Readings for Epiphany Sunday: Is. 60:1-6; Ps. 72: 1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Eph. 3:2-3a, 5-6; Mt. 2: 1-12
Just last night, I found myself in a ZOOM conversation with colleagues at OpEdNews.. The name of Cornel West came up. My friends referenced his discussion with Norman Finkelstein, and West's insistence on regarding Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters as "brothers and sisters."
West, of course, is the great theologian and former Harvard professor who is running this year as an independent candidate to replace Joe Biden as president of the United States. Finkelstein is a widely published social scientist and descendent of Holocaust victims.
In their conversation, both men condemned Israel's ongoing genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. Finkelstein found them unforgivable. In the latter's completely secular opinion, Benjamin Netanyahu and by extension, Joe Biden are beyond any absolution for their crimes. Calling them and their supporters "brother" or "sister" is an abomination.
For his part however, West refused to give up even on Israel's prime minister or on the U.S. president. While both, he said, deserved removal from office and a lengthy prison sentences for obvious war crimes, West still considered them "brothers" loved by God.
As a theologian myself, I found myself agreeing with both men. Netanyahu's cynical religious pretensions are despicable. His invocations of the Bible to justify his slaughter of innocents represents the worst and most blasphemous form of religion I can imagine.
I must confess that in my heart, I wish upon him the pain that Gazan babies and their mothers must endure as their limbs are amputated without anesthesia, because of the prime minister's refusal to allow medical supplies into the concentration camp he's mercilessly carpet-bombing. I have the same feelings towards Netanyahu's sponsor, Joe Biden. He fully deserves the epithet "Genocide Joe."
And yet, biblical readings for this Epiphany Sunday tell me that Cornel West is right. Despite shockingly primitive and cruel understandings of God found in the books of Genesis and Exodus, the Divine One of the Judeo-Christian tradition ultimately reveals God's Self as the loving Mother/Father of EVERYONE regardless of our crimes, and especially (in today's particular readings) - regardless of ethnic identification. To all of them, Yeshua's final words apply. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).
More specifically, the Divine One's universal and unfailing love is the very theme of today's readings.
Epiphany Sunday
Remember: the word "epiphany" means the appearance or manifestation of God - a revelation of who God really is.
On this Epiphany Sunday, Christians recall the tale of astrologers from "the East" who followed a miraculous star leading to the birthplace of Yeshua of Nazareth.
Epiphany recalls the time when such seekers recognized in Yeshua the long-awaited manifestation of the Universal God announced in today's selection from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah and today's responsorial Psalm 72 tell us clearly that God is not what ethnocentric believers expected or even wanted. S/he loves everyone equally, not just Jews, much less Americans.
That's part of why Herod "and all Jerusalem with him" were "troubled" when they unexpectedly met the travelers who were seeking the world-centric and cosmic-centered manifestation of God that Isaiah had foreseen.
The God Herod and the Jerusalem establishment knew was like the one worshipped by Jewish Zionists today. He exclusively loved and favored Jews, the Hebrew language, and the Holy Land. He was pleased by Jewish customs and worship marked by animal sacrifice and lots of blood.
So, Herod and Jerusalem were "troubled" when the foreigners came seeking the Palestinian address of a newborn divine avatar. The astrologers claimed that the very cosmos (the Star!) had revealed God's Self to them even though they were not Jews. Evidently, the wise men possessed (or were possessed by) cosmic consciousness. They realized Life's Great Source (whatever its name) not only transcended themselves and their countries, but planet earth itself. All creation somehow spoke of its Divine Source.
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