visit of the magi to the Christ child, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, the miracle of changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana, and, just prior to the start of Lent, the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountain, flanked by Moses and Elijah. All of those epiphanies make sense placed between Christmas and Lent/Easter. Not only do they work that way chronologically in the Gospels, but they also unfold for us the revelation of God in Jesus’ incarnation.

Did I say “the revelation”?

I think I’d rather be nit-picky here and call it the “revelations” of God in Jesus’ incarnation. Sure, one could get all Scholastic and argue it’s all of a piece, part of the one great action of God reverberating through time-space. But we can’t actually see things from God’s perspective. I think it’s both safest and most useful to talk about the way we experience and perceive God’s activity in history. Each of these moments show us something we need to see and so propel us in the movement Dean Hunter was talking about.

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So in this time between Christmas and Easter, as we move through the life and ministry of Christ, we see a set of revelations (epiphanies) that build to give us a picture of who Christ is. We already heard how his birth announcement was made by angels—to no one, apparently, except some shepherds. Were they the only people who were able to hear it?

Now, some number of Gentile astrologers (magi) turn up when little Jesus is a toddler, and give him gifts that are wildly inappropriate for a child his age, and (other than the gold) probably not of much use to anyone in his family. The gifts have long been understood to symbolize Jesus’ being a king (gold), being God (incense), and being mortal (myrrh). But in telling us this story, St. Matthew wants us to recall God’s promises that “nations will stream to your [Israel’s] light, and kings to the brightness of your dawning” (from the Surge, illuminare, the Third Song of Isaiah).

Next—and this calendar year, it was literally the next day—we find Jesus being baptized in the Jordan River by John, who St. Luke tells us, was some kind of cousin of Jesus’. Since John was baptizing people as a sign of repentance, he speaks for the reader of the text when he says, “Um, you should be baptizing me! But, if that’s what you want, then…okay?”

Jesus’ baptism is a bit confusing. Why does he seek out and receive baptism? Like any good question, I doubt it has just one simple answer. If that is the case, then I can offer a few reasons I presume to be small pieces of the mosaic.

Traditionally, it is said that in being baptized, Jesus consecrates all the earth’s waters. However, we still consecrate water for baptism.

The Jordan is notoriously muddy. Whether it was in Jesus’ day, I don’t know; but with all the people flocking to John to be baptized there, it probably was. So maybe we’re seeing the first of many instances where Jesus is unconcerned with cleanliness (ritual or literal).

At any rate, what happens next to Jesus transforms John’s baptism into Christian baptism: the Holy Spirit alights on him, sent by the Father, who names him the beloved Son.

As the Orthodox Churches see it, this is a very special theophany. We see not only the anointing of Jesus as the Christ; not only his divinity; but the Holy Trinity is revealed in human history for the first time.

Next we move to the wedding feast at Cana. Jesus and his mother are invited guests. You likely know the story: the wine runs out; Jesus’ mother nudges him to do something about it; he snaps back that it’s not his “time.” Mary doesn’t accept that. Perhaps she knows that his identity has already been revealed numerous times, so what is this “it’s not my time;” and anyway, you could argue he got a head start on public ministry when he got into those discussions in the Temple at age 12. So Mary goes around Jesus and simply tells the servants to “do whatever he tells you.” And instead of telling them, “Leave me alone,” Jesus does as his mother had requested. The water becomes wine—from the text, it seems that happens as it’s drawn out of the jugs that Jesus had told them to fill—and the host quips to the bridegroom, “Wow, normally the good wine is put out first, and once everyone’s too drunk to know the difference, then out comes the schlock. But you did it the other way ’round!” St. John the Evangelist calls this Jesus’ first public miracle. It seems to hint toward the superabundance we meet in the ritualized feast of the Eucharist.

Not long before he heads to Jerusalem to stir up some trouble that will get him crucified, we’re told Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain, where Moses and Elijah appear, and start conversing with Jesus. These three disciples were understandably too distracted to get down for us what the conversation was about. As they watched, Jesus was transfigured. What does that mean, though? We’re told he was shining brightly and clothed in the purest white; these are symbols of such things as glory, purity, and divinity, no doubt. The Father’s voice returned, or perhaps just reechoed through space-time, and was heard saying, “This is my Son; listen to him.”

Thus these weeks of “ordinary time” following the Epiphany to the magi are simply not allowed to be ordinary. Perhaps a lesson here is that we can expect eruptions of theophany at any moment, no matter how quotidian. We may be hanging out by a river, or trying to do the right things to get right with God; we may be hanging out with friends or celebrating a special though fairly ordinary occasion; we might be making our way from point A to point B when Jesus decides to have us come with him up a mountain. Now that God has entered God’s creation in the Incarnation, all of this is perfectly “ordinary.”

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So when is the next epiphany?

We know Easter is ahead. Jesus, having been killed, will rise from the dead and appear in various ways to various people before disappearing at his Ascension. The Holy Spirit will be given as a gift at Pentecost to anyone who wants it. All of these occasions reveal God—perhaps even in the flashy ways we would expect.

But they don’t come next. What comes next, after the journey of Lent, is the epiphany St. Mark seems to want to emphasize toward the end of his gospel: “Surely, this man was a son of God,” says some nameless Roman centurion (whom tradition names Longinus) who likely had just participated in the spectacle of mockery and terror typical of crucifixions.

But all the Evangelists recognize that the Cross really is Jesus’ exaltation. On the Cross, Jesus reveals most clearly what God is like. All the glistening revelations prior to this have hopefully gotten our attention enough that we recognize Jesus as God enough to recognize God as cruelly cast aside by the interests and powers and values of this world.

So let’s train our vision this Epiphanytide so that we can move intentionally through Lent to live as though we really do worship God enthroned on the Cross this Good Friday.

(It’ll be here pretty early this year.)