The Feast of our Lord's Epiphany

Well, if we anticipated by a couple days in the Divine Service, today's Office brings us the full joys on the actual day. There are a number of happy coincidences in the lectionary used in LSB and Treasury, and today's was one of them. What is the second reading for this joyful day? The Baptism of our Lord from St. Luke (together with the Lucan genealogy - which right after the Baptism stresses Christ as the new Adam arising from the waters of a new creation)!

The writing for this holy feast day comes from St. Gregory of Nazianzus:

Jesus goes up out of the water...for with Himself He carries up the world... and sees heaven opened, which Adam had shut against himself and all his posterity, as the gates of Paradise by the flaming sword. And the Spirit bears witness to His Godhead, for He descends upon one that is like Him. So also does the voice from heaven, for Jesus came from heaven, witness to His Godhead. (p. 1093)

The hymn for the day is Dr. Luther's incomparable "To Jordan Came the Christ our Lord" and especially stanza three:

These truths by Jordan's banks were shown
By mighty word and wonder.
The Father's voice from heaven came down,
Which we do well to ponder:
"This man is My beloved Son
In whom My heart has pleasure.
Him you must hear and Him alone
And trust in fullest measure
The word that He has spoken."

Yes, Luther conflates Transfiguration and Baptism. And when he does, the lightbulbs go off and you say: "Yes!" It's one of those great transpositions that illumines the one feast via the other.

Borrowing a page, I believe from Parsch, the Treasury notes: "At Christmas, God appears as man, and at Epiphany, this man appears before the world as God." (p. 1094)

Indeed, "The Christ has appeared to us! O come, let us worship Him!" [Invitatory for Epiphany, p. 0-63]