happy Epiphany!

 I'm sorry I didn't manage to actually post on Epiphany, but it was a very busy day; Bess had her first public appearance: she was a flower girl in a dear friend's wedding.

So in my musing on homemaking through the church year this past Saturday, my mind wasn't
concentrating on the showing forth of Christ to the Gentiles.  Instead, I spent my time watching
my daughter, watching the bride, and occasionally eyeing the creche that was partially hidden
behind the line of groomsmen.

All of those images made me think about fruitfulness.  About how we put toddlers in weddings
because they're cute, but how the older reason for having young children bearing flowers before
the bride was to symbolize the hoped-for fruitfulness of the marriage.  It's old-fashioned now to think that first comes love, then comes marriage, and then comes the baby in
the baby carriage, and even more old-fashioned to think that the marriage necessitates the baby
carriage, sooner or later. 

But, more or less, I do.  The BCP puts it well: "when it is God's will, [marriage is for] the
procreation of children."  There are times, of course, that it is not his will.  But it is the normal
course of things.

Sarah and Dave, our newly-married friends, seemed to think so too, judging from the scriptures
they choose to have read.  The Psalm lavished them with blessings about progeny: may your wife
be a fruitful vine in your house, may your children be olive shoots around your table.

But, despite the small figure of the Christ-child peeking out behind the tuxedo forest, they got
married on Epiphany, and not during Christmas.   Epiphany, the time we remember the Three Kings, and Jesus' baptism.  The first showed Jesus to the whole world, represented by the wise men, and the second showed that world that Jesus was God's Son, when God the Father publically approved of him as he came up out of the water.

Marriage, when it's done right, is fruitful by its very nature.  Physically, there are the children. 
Spiritually, there are gifts of love and grace that have to come if two people are going to live
together peaceably.  And, in some mysterious sense, there is that third entity that is the married
couple, that one flesh that St. Paul refers to once, and then instantly insists that he was talking about Christ and the church.

And Epiphany is about fruitfulness too.  It's a big holiday for missionaries, for those who are busy spreading the gospel to those far reaches of the world that the wisemen represented.  It's
a time for the rest of us to pray for workers for the harvest, the workers Jesus once warned us
are so few.  The events of Epiphany represent the beginning of the spread of the good news that Jesus came to save us, and that "us" means EVERYBODY.   "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand," preached John the Baptist.  And when he baptised Jesus, we saw the King to whom that kingdom belonged.

So, Sarah and Dave, here's a Epiphany wedding wish for you: may your marriage be glorious, like that glorious Bethlehem star was glorious.  May the brightness of your love, which grows out of the brightness of your Lord's love, show everyone around you that God is with us.

And may you have lots of cute babies.


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica