Epiphany: From What Is to What If
“We all — adults and children, writers and readers — have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.” (Neil Gaiman from the article "Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming")
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. (Albert Einstein)
—-o—
This week I visited an extraordinary exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art by the Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, titled Presence. The installation plays with light, optics, and the laws of physics to remind us that our understanding of the world—and of ourselves—is shaped not only by culture and experience, but by the act of perception itself.
In one installation, Beauty, Eliasson brings a rainbow close enough to touch. With carefully angled light and a fine mist falling into the space, something that usually feels distant and mythical becomes immediate and bodily. And yet no two people in that room experience the same rainbow. Height, position, and movement all change how it appears. Each person encounters the work differently, even as they stand together within it.
In another installation, Riverbed, the gallery floor becomes a rocky landscape with a stream winding through the middle. There is no marked path. Each person must choose how to move through it. While some hug the wall and others seek out flat stones to step on, I found myself following the water, even though it was slower and less practical. As I did, I became aware of how instinctively I privilege proximity to something lovely over efficiency.
And that was the point: not to tell us what to see, but to help us notice how we see—and how differently others encounter the same experience.
We each perceive the world differently, even when standing side by side. And coming at the close of the Christmas season, Epiphany is many ways, a feast of human perspectives. In response to the same Christ child: Mary perceives an affirmation of human dignity; Joseph experiences a call to protect the vulnerable mother and child; the shepherds recognise an invitation to witness something world-changing even as the rest of the world sleeps. And then there are the Magi, whose story we celebrate today—foreign scholars, shaped by another culture and cosmology—who notice a sign that locals have missed and follow their wonder and curiosity, not yet knowing what they will find.
Epiphany is not the moment when everyone finally sees the same thing. It is the moment when God’s light draws many different ways of seeing into a shared journey. It does not resolve difference of perspective; it does not wait until everyone sees clearly or agrees. God simply enters the world in ways deeply shaped by where people are already standing. Revelation then is not delivered from above as a single, fixed viewpoint; it emerges through encounter, attention, and a willingness to follow our wonder. Mary ponders, Joseph is moved by his dreams, the Shepherds leave their flocks, the Magi follow a star.
In the early church, Epiphany—alongside Easter and Pentecost—was one of the three major feasts of the year, celebrating the ‘shining forth’ of Christ into the world -through his birth, his baptism, and his early miracles. Over time, the Western Church separated these events, and after the fanfare of Christmas it may feel as though Epiphany has been demoted from one of the big three to a quiet Sunday in January—particurlaly in Australia where we are all still in holiday mode - but perhaps a quiet Sunday is more fitting.
Throughout scripture, some of the most beautiful moments of epiphany—of God’s self-revelation—have occurred in times of quiet transcendence. God appears to Moses as fire that burns without consuming. God comes to Elijah not in the earthquake or the wind, but in a sound so subtle it can be missed. Jesus appears alongside both on a mountain top while the voice of God is heard, provoking even more questions than answers. Again and again, those who encounter God hear an invitation: Draw in closer. What are you seeing?
This is where imagination and perception become essential to our discipleship. In our faith life, imagination is not fantasy or wishful thinking. It is the tool through which we see beyond what is - beyond the fire, the whisper, the small child. It is how we receive the promise of the kingdom of God—not as an abstract doctrine, but as a possibility to live into. When Jesus speaks of God’s reign, he does not offer a how-to guide. Rather, he paints us a picture: seeds and yeast, lost things sought after and open tables, workers paid generously, and men of status who run to intervene for the vulnerable. A vision of the world through the light of God’s dreamings that we might also imagine a place for ourselves in that story.
Certainly as communities this becomes is important: without employing faithful imagination, our religiosity becomes concerned only with preserving the past, and parishes get caught in patterns built for decades long past. Without curiosity, our faith becomes brittle—afraid of questions and threatened by difference. Without wonder, faith becomes exhausted—going through the motions with a God of history, without expectancy that God might still surprise us. Scripture consistently warns that faith without wonder becomes hollow ritual—honouring God with words while the heart disengages. At the same time, it insists that God is never static or finished: God is always doing a new thing, always ahead of our assumptions, inviting us to perceive, attend, and keep following. Wonder is not optional; it is the posture that keeps faith alive.
Which brings us back to the Magi’s star.
Whatever the Magi saw, it did not tell them exactly where they were going or what they would find. It did not guarantee safety or success. The epiphany did not arrive fully formed at the beginning of the journey. It unfolded slowly, across distance and time, as they carried their questions. The star functioned less like a map and more like a provocation. It awakened their sense of wonder and set their journey in motion.
And perhaps that is the point. What if our glimpses of God are not meant to settle us into certainty, but to draw us deeper into mystery? What if revelation does not give us all the answers, but sparks enough curiosity to provoke the next faithful step, enough inspiration to keep exploring, enough imagination to contemplate that God’s future is larger than the present we can see?
The headlines in the days since Christmas alone have been filled with tragedy, natural disaster, dramatic economic greed, and invasion by powerful forces. In a world that finds it easier to imagine dystopia than renewal it can be tempting to practise a faith that looks for escape rather than engagement. But the stories of our faith are not escape stories. They are what if stories. What if the hungry were fed, the stranger welcomed, the vulnerable protected? What if love extended beyond tribe and boundary—even to enemies? These questions are not naïve - they are the acts of imagination through which Jesus defines faithfulness (Matthew 25). They are how we resist being trapped by fear, cynicism, or nostalgia. The human capacity to see beyond is how the world is changed—again and again—by ordinary people.
A holy imagination is what moves us from what is to what if.
Epiphany then, calls us to attend to the light we are given—however partial, however uniquely perceived and refracted in us— that we may be led by our wonder and drawn into a common journey of hope, courage, and love.
After the Magi encountered the Christ child, they did not suddenly understand everything. But what they perceived formed their next steps - and they went home by another way.
May we also have our eyes to attend to the light we are given
and the courage to follow it,
believing that God will meet us on the way.
—o—
Other morsels:
Women’s Christmas is celebrated in Ireland and beyond on Epiphany Day (January 6). Every year Jan Richardson creates free downloadable retreat material that includes original readings, art, questions, and blessings for use alone or with others (and it’s not for women only!) This year’s theme is “To Meet Our Pain with Love.”