So You Can Take the Church Out of Epiphany...

 But you can't take Epiphany out of the church.

     We are celebrating Epiphany this coming weekend.  The winter weather kept us out of church in person this past Sunday and a snafu I am still trying to untangle led to a YouTube link to our first service from November 2020 instead of our first service from January 2021. So, according to the calendar, Epiphany is passed by, unless we do not take Epiphany out of the church.  

     So all the prep work into taking communion remotely, while still part of the community, was, temporarily, in vain.  And, unless someone commented to me, I would never have discovered the error except that the background was wrong.  I was on Facebook and saw the link to what was supposed to be Sunday, Jan.3's service.  The background was from my study, not the sanctuary, to where we have upgraded our service recordings.  

     What was a first in our actual presence at church extended to include an event that is a first in our remote presence from church. 

     So we are rolling everything forward to this Sunday.  BE AWARE, the service recording will say "January 3, 2021", but that is because I am not going to re-record it just to change the date.  And I do not have the capability to edit and change these things yet.  

     We are NOT taking Epiphany out of the church.  We are not bypassing Three Kings Day.  We are not leaving the story of the gifts of the Magi because it is stretching the bounds of the Christmas calendar.  It is so very appropriate to remember the gifts of the Magi on the Sunday where we remember the gift of salvation won for us by Jesus through the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood.

     And if it sounds like I am trying to play catch up, well, that is not wrong either.  

     At the conclusion of the Epiphany passage in Matthew 2, God came to the Magi in a vision and told them to go back to their own country by another road.  They were warned not to return to Jerusalem, as the present king, King Herod, had instructed them to.  The Gospel does not tell us if they ever had an idea as to why they did not return to Jerusalem.  

    If they had, their reaction would have been a double edged sword.  On the one edge, there would have been joy at the reality that it gave Jesus and his family the time they needed to escape to Egypt.  But on the other, there would have been shock and dismay at the slaughter of the Innocents that Herod ordered anyway.  Compared to that, well, there is no comparing the inconveniences of this past week to what happened then.

    God's plan is accomplished but bad things, inconvenient things, sinful things continue to happen.  Our strength, as Christians, is that we have the patience, the forgiveness, and the love of God in our hearts to overcome anything, from the horrific to the trivial, as we lives our lives of faith.

Peace,
Pastor Peter