NOTE FROM PASTOR J R FOR EPIPHANY SUNDAY, JANUARY 2, 2022
This Sunday is the first Sunday of a New Year. We at Covenant will observe it as “The Epiphany of Our Lord Sunday.” Epiphany is a Christian festival held on January 6th in honor of the coming of the Magi to visit the infant Jesus Christ. However, someone having “an epiphany” is defined as “a moment in which that person suddenly sees or understands something in a new or very clear way.” That’s what we all need as we begin 2022.
Everywhere around us and in our lives, we seem to face transition, after transition, as we long for what use to be “normal”. This pandemic, is teaching us that there is no such thing as “normal”. A constant in a state of change and transition is now our “new normal”. It was so before COVID-19, but it seems that the pandemic has accelerated transition with mind blowing sudden awareness of these changes.
We need an Epiphany to help us understand clearly how to deal with our world of non-stop transitions. In this Sunday’s assigned text from Matthew 2, depicts the world in a chaotic transition when grace was born into it with the birth of Jesus. The empire wanted that grace stamped out. An Epiphany to the Magi help keep God’s grace, Jesus, physically alive.
We need a New Year’s Epiphany that helps us keep that Grace alive spiritually in us in 2022. Richard Rohr says: “God is not a distant terrifying monster waiting for vengeance at the end of the universe. God descended among us here and now, making the tree of true aliveness available to all.” This means that Grace (now the Holy Spirit) is still very much alive to give us comfort, help, solace, and strength to endure and thrive this year regardless of any transition life throws at us if we will “hold to God’s unchanging hand.”
Join us at Covenant for worship as we observe “The Epiphany” on this first Sunday of 2022, by Zoom or Facebook livestream. My sermon will be “A New Year’s Epiphany Amid Transition,” based on Matthew 2:1-12.
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