This is an edited version of the sermon I preached on Sunday for Epiphany -- it may be of interest to those who missed the live-streaming of our service this week...

If you were at the Carols by Candlelight service a couple of weeks ago – or indeed if you watched it online – you’ll have been aware of the magical and moving experience of St Mary’s gradually filling up with light. In the opening moments the candles were only visible on the stage – our beautiful candelabra are fixed down, and can’t actually be moved, as Kieron and I discovered to our cost! But then during the first hymn the light was passed through the church as one person’s candle was lit from the next, until eventually the building was bathed in light.

‘Arise, shine’, says Isaiah, ‘for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.’

The focus of Epiphany is on the universality of the good news. Jesus is not just the Messiah for the Jews, but a ‘light to lighten the Gentiles’. The baby in the manger, that tiny light which starts to burn at Christmas, attracts all those who long for light in the place of the thick darkness that surrounds them: ‘Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.’ 

Thus in Matthew’s continuation of the Nativity narrative, the miraculous visitation of the angels and shepherds which we find in Luke’s gospel is replaced by the visit of the so-called wise men from the East, who see a new star in the sky and are drawn by its light.

The feast of Epiphany celebrates first and foremost the visitation of the three kings with their symbolic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh – and thus the recognition by complete outsiders that the baby in the stable is a king, and a priest, and carries within him the destiny of the world. 

But in a broader sense the Epiphany season encompasses a whole series of occasions when an abiding cosmic reality is glimpsed through everyday events, like the sun breaking out from behind the clouds before hiding its face again.

And it's in this sense that I’d like to spend a few minutes paying tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died on Boxing Day at the age of 90 and whose funeral took place on New Year's Day. It seems to me that this was a man through whom the divine reality could be glimpsed. 

A man of profound prayerfulness: a journalist reminiscing about him on the radio remembered sharing a room with him during a time of crisis in South Africa, and waking in the middle of the night to find him in a position of prostration on the ground, covered from head to foot in a white bedsheet. 

A man of principle, who initially trained as a teacher but abandoned that career after the passage of the Bantu Education Act in 1953 introduced racial segregation in schools. 

A man of conviction, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his non-violent fight against white minority rule in South Africa. 

A man of self-denying courage, who in 1985 helped to save a suspected police informant from being lynched by an angry mob during race riots in a township near Johannesburg. He later returned to rebuke the man’s attackers, reminding them of "the need to use righteous and just means for a righteous and just struggle". 

A man of transcendent humility, who became Archbishop of Cape Town and the instigator of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa in 1995, who was recognised and feted all around the world, but never allowed power to corrupt him.

 A man unafraid to speak truth to power, who on a visit to Birmingham criticised what he called ‘two-nation Britain’ and angered the Israelis by speaking out against their treatment of the Palestinian minority. 

A man who could be reduced to tears by the suffering of the poor and marginalized, and who once claimed "God is weeping," when he accused the church of allowing an "obsession" with homosexuality to take precedence over the fight against world poverty. 

But also a man in whom the lightness of God was manifest, a man who was still dancing in public at the age of 80, and whose infectious giggle could not be repressed. 

A man whom we so often saw with a smile on his face when others were stony and serious, who took joy and delight in small things, and small people. He formally retired from public life in 2010, he said ‘to spend more time drinking red bush tea and watching cricket’ than in airports and hotels; but was never able to refrain from commenting on the outrages of public life where he saw them, most recently speaking out against Donald Trump’s endorsement of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and against Aung San Suu Kyi and the treatment of the Muslim minority in Burma.

His even-handedness in matters of faith and culture had profound roots in the conflicts of apartheid, and it seems appropriate to finish by remembering that he was the one to coin the tag of the ‘Rainbow Nation’ – the many-coloured peoples of God in South Africa. 

On this feast of Epiphany, when we rejoice in God’s love for Jew and Gentile alike, what better way to remember this particular beloved child of God? 

Information about Desmond Tutu taken mainly from Obituary: Desmond Tutu - South Africa's rebellious priest - BBC News