Eating an Orange for the First Time
We are marking today the day of Epiphany. Epiphany is one of our big bible words for the revealing of something, an unveiling. We have those moments dotted throughout the bible. In it the unveiling of truth is not an uncommon occurrence at all. In fact it seems to be almost a prerequisite that if anything is of God it is rolled up and packaged into something that is quite surprising. And that as what is on the inside is revealed, it will cause some to adore it, some to run from it, some to feel disgust about it and others to not know how to respond at all.
Epiphany is a season of the church where we see several stories near to the Christmas narratives gathered together as a revealing of Christ’s saving story to different groups. Today it is the moment the Christ story is revealed to gentile foreigners, bringing all of us into the wide wide arms of God right from the very beginning. But it is also a revealing of the Christ story to the Jewish people present, as they, who had not realised what God’s story entailed, had to come to terms with a full on royal foreign dignitaries visit and play catch up- how could foreigners have foreseen what is a primarily Jewish set of prophecies?
But as I said, the Bible as a whole is full of Epiphanies dotted all the place. It isn’t just a season, it is a concept of Godself. We find it in the tranfiguration story, where Jesus’ true nature is suddenly seen as if from the inside. We find it in the Easter stories as bit by bit, unhappy truths are understood by the disciples and a revealing of what love means is shown to them in such a way as to change them forever. It comes in the old testament, where a prophet waited for God to reveal herself in the elements, and waited and waited, as God was not packaged in the fire, was not found in the wild winds, was not a forceful earthquake to shake us by the shoulders, but knew she’d appear in the silence following all those.
The Bible is packed with revealings of God’s truth packaged up in different form. So an Epiphany is a stripping away, a showing of what is real on the inside. A bit like peeling oranges - we know from experience what is on the inside of an orange and we know that it is quite different from the outside. But imagine for a moment that you had never looked inside an orange before. What would that be like? It takes a bit of effort for us, but try it out, clear your mind and imagine being that innocent individual now, because the analogy of that experience is exactly the experience that we get when God reveals something of Godself.
Imagine all you’ve ever experienced of oranges has only ever been to see the outside of the orange. It’s nice enough, it’s a lovely colour, adds texture to the fruit bowl, but it’s a bit bitter- I don’t think I want to eat it.
Now, imagine watching someone take that orange and before your very eyes, for the first time ever you saw that person pierce their finger through the skin. A little yelp of surprise might come from you, this is beyond your experience of the orange so far- you didn’t know it could do that. Your distress intensifies as the skin is torn, seemingly tortuously, what was so divinely fine as an orange is being wrecked before your very eyes, bits of its inside texture shed onto the floor. You look on in a mixture of awe and fear as you set eyes on the inside of the orange for the very first time in your life.
Inside, soft and vulnerable looking, the orange colour seems more delicate and needing to be appreciated more for that fact. The whitened coverings of the remnants of the skin are scraped away as you begin to realise they were just protecting what was real on the inside. Then! Further panic as your friend pulls the delicately toned item in half and then quarters and then smaller pieces until your fear settles and you realise the inside is made of many versions of itself, each complete and bound by its own boundary.
They offer you a piece. You take it, and as you allow your teeth to break the still fairly strong boundary, an amazing sweetness, the like of which you had never anticipated floods your mouth. You had only ever seen a bitter protected version of this thing. You had no idea that an orange could be so different inside. And although the experience of getting there might have been traumatic for one lacking such experience, the result was ever so good.
Now, take that analogy. And let’s apply it to the many many bible stories, where God reveals something within that is not what we expected. We might come to realise that for some, they’d rather have the bitter outer packaging, so fearful are they to see all the things they thought were certain broken up before their eyes. Others might try and travel a little further but the distress of seeing the destruction of what they thought was God’s gift, makes them run, and they never get to taste the sweetness inside- the true gift. Only those that stuck with Jesus to the end knew the sweetness of the truth that was packaged up in him.
In today’s bible reading, the amazing sweetness that is revealed is the revelation that God’s goodness is for all those foreigners too. That’s you and me. Conversely it is also the bitterness of the unopened orange, for Herod and others who couldn’t bear the thought of their precious kingdoms being demolished.
Whenever you pick an orange, try and imagine being one who has never looked inside before. Feel the experience, and consider where in the experience you are whenever God brings an Epiphany moment for you to open from his Word.