A few years back I began wondering why the Season of Epiphany didn't have its own distinctive colour, identifying it as a unique time in the Church year. When I was a child Advent and Lent shared the same colour - purple. By the time I had reached seminary most congregations that I was aware of had switched to blue as the colour for Advent. Thus Advent and Lent were visually identified as being separate and unique seasons within the church year. This made sense to me since the only connection between Advent and Lent was a sense of expectation, but the overall tone for each of these times in the church year was a complete contrast, and the nature of the anticipation was quite different. So different colours made a lot of sense to me.
For many years it has struck me as odd that the time of Epiphany, with its particular tone and emphasis, got lumped in with Ordinary Time - at least in how it was presented visually in worship. Perhaps part of the issue was the use of green in a decidedly greenless time of the year for Canadians. In the weeks that follow Christmas everything is still in hibernation, kept dormant by snow and cold - there is no growing going on (at least not outside), yet we were told that the use of green in the church paraments was a symbol of growth and life. Winter is not a time of growth and life, at least not in nature. What we Canadians do experience during this time of the year is the coming of the sun - more daylight begins to move into our lives, and that is a great source of hope and comfort.
Epiphany is really a festival celebrating the coming of the Light of the World. The weeks following this feast day are centred in the revelation of that Light to the world. The lectionary readings focus on the beginning of Jesus' ministry - the time when he was being revealed to the world. Thus while it could be called a time of growth and life, I am inclined to think of it more as a time of revelation and inspiration. This all leads me to suggest that the season of Epiphany should be indicated not with the colour green, but rather yellow.
Why yellow? According to Annette Labedzki (an artist who received her BFA at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C.) yellow "is the color with the closest resemblance to sunlight - the life force on the planet Earth." As the Gospel of John states "The Word was the source of life, and this life brought light to humanity." (John 1:4 - Good News trans.) According to the ReligionFacts website "As the color of light, yellow may be used to represent divinity." Yellow seems to be an ideal colour to signify the revealing of the Light of the World.
It just so happened that at our last Synod Convention there were some handcrafted yellow stoles from India. These stoles were from the MESH program (Maximizing Employment to Serve the Handicapped) a Fair Trade initiative of Canadian Lutheran World Relief. I already had what I thought was a complete set of colours of MESH stoles (green, white, red, purple, blue and black) but here were some yellow stoles being cleared out (at the incredible price of $5 each). I suspect they were being cleared out because no one uses yellow as a liturgical colour. (Gold has been used for Easter and Christmas in some western churches, the Orthodox and Coptic churches use gold - rather than green - when no other colour is specified. Perhaps these yellow stoles were intended to be appear golden in colour, but I simply saw yellow.) The clergy at Christ Lutheran Church in Regina each obtained one of these yellow stoles, and this year we are wearing them during the Season of Epiphany. We would like to encourage others to mark this unique time of the church in a similar fashion - perhaps we are starting a small liturgical innovation here. Yellow - the colour of sunlight, yellow - the colour of Epiphany...why not!?
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