Partakers and Proclaimers of His Promise

Psalm 86:8-13               Ephesians 3:1-21                       Matthew 2:1-12

Partakers and Proclaimers of His Promise

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is among the oldest Christian communions in the world, with roots stretching back into the earliest centuries of the faith. Tradition and early church writers hold that the first Ethiopian believer was the court official from Acts 8 whom Philip the Evangelist baptized on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza; an event that has long been understood in Ethiopian Christian memory as the seed of the Gospel in that land. This eunuch, a high ranking official of Kandake, the Queen of the Ethiopians (or Candace), returned home rejoicing and carried the good news with him, a tradition that testifies to Ethiopia’s ancient connection with the earliest Christian witness. 

Historical records also attest that Christianity became the state religion of the Axumite Empire in the 4th century under King Ezana through the ministry of St. Frumentius, whom the Coptic patriarch consecrated as the first bishop of the Ethiopian church. 

The Ethiopian Church follows a liturgical calendar of thirteen months, like its sister Coptic tradition, and celebrates Christmas on January 7 and its Epiphany feast, called Timkat, on January 19 (or January 20 in leap years according to the Gregorian calendar). Unlike Western Epiphany celebrations that often emphasize the visitation of the Magi as the first manifestation of God to Gentiles, Timkat principally commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan as the first revelation of Jesus as divine, understood as the moment of his revelation to the world as God incarnate as well as the first explicit manifestation of the Holy Trinity. 

Timkat is one of the most sacred festivals in Ethiopian Christianity and is marked by elaborate processions, rich liturgical music, and symbolic rites. On the eve of the feast, the Tabot, a consecrated replica of the Ark of the Covenant present in every Ethiopian church, is wrapped in ornate cloth and carried in procession to a nearby body of water, where priests and congregants gather through the night in prayer and vigil. At dawn on Timkat day, the water is blessed in remembrance of Christ’s baptism, and the faithful are sprinkled with water or they immerse themselves in the water as a sign of renewal in Christ. As such the feast is seen as something you actively enter rather than simply remember.

While the Ethiopian Church’s emphasis on Epiphany as the central feast of the liturgical year may seem distinctive to those brought up in Western Christian calendars, it reflects an ancient and enduring focus on the revelation of God in Jesus and the extension of salvation beyond Israel to all peoples, a revelation that was as astonishing to the first-century church as it is still wondrous to us today. 

In our Epistle reading for today, Paul described this revelation of the divine undeserved favour of God to the Gentiles as a “mystery”…a mystery that had not been made known before but had now been revealed by the Spirit to his holy apostles and prophets. This great revealed mystery decreed that the Gentiles…those once considered “not my people”…were now the very “fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

Although the Old Testament prophets had foretold the inclusion of all nations, none would ever had imagined that this would result in the perfect spiritual union of those once so distinctly divided…in the absolute fusion of such opposite factions into a new united Israel of God comprising every tribe, tongue, and nation of the world. 

In many ways, the global Church is the reversal of Babel where those once united by a common language were divided and scattered. However, the common language of the Church that unites us, despite differences in culture, tradition, and expression, is the language of the fulfilment of the divine promise of forgiveness, deliverance, adoption, and restoration. Our inheritance of and participation in God’s promise is found in Jesus. We are united in life by his death. 

Those once dead in trespasses and sins, without a hope in the world, who “once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2), they have now been made alive and have been raised up together with Jesus and made to sit with him in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). 

Can you see the wonder of the exceeding riches of God’s grace and mercy and kindness towards us in Jesus? What unbelievable favour! What immeasurable love!

For this reason, Paul could speak of his sufferings, persecutions, beatings, deprivations, and imprisonments as blessed consequences of his ministry to those once excluded. He knew that the outcome of these things, whether life or death, were in the nail-scarred hands of the one who now ruled the entire universe in the interest of the Church. His suffering on behalf of the Gentiles paled in comparison to the mercy of God shown in and through Jesus and therefore, for him, the proclamation of the Gospel to the lost was a gracious gift…not a duty or a chore. He had been graciously granted the stewardship of God’s unmerited favour. His task in life was to reveal the unsearchable riches of Christ among the Gentiles and to “bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

Paul delighted in his calling as an ambassador of the kingdom of God. He joyfully carried the light of the Gospel wherever he went so that Jesus might live in the hearts of those who once did not know him…so that they, having been “rooted and grounded in love, may have (the) strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, (so) that (they) may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19)

This calling as an ambassador of the kingdom of God is our calling too, dearest beloved brethren. But does the love of Jesus have the same effect on us as it did on Paul? Out of sheer wonder with the gravity of such overwhelming mercy, do we also consider it an honour to deliver to the world the message of eternal life though Jesus? 

Epiphany in its various expressions marks the rising of the light on the Gentiles. May this season mark our rising as a church from our comfortable complacency to fulfil our calling to be salt and light in our town, our province, and our nation.

If the purpose of the church is to make known “the manifold wisdom of God…to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places”, then we as his body on earth do not exist for ourselves. We are not a holy social club that exists to enjoy exclusive benefits of membership. That was the error of Old Testament Israel. Chosen to be a light to the nations, they selfishly and disobediently turned their focus inward, not outward. But Paul said that we exist to reveal the multi-faceted, many splendored wisdom of God in the reconciling of what had once seemed irreconcilable…that we exist to reveal this mind-blowing mercy not just to the world, but also to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

This is a plan that spans all ages. It is God’s ultimate design for the Church. We are the living school for the world and the heavenly hosts…we are the living school of the seen and the unseen. Those who had desired to look into the unfolding of God’s redemption (1 Peter 1:12) are now given front row seats, as it were, to watch our Lord reconcile the world to himself through us, the Church (2 Corinthians 5:18-21). 

But my point is simply this: God has entrusted to us the message of reconciliation…God has made us ambassadors for Jesus…we exist as a church so that God might make his appeal through us. But can we honestly say that this is an accurate description of who we are? While we are certainly partakers of his promise, can we truly claim to be proclaimers of his promise?

Jesus’ First Advent ushered in a gracious age no one ever expected. In Jesus all the families of the earth are blessed as they are grafted into the family of Abraham. Through faith in Jesus, barriers and boundaries are broken down and men, women, and children from different tribes, tongues, and nations are brought into the fold of God and incorporated into the one Body of Christ. We are made one by virtue of a common rebirth…and in him there is therefore no longer Jew, Gentile, slave, free, black, Asian, or Caucasian…we are all one holy universal and glorious Church.

Epiphany marks the conception of this union. A time when God’s plan for salvation through the incarnate Jesus was revealed to the world…whether seen or celebrated through the remembrance of the visitation of the Magi or the participation in the declaration of God at the River Jordan.

May we be reminded once more today of his astoundingly gracious gift to us, and, as our hearts are filled with humble gratitude, may we be encouraged to participate in God’s ongoing task to reconcile the world to himself through Jesus.

Shall we pray?

© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2025